Currency Depreciation, Tumbling Oil Prices Will Not Deter EU From Investing in ASEAN

Kuala Lumpur (PNA/Bernama) — The depreciation in several ASEAN currencies will not deter the European Union from investing in Southeast Asia, a top European business official said yesterday.

On the contrary, EU-ASEAN Business Council Executive Director, Chris Humphrey, noted that trade between the two regions show no signs of slowing down with European businesses keen to plough more money into the region.

The EU, which is one of the largest sources of foreign direct investments into ASEAN, saw its trade with Southeast Asia grow by a nine per cent annually over the last few years.

This was remarkable in view of the challenges facing ASEAN such as tumbling oil prices and currency volatility, he told a press conference here today at the Fourth ASEAN-EU Business Summit 2015.

He said that EU companies were committed to investing in the region for the long-haul with the depreciation in several regional currencies being a boon rather than a liability to European businesses investing in Southeast Asia.

“The (depreciation of currencies) might be worrying to some people but is certainly not holding back EU businesses,” he said at the business summit which was held alongside the 47th ASEAN Economic Ministers’ Meeting (AEM).

The one-day summit was jointly organised by the EU-ASEAN Business Council and the EU-Malaysia Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Echoing Humphrey’s sentiment, Robert Bosch Southeast Asian operations President, Martin Hayes, said the engineering multinational corporation company was not seeing any significant effect from declining regional currencies to its business.

“As an MNC, we have operations in more than 160 countries, so we can deploy manufacturing activities to where we need it to be at that time to any of our plants,” he added.

Turning to Malaysia, EU-Malaysia Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chairman, Fermin Fautsch, said it planned to promote the country to European small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) as a strategic gateway to ASEAN.

He said the availability of high-skilled talent and the thriving high value-added industry here would make it sustainable for the long-term, attract more FDIs and withstand any currency volatility.

“While we are seeing some outflows of manufacturing activity from Malaysia to countries like Vietnam and Myanmar, the country’s focus on high value-added sector has managed to attract more quality FDIs,” he said. (PNA/Bernama) JBP/CDN