Southeast #4: At an inflection point
Singapore chokes on cost while Indonesia toys with populism.
It’s a public holiday in Malaysia after PM Anwar Ibrahim declared the eve of Malaysia Day (tomorrow) a nationwide R&R.
Yes, I know, we’ve been awash with public holidays. But I’m not complaining. I get to sleep in while this ships out.
Who am I kidding? Sleeping in? The kid will faithfully terrorise me out of bed in no time.
Today’s Southeast tackles two topics: Singapore’s squeezed businesses and a Q&A on Indonesia’s power brokers redrawing the fiscal map.
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Singapore has seen an uptick in business closures and layoffs this year, particularly in F&B, tech, finance, logistics, and aviation.
It’s the usual suspects: high operational costs, rising wage demands, weaker consumer spending, and global trade disruptions (such as potential US tariffs hitting exports).