"After years of delays and legal wrangling, India's first 'sea bridge' opens to traffic this week, aiming to ease chronic congestion on Mumbai's notoriously choked roads. It is hoped that the 16.5-billion-rupee ($340 million) eight-lane freeway will help cut the 40-minute journey between the suburbs of Bandra and Worli to just eight minutes.

But as the bridge opens on Tuesday, to ease the bottleneck of honking cars, lorries and motorbikes on the mainland, there are hopes, too, that as well as showing off India's engineering prowess, it can inspire other projects elsewhere. India's infrastructure is in desperate need of an overhaul but road, rail, airport and power schemes have often been delayed by tortuous state bureaucracy, a lack of private sector funding and land ownership disputes."

"Being one of the few global economies to book positive growth amid the financial crisis, Indonesia has become more attractive to global investors looking for new markets. Nevertheless sluggish progress in public administration reform, particularly at the level of regional government, could seriously hamper efforts to make the most of this leverage, a senior government official says.

The main concern of foreign investors is Indonesia's rigid bureaucracy, which the government is trying to address. As of May, government spending was only 27 percent of the expected figure set for the whole year in the 2009 state budget, despite the fact that the country clearly needs a boost from government spending to back up private consumption, the economy's main driver, which is still forecast to slow down somewhat."

"Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreed Monday in working-level energy talks in Sapporo with Japan, China and Korea to begin working out their respective countries' plans to build up oil reserves. Energy officials of ASEAN also agreed to release their countries' plans at a meeting of energy ministers of the ASEAN plus Japan, China and Korea next year, they said.

The participants agreed on the need to build up the oil reserve system in each country to cope with increasing demand for oil in the Asian region and rising prices of oil in the future. They also confirmed the need for each country to secure oil reserves at a certain level from the viewpoint of energy security in case of suspension of oil supply from oil-producing countries due to natural disasters and disputes."

"Come September, and China will begin to lay parallel oil and natural gas pipelines from the Kyaukpyu deep-sea port on Myanmar's Arakan coast in the Bay of Bengal, all the way up north-east to Kunming in China's Yunnan province. The pipeline reduces China's dependence on the narrow Malacca Straits, through which pass 80 percent of its oil imports of 4 million barrels per day.

When the oil and gas pipelines are completed by 2013, Chinese tankers will dock at Kyaukpyu port to transport 0.6 million barrels every day from West Asia and Africa. The gas pipeline, meanwhile, will move about 12 billion cubic metres of gas annually to Kunming."

"Archaic labor laws that impose myriad restrictions on manufacturers have hamstrung India's ambition to be a low-cost center to rival China and now threaten to spark greater tensions as layoffs bite in a slowing economy. The government is expected to announce steps to protect jobs in its inaugural budget next week, but analysts fear the government will stop short of overhauling laws they say hurt competitiveness and lead to worker unrest.

India's labor laws, rated by the World Bank as among the globe's most rigid, place strict limits on number of hires and conditions for retrenchment, forcing manufacturers to hire more casual workers. Only about 10 percent of the nearly 400-million strong workforce is in the organized sector, crippling the growth of skilled labor and hindering India's manufacturing aspirations."

"On Saturday, China's legislature passed, and President Hu Jintao signed, a revised Statistics Law, which when it takes effect next year will stiffen official penalties for falsifying social and economic data. China's increased weight in the global economy has meant an unprecedented level of international attention on once-minor indicators. The financial crisis in particular has increased the pressure on the statistical system to provide accurate data, without which it is more difficult for policymakers to make proper decisions.

Recently, officials of the National Bureau of Statistics have become more forthcoming about deficiencies in their data, and have also started publishing a more detailed accounting of economic growth. And this year's economic census, a quinquennial attempt to obtain basic information on every company of economic significance in the nation, is the centerpiece of the bureau's effort to build up more accurate figures through the use modern survey techniques."

"The Arroyo administration has sought Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) approval to raise more funds abroad through the issuance of global bonds, a state source said. The government applied for a permit to issue $1 billion in ROPs (Republic of the Philippines debt papers), which would be an alternative to an earlier plan to borrow from the Japanese bond market, according to sources.

The government is hard-pressed to increase its borrowings, after economic managers raised the country’s budget deficit to P250 billion, or 3.2 percent of gross domestic product. President Arroyo this month went to Japan, where she secured Tokyo's commitment to guarantee her government's plan to issue as much as $1.5 billion in Samurai bonds over the next two years. Debt servicing this year is equivalent to 8.3 percent of GDP."

"Indonesia is the third-fastest-growing economy in the region, behind China and India. Indeed, it has been growing so fast that some economists believes it should be included with emerging giants such as Brazil, Russia, India and China in an acronym expanded from BRIC to BRIIC.

Battered by the 1997-98 Asian crisis, Indonesia was the least able to rely on exports to kick-start growth. Forced to take the International Monetary Fund's tough medicine, it sold much of its banking and telecommunications and part of its resources sectors to foreign players, who brought in new capital, corporate governance and technology. That has put it in a stronger position to ride out the global credit crisis. GDP is forecast to grow 3.8% this year and 5% next, compared with 6.1% in '08."

"Korea plans to invest 4 trillion won ($3.13 billion) by 2015 to expand Incheon International Airport. Korea is eager to boost government and private spending in construction and other large-scale projects to help offset sluggish local consumption and exports that have weighed on Asia's fourth-largest economy.

At Incheon, the government plans to add a second passenger terminal and expand its existing cargo terminal and other infrastructure. Upon completion, Incheon will be able to handle 62 million passengers and 5.8 million tons of cargo a year, up from the current capacity of 44 million passengers and 4.5 million tons."

"China's banking sector is bucking a global trend of loan contraction and the economy is clearly responding to a series of policy measures put in place late last year to revive its flagging economy. Banks were instructed to boost lending to accommodate demand for infrastructure investment and they have -- exceeding even the most optimistic expectations.

Lending jumped by roughly 30% in March and April, but the $758 billion in new bank lending in the first four months of the year is both a sign of the strengths and weaknesses of China's economy. The darker side of bank lending is that it will lead to non-performing loans that some analysts believe could cause a banking crisis requiring the recapitalization of the banking sector."

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