Singapore an early mover in Asia’s inflation fight

City-state is on the monetary tightening vanguard as Asia’s central banks expected to start shifting policy to contain rising prices

A day after Singapore’s government released inflation data that surged past expectations with consumer price growth at a nearly eight-year high in December, its central bank announced on January 25 its second monetary tightening in three months in a surprise off-cycle move.

The unscheduled adjustment by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which manages monetary policy through exchange rate settings, puts the city-state on the vanguard of central banks beginning to rein in loose monetary policies that helped stimulate growth amid the pandemic, with the focus now shifting to containing spiraling inflation.

Analysts have described the policy tightening, which slightly raises the “slope” or rate of appreciation of the Singapore dollar policy band to mitigate inflation by allowing the local currency to strengthen against peers, as a pre-emptive move ahead of anticipated interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve widely forecasted to begin in March.

“Inflation has been climbing in the US and other parts of the world. By announcing the policy change sooner rather than later, MAS is sending a clear signal to the market that it stands ready to act to bring prices under control,” said Cheryl Chan, senior vice-president for capital markets at digital securities exchange ADDX.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

PS5, Switch and Xbox all short-circuited by scarce chips

Semiconductor crunch and other supply chain disruptions are stalling next-generation revision of top-selling Nintendo console

Demand for video games has surged to unprecedented levels in the era of lockdowns and Covid-19, but finding a new PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch is easier said than done. Console manufacturers see no end in sight to global shortages of the cheap but essential chips needed to boost the availability of their coveted gaming machines.

With general-purpose chips for audio, power management and wireless communication functions in short supply in recent months, Japanese electronics makers Sony and Nintendo have made significant downward revisions to their sales targets for the financial year and spoken in stark terms about the turmoil in their operations caused by chip shortages.

“Judging by recent statements and projections made by the top management at Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, things will continue to look bad at least into the second half of 2022,” said Serkan Toto, founder of Tokyo-based game industry consultancy Kantan Games, who added that semiconductor shortages may only begin to ease in 2023.

Industry analysts say console manufacturers may substitute certain components for readily available alternatives in the months ahead to cope with the supply crunch, and that the release of next-generation hardware, including a rumored more powerful revision of the top-selling Nintendo Switch console, could be held up until supply chain disruptions are resolved.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Singapore’s chip revival hinges on a wobbly China

City-state’s electronics and semiconductor exports are booming but Covid-hit China holds the key to sustained demand

Singapore’s economy expanded at its fastest pace in over a decade in 2021, a rebound from the city-state’s worst-ever recession led in large part by a manufacturing sector that fired on all cylinders to meet soaring global demand for electronics products as well as semiconductors.

The city-state’s economy expanded 7.2% last year, a robust bounce from a pandemic-induced 5.4% contraction in 2020. Singapore’s manufacturing sector expanded 12.8% compared to 7.3% the previous year, while exports rose 24.2% in November, the largest gain in nearly a decade. Exports are estimated to have grown by 10% year on year in 2021.

Electronics output alone grew 16.5% in the first 11 months of last year compared to the same period in 2020. Yet while the island nation’s broad economic recovery seems poised to continue in 2022, economists say its manufacturing-led momentum may have already peaked amid incipient signs and warnings of a slowdown.

In particular, cost pressures from rising input prices and skyrocketing freight costs are intensifying for electronics manufacturers. More significantly, perhaps, the specter of a potential slowdown in demand from China – Singapore’s largest trading partner – caused by Beijing’s “zero-Covid” policy is clouding the trade-reliant city-state’s outlook.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

How a lie could bring down Singapore’s opposition

Singapore’s opposition Workers’ Party is ensnared in a controversy that could see its leaders fined and jailed

Less than 18 months after making historic electoral gains, Singapore’s largest opposition party, the Workers’ Party (WP), has been shaken by a controversy that threatens its credibility and puts its leadership at risk of being sanctioned with fines or jail by the city-state’s legislature, where the ruling party commands a supermajority.

