Singapore drops the mask in new post-pandemic push

City-state lifting various Covid controls and travel restrictions in ‘decisive’ move to live with the virus

With a high majority of its population fully vaccinated and nearly all eligible given a booster, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced on Thursday (March 24) a major easing of strict virus control measures in a “decisive step forward towards living with Covid-19.”

Gatherings of up to 10 people, up from a limit of five currently, will be permitted and the wearing of masks outdoors will be optional from March 29 in the most significant relaxation of rules in place for nearly two years. The city-state will also allow vaccinated travelers to enter the city-state without quarantine from April under a new travel framework.

In a televised speech, Lee said the country’s healthcare system remained resilient through a now-subsiding wave of transmission driven by the Omicron variant. While stopping short of a complete opening up, the premier said Singapore had to weigh the continued costs of stringent safety measures on businesses, the economy and society.

For many in the island nation, the announcement couldn’t have come soon enough. Although public compliance with protracted virus curbs has never ebbed, months of back-and-forth adjustments to restrictions have brought a palpable sense of fatigue as well as confusion over what “living with Covid-19” actually means.

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.

Malaysia’s game of thrones conspiring against Ismail

UMNO heavyweights are agitating for snap polls that could bring an early end to the accidental premier’s tenure

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob is facing renewed pressure to call an early general election from his rivals within the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and its grassroots supporters after the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition it leads clinched an emphatic victory at the recent Johor state election.

Winning 40 out of 56 seats in the Johor state assembly, the results surpassed the BN’s own target of a two-thirds majority and follow an earlier landslide victory in Melaka’s bellwether state polls in November. But in an ironic twist, some analysts argue that the biggest winner of the March 12 Johor election wasn’t even a candidate.

Criminally convicted former prime minister Najib Razak has emerged as the BN’s star campaigner, attracting crowds on the election trail and winning plaudits from party leadership for his success as a vote-getter. The ex-premier emerged as the political face of the coalition’s resounding win in Johor, just as he did in Melaka five months ago.

Time is of the essence for Najib and his key ally, UMNO president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. Both politicians face prison time on graft and money laundering charges and are agitating for snap polls to capitalize on the BN’s political momentum. Their ultimate aim, say analysts, is to get ahead of the courts by foisting a sympathetic member of their faction into the premiership.

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.

Goldman’s top execs off scot-free at 1MDB trial

Lawyers insist ex-Goldman banker Roger Ng is a ‘fall guy’ for higher level complicity in the multi-billion dollar scandal

Often described as one of the largest financial heists in history, the now-infamous money laundering and bribery scandal involving state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB, saw billions looted from public coffers. The only Malaysian to be tried overseas over the scandal, meanwhile, adamantly insists he is a “fall guy.”

Since the February 14 opening of his trial at the US Eastern District Court of New York, lawyers for 49-year-old Roger Ng, the former head of investment banking at Goldman Sachs Malaysia, have described their client as a scapegoat for companywide failures at the Wall Street bank that enabled massive fraud.

Ng, or his birth name Ng Chong Hwa, has pleaded not guilty and denies accusations of bribing foreign officials, circumventing Goldman’s internal compliance rules, laundering portions of the US$6.5 billion raised by the bank for 1MDB through three bond issuances in 2012 and 2013, and allegedly pocketing about $35 million in the process.

Legal experts and close observers of 1MDB proceedings say Ng faces an uphill battle in proving his innocence since prosecutors will likely show the jury incriminating emails, online chats and financial records showing he benefited from the scheme. But much still hinges on the question of Goldman’s institutional culpability in 1MDB’s fraudulent dealings.

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.

Lee’s successor coming into new view in Singapore

Finance Minister Lawrence Wong is among the frontrunners to take over when PM Lee Hsien Loong finally steps aside

In a nation reputed for its staid politics, the delivery of the annual budget statement is one of Singapore’s keynote political events. Amid the unveiling of the latest spending plan has been a back-of-mind concern that Singaporeans have not previously been accustomed to: a stalled prime ministerial leadership transition.

