Chief Economist & Political Strategist, CrossASEAN Research

Prasenjit K. Basu

PK Basu has 34 years experience covering Asia's economies and markets (equities, fixed income and currencies), including 20 years covering the global economy. He was Chief Economist (SE Asia & India) at Credit Suisse First Boston for 5 years, and Chief Asia (x-Jpn) Economist at Daiwa Securities for a similar period. Among other roles, he was global head of research at Maybank Kim Eng, Malaysia equity research head and chief ASEAN economist at Macquarie, ASEAN economist at UBS and the first chief economist at Khazanah Nasional (where he was co-head of research, and led all agri-business initiatives). PK Basu started his career in the Asia Service of WEFA (Wharton Econometrics) in Philadelphia in 1990, rising to be Director of their Asia Service in June 1994. 
PK's book, "Asia Reborn: A continent rises from the ravages of Colonialism and War to a New Dynamism" won the Tata Literature First Book Award (non-fiction) for 2018. It is the first single chronicle of the modern economic and political history of the whole of Asia (from Iraq and Turkey to Korea and Japan, and everything in between), told from an Asian perspective.

Chief Economist & Political Strategist

Mildly Expansionary, but Socially Magnanimous While Staying Focused on Long-Term Competitiveness

Singapore Is the First Domino to Fall Towards Stagnation (Approaching Recession)

The Week that Was in ASEAN@Smartkarma - Singapore's Stagnation, Vietnam Rocks, and Indonesian Telcos

Cyclical Growth Momentum Restored by a Fiscal Spur Amid Receding Clouds

REAL-Economics.com

Macroeconomics

<p>With real GDP growing 3.6% in 2017, and property prices beginning to stir anew, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat was able to report a revenue bonanza that gave him enormous fiscal headroom. Compared with a budgeted overall surplus of 0.4% of GDP, the actual outcome was a surplus of 2.1% of GDP (S$9.6bn). In 27 years of writing about Singapore’s budgets, I remember just three years in which the fiscal balance was worse at the end of the year than the projection at Budget time. Most years, the…</p>

With real GDP growing 3.6% in 2017, and property prices beginning to stir anew, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat was able to report a revenue bonanza that gave him enormous fiscal headroom. Compared with a budgeted overall surplus of 0.4% of GDP, the actual outcome was a surplus of 2.1% of GDP (S$9.6bn). In 27 years of writing about Singapore’s budgets, I remember just three years in which the fiscal balance was worse at the end of the year than the projection at Budget time. Most years, the…

Buoyant Economy Allows a Long Fiscal Look-Ahead