"More then ever, Cambodian women are working outside the home, but they need better education and job opportunities to bring their full potential to the country's labor force. Cambodia's female labor force participation rate is high by regional standards, at 71 percent of the working age population over 15 years of age. This is compared to 64 percent in Thailand, 56 percent in Laos and 87 percent in Vietnam.

While the majority of women -- 83 percent -- remain self-employed or unpaid family workers, new employment opportunities for women have opened up, particularly in the garment industry. This is part of what many believe has been a gradual positive shift in the situation of Cambodian women over the last decade. However, about 40 percent of women in Cambodia between 25-44 are illiterate (versus 22 percent for men)."

"Asian economies are losing their vibrant growth as they feel the impact of slowdowns in the United States and Europe. The recent economic news has been all negative around Asia -- whether it's the slowdown in Singapore's non-oil exports, the bleak economic assessment of the Bank of Japan, Vietnam's continued slide into a meltdown and the continued inflation shocks from around the region.

A raft of policy mistakes by China and India could mean that the coming slowdown will be unnecessarily painful. In India, government employees last week got a pay hike (an average increase of 21% backdated to January 2006), which will further add to inflation, as will other sops such as the waiving of farmers' loans and other messy subsidies. The only way for India to reverse its decline is for the country to cut wasteful spending on welfare and related inflationary areas, and instead focus on building physical infrastructure."

"Singapore on Wednesday called for speedy ratification of an Asean charter, which requires the bloc to uphold ideals of democracy and human rights and to make legally binding commitments. In a speech to Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) parliamentarians, Singapore Prime Minister Lee said the charter is an important part of the process for Asean to establish a single market and manufacturing base by 2015.

The charter has already been ratified by seven member countries. Three Asean states -- Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand -- have yet to ratify. The charter aims to give Asean a legal framework and sets out principles and rules for members while transforming the 41-year-old bloc into a legal entity that will give it greater international clout."

"Extreme poverty is almost synonymous with extreme isolation, especially rural isolation. But mobile phones and wireless internet end isolation, and will therefore prove to be the most transformative technology of economic development of our time. The rural poor now have access to wireless banking and payment systems. The information carried on the new networks spans public health, medical care, education, banking, commerce, and entertainment, in addition to communications among family and friends.

India has naturally been a pioneer of digital-led economic development. The digital divide is ending not through a burst of civic responsibility, but mainly through market forces. India has around 300 million subscribers, with subscriptions rising by a stunning eight million or more per month. Digital information technologies, if deployed cooperatively and globally, will enable us to join together globally in markets, social networks, and cooperative efforts to solve our common problems."

"Indonesia aims to fully implement this year the so-called Indonesia National Single Window system, which is aimed at streamlining export and import flow and preventing smuggling. However, the system may not be effective unless it is managed by a highly trained work force and is integrated with financial institutions.

The system is designed to weed out illegal exporters and importers though a scrupulous verification process. Next year, the government will integrate the system with the ASEAN Single Window (ASW) system. Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand will combine their national export and import systems. Other ASEAN countries -- Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam -- will have to join ASW by 2012 at the latest."

"The South Asian region has to work for a common economic framework/model fitting to each country in the region to achieve a sustainable economic growth in the long term perspective, the Governor of Sri Lanka's central bank said. Countries in the South Asian region have to overcome many common challenges and constraints like poverty, terrorism, inflation and many more.

Governor Cabraal said that the region should work together and form a strategy to make the future more effective with the implementation of economic models unique to each country in the South Asian region. Cabraal said that when countries moved their per capita incomes from $1,000 to $3,000 some years ago they never experienced issues such as copyright laws, labor problems, and stringent environmental pollution laws."

"A rise in exports has sparked a free-for-all among Cambodia's state and private ports and officials warn that unregulated competition will hurt trade. Soaring exports have led to what officials say is a chaotic and cutthroat system of private and public seaports that needs to be better regulated.

The state-owned Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville ports, meant to be key trade hubs, complain that they cannot compete against smaller private facilities that have few standards and frequently engage in what they say is price-dumping to attract business. Lawmakers are expected later this month to debate legislation that exporters and port operators hope will bring some order to the export sector."

"Indonesia has not supported the steady growth of labor-intensive industries over the last six quarters, missing a vital opportunity to reduce unemployment and poverty, several lawmakers say. Although the economy grew 6.3 percent last year, the agriculture and manufacturing industry sectors had low growth.

The government must improve labor-intensive industries and empower regions to secure a leap in the economy. In a speech last week, President Yudhoyono said the government targets to reduce the rate of poverty in 2009 to between 12 and 14 percent, and unemployment to between 7 and 8 percent."

"China should push forward the pricing mechanism reform of energy products, despite concerns that the move may add to inflationary pressure, economists said. Analysts and government officials have long been advocating for a reform of the energy pricing mechanism, which could link refined fuel prices with production costs.

Energy prices in China are mainly decided by the government. Over the past year, it has managed to hold down the prices of electricity and refined oil products, which is seen as an effort to rein in inflation. But the move has led to the loss of energy producers, which then chose to suspend part of their operation, as soaring oil and coal prices eat into their profits."

"Chief executive officers of Bangladesh's state-owned commercial banks have been warned that they will face termination for failure to achieve targets. This was the first performance review on the banks after they were turned into limited companies early this year and the CEOs were appointed in line with suggestions from the World Bank.

The main hindrance of the banks to improving their performance is huge burden of non-performing loans (NPL) which saw a marked rise during the last six months. Slow progress in recovering NPLs due to legal procedures is a big problem. The amount of default loans in the country's banking sector stood at Tk 249.97 billion until June, up from Tk 223.02 billion in June 2007."

"Viet Nam and Uzbekistan have agreed to promote bilateral cooperation on oil and gas exploration in order to sign a contract on oil and gas exploration in Uzbekistan and transfer coal-to-liquid technology. In agriculture, Viet Nam and Uzbekistan agreed to sign an agreement on the quarantine of plants and an agreement on agricultural cooperation.

The two sides also reached a consensus to soon build and sign an agreement on visa exemption on Vietnamese citizens with diplomatic passports. Two-way trade between Viet Nam and Uzbekistan stood at $6 million in 2007 which is said yet to tap the potential of both countries."

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