"China and Southeast Asia will establish the world's biggest free trade area (FTA) on Friday, liberalizing billions of dollars in goods and investments covering a market of 1.7 billion consumers. Eight years in the making, the ASEAN-China FTA will rival the European Union and the North American Free Trade Area in terms of value and surpass those markets in terms of population.

Under the agreement, China and the six founding ASEAN countries -- Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand -- are to eliminate barriers to investment and tariffs on 90 percent of products. Later ASEAN members, including Vietnam and Cambodia, have until 2015 to follow suit."

"Beijing, the city once known as the kingdom of bicycles, has become clogged with automobiles. Beijing authorities have now registered over 4 million vehicles. About 2,000 new cars are being sold daily. It took six years for the number of cars on the city's streets to rise from 1 million to 2 million in 2003. It only took another four years for the number to reach 3 million in 2007. The next million cars flooded the roads in just two years.

More than 90 percent of Beijing's roads are overloaded. The growth of road construction is much slower than that of vehicles. The city now plans to add 280 km to its express road network in the next five years to ease traffic. Thirteen new subway lines are under construction in addition to the six that are already operating. By 2015, the city's subway lines will stretch 561 km."

"Southeast Asian countries are set to sign a deal that will remove flight restrictions on all points within the region. Asean has agreed in principle to fully liberalize air passenger services in all airports. The full open-skies regime means the frequency of flights to any airport in the region will be dictated by demand, not pre-determined limits.

Last year, the 10 Asean transport ministers signed an accord that sought an open skies regime for capital cities in the region. Since then, officials have been working on the open skies agreement covering all airports in Southeast Asia. It was agreed that the final version of the agreement will be signed at the next Asean transport ministers meeting, most likely in April 2010."

"The year 2008 marked a decisive turning point in the history of humanity: for the first time ever, the urban population exceeded those living in rural areas. In all, the number of people living in towns and cities that year was estimated at 3.3 billion. This is expected to grow rapidly and touch 5 billion by 2030. Combined with a rapidly aging global population, this mega-trend is likely to have a significant impact on the way we live.

About 3 million people per week are being added to cities in the developing world. The biggest jump is expected to happen in Africa and Asia where the urban population is predicted to double, accounting for 80 percent of the world's urban population growth by 2030."

"It has been three months since the Sept. 30 quake ravaged the West Sumatra coast. Survivors of the 7.6-magnitude earthquake have been making use of salvaged material from their damaged homes to build small outhouse-sized huts to live in. Others continue to stay in makeshift shelters or in undamaged parts of their homes, regardless of the inherent danger.

The reconstruction of 786,795 damaged homes is expected to take at least three years to fully complete. The first phase of reconstruction is expected to finish by May 2010."

"Power generation is set to be a main plank for future Vietnam and Cambodia bilateral cooperation. Under the cooperation agreements signed between the two countries last week, Vietnam committed to continue giving its support to Cambodia in power generation, and exploration and exploitation of natural resources, particularly focusing on power supplies and bauxite exploitation.

Strengthening ties in marine transportation, trade and investment are also areas to be focused on. Vietnam and Cambodia have targeted to bring two-way trade revenue to $2 billion in 2010 from more than $1 billion this year."

"The Bangladesh government has taken a three-year plan to bring all departments, agencies and associated organizations run by the ministries under e-governance, a state-of-the-art service delivery system. The main objective of the venture is to build a basic infrastructure to impart IT literacy to the officials and employees under all ministries resulting in developing a skilled manpower in Bangladesh.

Experts say the e-governance project will have people's participation by ensuring transparency, shortened service delivery, poverty alleviation, curbing corruption and strengthening democratic practices. The Korean government agreed to provide soft loans for the project that will be implemented during 2010-12."

"The rapid and sustained growth of India's manufacturing is a necessary condition for not only generating the required employment for the country's young workforce, but also for modernizing society and eliminating the dualism -- stark differences between the organized and unorganized sector. Too much reliance on financial and information technology-enabled services could actually produce the opposite results by creating enclaves and exacerbating the dualism.

The issue is how to achieve the required 13-14 percent annual rate of manufacturing growth in order to raise its share in GDP, and at least prevent it from declining below the unacceptable 16-17 percent of our output that it is now. An overriding aim should be to reduce uncertainty for potential investors. Uncertainty is different from risk, which the entrepreneur is trained to deal with."

"Few recall that, just last month, there was a food security summit in Rome. In sharp contrast to the almost overwhelming coverage of the Copenhagen climate summit, it attracted far lesser attention from the heads of governments, as also from the media. This is somewhat strange as a food (and water) crisis can hit the world, and particularly many developing countries, much sooner than the effects of global warming. In many ways, of course, the two issues are interconnected.

At present, the global output and consumption of food are in rough balance. Lately, however, the output growth has not been keeping pace with the population growth and, unless some urgent steps are taken, food shortages and inflation would gather pace. The present 20 percent inflation rate for primary products in India may not be easy to cure."

"Indonesia's full-year inflation will most likely reach the lowest level in a decade as demand slows down due to the delayed negative impacts of the global economic downturn. Full-year inflation is likely to be between 2.9 and 3 percent. This year's low inflation has prompted the central bank to keep its benchmark interest rate at 6.5 percent in December.

The Indonesian currency is Asia's best performer this year, having strengthened 15 percent as the economy showed continued resilience despite the negative impacts of the global recession, while relatively high interest rates helped attract funds from abroad. It is estimated the economy will grow between 4.3 and 4.4 percent this year, growing at about 4.5 percent in the last quarter of 2009."

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