03 August 2020

WCEF Update

The International Strategy Institute (ISI), as the permanent secretariat of the World Chinese Economic Forum 世界华人经济论坛 (WCEF), would like to convey our warm greetings to our partners and supporters. As you know, we have had a successful convening of the 11th World Chinese Economic Forum in Hangzhou on 11-12 December 2019, bringing in more than 1000 participants from 29 countries. We are looking forward to convene our 12th World Chinese Economic Forum in China this year but unfortunately due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are not able to do so. We did however convene a special online conference for the World Chinese Economic Forum focusing on the effects of Covid-19 on global health and business on 14 May 2020. Please bear with us while we wait out the effects of the pandemic and hoping that a global vaccine is within reach in the near future. We will be informing you in due course on the next development and we look forward to see you soon. Read more here.

Thanks for having us. It was truly an engaging and vibrant session. Picked up many things from fellow panelists. Happy to see a great turnout! Congrats on a well-organised event. Kee up the great work!

Congrats on a conference well-attended and well-organised. It was nice to see all of you yesterday. Keep up the good work, everyone.

03 August 2020

GST In the Time Of Covid-19

As the Malaysian government struggles to keep the economy afloat by injecting a series of stimulus packages to keep consumer spending alive and revitalize the economy, its public coffers come under serious pressure as its fiscal deficit deepens, threatening the government to plunge into further debt in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Read more here.

24 July 2020

Deep Diving on the Covid-19 Act on Commercial Rent

In the previous article, I spoke about the imperative of saving the private sector from collapsing, even if it means deepening fiscal deficits or even resorting to QE. The private sector is the nucleus of economic activity and must be protected at all costs. Read more here.

26 March 2020

The Malaysian Economy in the Age of Covid-19

  These past few weeks have been particularly challenging for Malaysia on 3 fronts. The first stems from the bleak political outlook due to the protracted US-China trade war that has been pulling the world economy down into an economic recession towards the end of 2019. Read more here.

30 March 2020

Covid-19: Is Malaysia Preparing Itself for What’s to Come?

The Malaysian government announced the extension of its Movement Control Order (MCO) which sees businesses and people’s movement restricted for another 14 days until 14^th April 2020. Read more here.

12 June 2020

Can ASEAN Achieve Integration by 2025?

Covid-19 has put the biggest test yet on ASEAN. ASEAN macroeconomic fundamentals have weakened as an aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008 felt to this day. With this weakened position and the stark development gap between member states, ASEAN integration remains uncertain. With 5 more years left, can ASEAN achieve its desired community? Read more here.

25 June 2020

Why is the World Slowing Down?

South Korea’s household debt rises by an estimated USD100,000 as projected from Bank of Korea 2019 figures, amounting to a whopping USD1.7 trillion today. Every day, more than 100 South Koreans are declared bankrupt. South Korea’s government debt has skyrocketed to 840.2 trillion won (USD693 billion), an increase of 111 trillion won in just 6 months in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Read more here.

14 July 2020

The Covid-19 Act and Its Impact on Commercial Rent

By the end of September, Malaysia will end its moratorium on bank loans. By that time, whether a business is struggling or not, they need to resume paying their loans. Now this is all fine and dandy if businesses are making money, but during the MCO and its subsequent variations, a huge number of businesses make zero or negligible revenue, making it tremendously difficult to pay their full rent on commercial spaces, without the threat of bankruptcy. Read more here.

ISI is pleased to announce our latest initiative – the mymakanan.my food project. Mymakanan.my is the “yellow pages” for all local basic food producers in the country to help them sell their produce to people all over the country. For more information, visit www.mymakanan.my

ISI may be new (recently established) but their future is looking to be successful, because of their strengths, and efficient staff. They managed to contact and network with people everywhere in the world.

I wish ISI a happy birthday and many, many years of success and significant contributions to the country.

Happy birthday ISI and may you have many more birthdays to come along. May you continue to open the channels of communications to all.

I think responsibility of corruption is everybody’s business – not just a few people alone – to overcome corruption and other things that are not good for society in general.

ISI not only brought issues on anti-corruption, but there are also other various issues.

ISI is a think tank that able to get people together and discuss, like a big storming session, and also able to find the solution towards the problems (issues discussed). It’s good, so well done and happy 1^st anniversary!

I wish you prosperity in the near future, and well done for the good job in organising this big event internationally.

Very good event and keep up the good work, the speakers are good too and straight-to-the-point talks.

I was very impressed how you were able to assemble so many participants and presenters at such short time.

My best wishes for your continued success.

Thank you for having us.

You guys organised an amazing event and we certainly learnt a lot from the panelists and built new relationships.

Sharing of knowledge and insights regarding topics which are related to every part of society.

Good platform for Kedah development integration.

Thank you for organizing such a beneficial event.

The program was a great success and the Chief Minister shares the same opinion.

I sincerely hope that this event had offered participants an insight of what Kedah can offer and how we can all work together to make Kedah a more prosperous State.

I would like to compliment ISI and team for the very well organised summit.

It is very compact, direct to points, and impactful panel discussions.

I salute the efforts and we appreciate ISI for organizing it for Penang and Malaysia.

Please convey the heartfelt thanks to Mr Cheah and team.

Congrats on a very successful summit!

Very good crowd and (mostly) good speakers and discussions!

Keep up the good work on making awareness to others regarding the availability of technology and entrepreneurship skills developments.

Hearing from Dato’ Seri Anwar as a keynote speaker and the panel discussions

– fantastic role-players who came very well prepared!

Keep up the good work 💪

The secretariat was helpful and friendly.

Menu and food were fantastic.

I would like to wish ISI a happy birthday, happy 1^st anniversary. And I wish all the best to ISI and I hope ISI will continue the initiative to strengthen the relationship between the government sector and the private sector.