Southeast Asia has overtaken China because the region most probably to deliver the best investment returns as the continued trade war between Washington and Beijing puts pressure on the world’s second-largest economy.
List by President World The magazine recently ranked Malaysia in first place, with Poland close behind.
Fellow Southeast Asian neighbours the Philippines got here third, while Indonesia and Australia got here fourth and fifth respectively out of the 50 countries surveyed.
“Malaysia continues to be the most attractive destination for investors and businessmen,” the magazine said in an announcement.
The magazine based the rating on 11 various factors, including corruption, freedom (personal, trade and monetary), workforce, investor protection and infrastructure.
Factors also included taxes, quality of life, bureaucracy and technology readiness. “Each category was weighted equally.”
Singapore got here sixth, followed by India, the Czech Republic, Spain and Thailand.
Meanwhile, in response to a survey conducted on the Asian Financial Forum in 2019, about 39% of respondents believed that Southeast Asia offered the very best investment returns, while 35% voted for China and 16% for the US.
The vote took place through the panel discussion “Global Investment in the New Economy” in Hong Kong, as reported by South China Morning Post.
Vietnam is one other hotspot recently identified by PwC in a survey of CEOs from the Asia-Pacific region.
“We surveyed CEOs across the region on where they’d like to invest their money over the next 12 months, and Vietnam has been at the top for two years running. That has a lot to do with what’s happening around the world, and also some CEOs making changes to their supply chains in response to the current environment,” said Raymond Chao, Asia Pacific and Greater China chairman at PwC, referring to the continued U.S.-China trade war.
“We really need to think twice before we manufacture your products in China and put a ‘Made in China’ label on them because that will create huge tariff problems in the U.S.,” Fung said.
According to South China Morning Post, Foreign direct investment flows into ASEAN, the 10-nation Southeast Asian group, rose to a record US$137 billion in 2017, up from US$123 billion in 2016.
Three member states, including Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore, accounted for about 72 percent of foreign direct investment flows to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, in response to a November report.
