The ASEAN Economic Integration program has just scaled up into a broader collaboration from the ten ASEAN countries to now including the heavyweight countries of Japan, China, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia to form a free trade bloc called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or RCEP. The key outlook here for countries like the Philippines is the impact of the RCEP's ’trickle-down economics’.

Will Suppliers pass on the increase in costs to the Demand sector? Will the need for supply chain financing affect its ecosystem of producers, labor, movers, customers, regulatories’ requirements, etc.?

The capital markets will be one of the beneficiaries of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership since it will generate “investments in sectors such as e-commerce, manufacturing, research and development, financial services and information technology”.

With the Philippines shipping $63.9B worth of goods around the globe, according to worldstopexports.com, the products are heavily electronics from circuits to computers and their parts/accessories, insulated wire or cable and printing machinery.

According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s report on ING PH Senior economist Nicholas Mapa’s assessment, the exports gain was mainly driven by the 5.6% rise in electronic exports - the Philippines’ biggest export commodity registering $31.7B in value and accounting for over half of the total export trade.

The Philippine (PH) telecommunications (telco) history was a legacy of global regimes - from the Spanish colonization of 333 years to the American rule of 48 years and to the Japanese occupation. Along with foreign domination came the transmission of information from wire to radio, optical and to other electromagnetic systems.

If the rise of consumer availability of AI Virtual Assistants and Electric Vehicles (EVs) are any indication, Business, Logistics, and Manufacturing automation should dominate 2022. Automation and robotics hold the key to remove human error, streamline workflows, and keep processes optimized, efficient, and highly productive. On top of all of that, massive amounts of data on these processes are available, allowing businesses to measure performance in unprecedented fashion.