TheJakartaPost
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Riding Southeast Asia’s wealth wave
For a sense of what rising affluence in a region of 650 million-plus consumers is all about, consider the soaring passenger volumes at many of Southeast Asia’s airports.
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Voyager of the Seas cruise ship by Royal Caribbean International will be making around 70 sailings in Southeast Asia between Sept. to June, 2019. (Shutterstock/File)
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or a sense of what rising affluence in a region of 650 million-plus consumers is all about, consider the soaring passenger volumes at many of Southeast Asia’s airports. Manila handled 41 million last year. That’s double the 2006 number. Passenger numbers at Ho Chi Minh City have more than quadrupled over the same period. Jakarta’s have risen from 37 million in 2009 to 63 million last year.
These are just some manifestations of the rising consumption power of a region that tends to be overshadowed, in the eyes of many businesses and investors, by India and China, its bigger and more populous neighbors.
Spanning countries as diverse as Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, Southeast Asia is not an easy, one-size-fits-all market to tap. Anyone doing business here has to be prepared to deal with a diverse range of languages, cultures and levels of economic development, different political, regulatory and financial systems, and varying degrees of internet and mobile penetration — all spread out over a fragmented geography that spans tens of thousands of islands.
And yet, the region is rapidly coming into its own as an economic powerhouse, and as a key market for anything from cars, cosmetics and computers to wealth management, insurance and international remittances services.
