ASEAN is no longer a passive recipient of global investment capital
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim delivers his speech as he officiates the ASEAN Investments Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia April 8, 2025. © Reuters
Dai Kadomae, CFA, CPA, is a Thailand-based strategic finance adviser and former CFO with 25+ years of cross-border M&A and capital market experience.
Capital has been quietly flowing out of Southeast Asia. In 2024 alone, the region's five key emerging economies -- Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines (sometimes collectively referred to as ASEAN-5) -- recorded net financial account outflows exceeding $4 billion, marking a structural break from nearly a decade of steady inflows. Since 2017, these ASEAN-5 economies have experienced a persistent decline in portfolio investment, based on balance of payments data from central banks and International Monetary Fund reports. Meanwhile, their once-resilient current account surpluses have begun to erode in the wake of COVID-19, exposing them to growing liquidity stress -- amplified by the Trump administration's stop-start trade policies.
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