When Finance Minister Lawrence Wong announced the budget earlier this month, it was his first time doing so since a cabinet reshuffle last April put him in charge of the influential ministry, a portfolio held previously by deputy premier Heng Swee Keat, who had earlier that month stepped aside as prime minister-designate in a surprise announcement.

The appointment put 49-year-old Wong, already one of the most visible government leaders in his role as co-chairman of a multi-ministry task force in charge of Singapore’s Covid-19 response, among the frontrunners in a contest for which there is still no clear successor a decade since aging Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong first broached his plans to retire.

Apart from Wong, who on February 18 unveiled a spending plan designed to drum up revenue with a slew of tax hikes on higher income groups after two years of pandemic-era big-spending, local media and commentators see Education Minister Chan Chun Sing, 52, and Health Minister Ong Ye Kung, 52, as the top contenders to succeed Lee.

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.

Muted ASEAN response to Russia’s brazen invasion

SE Asian states have been mostly reticent on Russia’s assault on Ukraine but no doubt quietly worry about the precedent being set

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “shock and awe” invasion of neighboring Ukraine, the biggest attack on a European state since World War II, has been met with condemnation from global democracies for the dangerous new precedent being set by Moscow.

Yet in Southeast Asia, a region where non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations is sacrosanct among democrats and autocrats alike, governments have been reticent to issue strong statements on the fast-moving developments in Eastern Europe as invading Russian forces attempt to encircle the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.

Singapore, both the region’s smallest state and its most outspoken thus far, sees the unfolding security crisis as a stark reminder that sovereignty, independence and adherence to international law are not to be taken for granted, with its foreign affairs ministry condemning “any unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country under any pretext.”

The city-state reiterated its stance that “the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine must be respected,” a position that it alone took in the region after the Kremlin recognized Donetsk and Luhansk, breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russian separatists, as “independent” states on February 21.

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.

Malaysian economy grows, but pandemic risks remain

With record infection numbers, authorities are not ready to end quarantines for travelers or reopen borders

Malaysia’s economy is firmly in recovery territory with full-year growth for 2021 having expanded within the official forecast range at 3.1% after a rebound in the final quarter of last year. But Southeast Asia’s third-largest economy isn’t out of the woods as inflationary headwinds threaten to stymie growth-spurring private consumption.

Authorities are also now battling a surge in Covid-19 cases fueled by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, which has driven up daily infections fivefold. The country reported a record high of 27,831 cases on February 16, adding to a cumulative total of more than three million since the pandemic started.

With a 78.8% full vaccination rate and approximately 99.6% of new cases suffering only asymptomatic or mild symptoms, health experts say Omicron’s milder impact should make the current wave more manageable than the deadly Delta variant that killed tens of thousands last year, resulting in one of Asia’s highest fatality and infection rates.

Weary of a viral resurgence, authorities are still not ready to end quarantine restrictions for vaccinated travelers or reopen borders, which have been closed since March 2020. But as Malaysia’s neighbors step up their easing of restrictions on inbound international travel, analysts say the government’s guarded stance risks hindering foreign investment.

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.

Migrant labor abuse bouncing back on Malaysia

Malaysian rubber glove makers are trying to right past wrongs as the US bans their products on modern-day slavery allegations

Malaysia’s major medical glove makers control more than two-thirds of the global market for a product that has been in emergency high demand amid the Covid-19 pandemic. But many of the Malaysian companies that export personal protective equipment (PPE) to hospitals across the developed world now face modern-day slavery allegations for their widespread labor abuses.

Some of Malaysia’s biggest rubber glove and palm oil exporters have recently had their goods blacklisted by the United States in response to third-party complaints of human trafficking, exploitation and forced labor of migrant workers in factories and plantations.

Malaysia is heavily reliant on migrant workers who toil in low-paid, labor-intensive jobs in the manufacturing, agriculture, construction and services sectors that are typically shunned by locals. Around 2 million foreigners work in the country of 33 million, with those employed in the glove industry hailing mainly from Bangladesh and Nepal.

Now, glove makers are making unprecedented debt bondage repayments to tens of thousands of their current and former workers in response to a string of US Customs and Border Protection (CPB) bans on their products that have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars worth of losses.

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 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.