The scandal has dominated political headlines in Singapore since November 1, when WP lawmaker Raeesah Khan admitted she lied in parliament about accompanying a sexual assault victim to a police station where the latter was allegedly mocked and treated insensitively by a police officer handling her complaint.

After sharing the anecdote in August during a debate on women’s empowerment, Raeesah came clean three months later, confessing she did not follow the victim to the police station, but heard the account in a sexual assault survivors support group she was part of, nor did she have the victim’s consent to share the account publicly.

Raeesah, 28, said she attended the group session because she had been sexually assaulted at the age of 18 while studying abroad. Telling the complete story, she implied in a tearful speech, would have required publicly outing herself as a sexual assault victim, an experience she had not told her parents about at the time.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Omicron stalks SE Asia’s post-Covid hopes and dreams

Caseloads and deaths are down and reopening gathering pace but the new highly contagious variant could scupper those plans

Southeast Asian nations have been eager to leave behind a year that saw record-high Covid-19 caseloads, skyrocketing death rates and economically debilitating lockdowns. With rising inoculation rates recently stabilizing the situation across most of the region, the rapid global spread of the vaccine-eluding Omicron variant threatens to reverse those gains.

The emergence of the highly mutated pathogen, first identified in South Africa and classified as a "variant of concern" last month by the World Health Organization (WHO), is stoking fears of a pandemic resurgence as several global countries, most notably the United Kingdom, face runaway transmissions linked to the ultra-contagious strain.

Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand have each detected Omicron cases, raising the specter of new waves of infections and hospitalizations, a scenario that threatens to delay or reverse reopening plans, prolong travel curbs and new rounds of economic and social pain after two years of widespread suffering.

A University of Hong Kong preliminary study showed the Omicron variant infects around 70 times faster than the Delta and original Covid-19 strain. The study found that the variant replicated less efficiently – more than 10 times lower – in the human lung tissue, which may signal a lower severity of disease, particularly among the vaccinated.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Ruling leaves Najib on the hook for 1MDB

Court rejects ex-premier’s appeal of a landmark corruption conviction in decision that deems his actions a ‘national embarrassment’

A landmark corruption conviction against former prime minister Najib Razak was unanimously upheld by Malaysia’s Court of Appeal on Wednesday (December 8), a ruling that could slow the ex-leader’s political comeback ambitions and sow new divisions in the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) where he remains highly influential.

The appellate court dismissed the former premier’s appeal to reverse a guilty verdict handed down last July in relation to the misappropriation of 42 million ringgit (US$9.9 million) from SRC International Sdn Bhd, a now-defunct investment vehicle of the scandal-plagued 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) state fund.

Najib, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing, was sentenced to 12 years in prison and handed a 210 million ringgit ($49.7 million) fine on seven charges encompassing abuse of power, criminal breach of trust and money laundering. Appellate court Judge Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil said he agreed with the High Court’s earlier conviction and sentencing.

But the former premier’s avenues for appealing his guilty verdict are not yet exhausted. Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, Najib’s lead defense counsel, said his case would be appealed next at the Federal Court, the country’s highest and final appellate court. The Court of Appeal then granted a further stay of execution for Najib’s sentencing and conviction.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Make or break for ASEAN to matter in Myanmar

Cambodia's chairmanship of regional bloc is not expected to bring a breakthrough in Myanmar's intensifying morass

After being excluded from last month’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in an unprecedented rebuke of Myanmar’s recalcitrant military regime, junta chief Min Aung Hlaing was similarly conspicuously absent from two virtual ASEAN meetings with the European Union (EU) and China this week.

In what analysts viewed as the most severe sanction against any ASEAN member has ever been dealt by the regional bloc, ASEAN leaders barred the commander-in-chief, increasingly regarded as an international pariah, from attending an October 26-28 summit and called for a “non-political” Myanmar figure to participate instead. The junta refused.

