Speaker Reflection 2

Australian Trade Commission

Anthony Weymouth: Trade Opportunities in the Asian Century - Infrastructure in South East Asia

The Australian Trade Commission posted a video to YouTube from the Trade and Investment Queensland Conference highlighting the speaker Anthony Weymouth who is the Senior Trade Commissioner to the Philippines in April of 2013. Anthony offered three topics to his audience in his speech about what opportunities exist and how to do business in Asian countries and they are as follows; Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Philippines.

Anthony began by explaining that countries that belong to ASEAN have a dramatic need for infrastructure development, especially Singapore, and Thailand in particular. He says that each of the ASEAN countries is pooling together to develop and build major construction projects covering their growing energy needs and transportation demands. Nearly $8 Trillion is needed upon initial estimates and roughly 80% of this will go toward the energy and transportation sectors. He added that $200 Billion will be set aside for Indonesia to build toll roads, seaports and railways. From the perspective of a business person or organization trying to gain a foothold in the region, it is exciting to know that 70% of the funding of these projects will be expected to come from private investment.

When talking about how to seek opportunities in this region, Anthony revealed that investors can utilize tools created by the ADB to aid in finding projects as well as banks that will assist in funding the effort. It makes sense that a region whose economies are growing as quickly as Southeast Asia, should not be difficult to secure money to build new projects, especially those that are so desperately needed. He added that the ADB is essentially made up of over 50 member banks and nations and the major stakeholders make the key decisions on how to spend the money. Australia being one of the top five members has a lot of clout and has capitalized on this position in the last several years by finding and awarding projects to Australian firms performing new construction and commercial development projects.

The ADB uses an online procurement tool to identify projects and opportunities and only requires a vendor profile be updated and stored in the system. The software tool uses key words to target projects and matches them with vendors and can notify each vendor with an email alert or text message. Anthony added that many opportunities are very specialized and require a single vendor that may be able to perform the work required and so from time to time the ADB will hire a consultant to search for specialized vendors directly and have sometimes been able to offer a direct award contract without a formalized proposal process to get the program moving faster in order to meet demand.

Anthony’s main focus was the Philippines and he had a lot to say about the election the newest President, who tasked himself with his first official duty of eradicating poverty by growing the Philippines tourism industry. He impeached a former Chief Justice on the basis of corruption and has since moved to build new roads so tourists can get around more easily. The confidence level of business in the Philippines is better than it has been in the last thirty years, growing the GDP by nearly 6.6% since his election. Overall Anthony Weymouth had a lot of insights on how one could begin working in Asia and emphasized that a desire to be successful and a hunger to work fast are needed as these economies don’t wait for anyone.

References
Weymouth, Anthony. “Trade Opportunities in the Asian Century - Infrastructure in South East Asia.” Online video clip. YouTube. Youtube, 4 Apr. 2013.