Frustrated by Naypyidaw’s failure to honor pledges to allow an ASEAN special envoy access to deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other elected lawmakers overthrown in February’s coup, the decision to bar the junta chief was seen as a last-ditch effort to salvage credibility lost to the months-long impasse.

Now, with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen taking the reins of ASEAN’s annually rotating chairmanship in 2022, debate is swirling over whether Phnom Penh has the mettle to display leadership by dealing sternly with Myanmar or instead defer to China, its closest political ally and economic benefactor, in its handling of the crisis.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Najib on the comeback trail with Melaka poll sweep

Corruption-tainted ex-prime minister leads UMNO to thumping state election win that could bolster his bid to retake the premiership

To those who celebrated the downfall of Malaysia’s graft-tainted and since criminally-convicted former premier Najib Razak at 2018’s watershed election, heralded at the time as a democratic new beginning, the results of the bellwether state election in Melaka on November 20 are sobering.

The ex-prime minister, despite being virtually synonymous with the globe-spanning multi-billion dollar the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal, was the political face of the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition’s resounding victory over the weekend, clinching a supermajority in the state legislature by capturing 21 of 28 seats.

Analysts see the decisive win for Najib’s United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the lynchpin of the BN coalition, as a sign that the historic ruling party could go on to once again dominate national politics after the upcoming general election, which is not due until 2023 but is widely expected to be held in the latter half of next year or even earlier.

The results are also being seen as proof that Najib, who governed Malaysia from 2009 to 2018, has shaken off the taint of graft he has always adamantly denied and retained his popularity with voters even after being sentenced to 12 years in prison for corruption and other charges last year, a verdict he has appealed while mounting a political comeback.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Spotlight on Singapore’s propensity to kill

Mentally disabled Malaysian on Singapore's death row for drug trafficking sparks a global outcry

Activists, lawyers and rights groups are calling on authorities in Singapore to halt plans to impose the death penalty on 33-year-old Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, a mentally impaired Malaysian man convicted of drug trafficking, after a court stayed his imminent execution until further notice after he tested positive for Covid-19.

The announcement on Tuesday (November 9) came less than 24 hours before Nagaenthran was due to be executed by hanging at Singapore’s Changi Prison and gave relatives and advocates a glimmer of hope that his life will be spared. The Court of Appeal has yet to grant a prohibitory order against Nagaenthran’s execution sought by his lawyers.

Prominent rights lawyer M Ravi mounted an eleventh-hour judicial appeal before the High Court on Monday, arguing that executing a “mentally disabled person” would violate Singapore’s constitution and its international obligations as a signatory to a United Nations-sanctioned treaty protecting the rights of disabled persons.

The court dismissed the plaintiff’s argument but granted a temporary stay of execution to allow for an appeal of that decision. “We have got to use logic, common sense and humanity,” said judge Andrew Phang as he stayed the execution prior to the court’s adjournment. It is still unclear whether his death sentence will ultimately be commuted.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Ismail on a spending spree to revive Malaysia

New prime minister advances nation's richest ever budget with an eye on post-Covid recovery and possible early elections

After nearly two years under Covid-19 movement restrictions that have stifled the economy and shuttered thousands of small businesses, Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s government is betting that the largest budget in the country’s history will ease unemployment and spur a robust post-pandemic recovery.

The ambitious 332.1 billion ringgit (US$80.2 billion) spending plan is Ismail’s first since taking the reins as the nation’s ninth prime minister in August. The 2022 budget includes increased developmental spending, support for businesses, subsidies and cash aid, and a dedicated fund for combating Covid-19 and boosting public health care capacity.

Having signed an unprecedented political ceasefire with the opposition shortly after taking power, Ismail’s budget will likely win approval when Parliament votes on the plan in mid-November, analysts say. Ismail’s predecessor, Muhyiddin Yassin, only narrowly passed the 2021 budget amid speculation at the time that his government would fall.

The expansionary spending plan and its various support measures for low-income earners set the stage for an early general election that analysts suggest could be called as early as the middle of next year. Malaysia’s next polls must be held by 2023.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.