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

Malaysia: In a Middle-Income Trap of Low Growth Despite Sustained Fiscal Deficits

Malaysia: Imminent Political Realignments Raise Uncertainty over Electoral Outcomes

Malaysia: Local and Foreign Investors Are Fleeing Despite the Commodity Boom

Malaysia: A Lightweight Takes Over, Setting up a Future Election over the Nation's Soul

Gravity Works As WeWork Doesn't; Now Plan B

CrossASEAN Research

At CrossASEAN Research we strive to produce unbiased and differentiated on the ground insights on companies across South East Asia. Our Research is produced for the most part after face to face meetings and conversations with company management to dig deep into the long term vision and strategy of the companies we cover. We seek to deliver investable and actionable themes on sectors and markets across SE Asia, often in collaboration with other Insight Providers across the region, pooling the vast experience of the analysts within the Smartkarma Ecosystem. We also offer bespoke work and tailor made trips for our clients. 

Insights across South East Asia

Thematic (Sector/Industry)

Malaysia Industrials / Thematic (Sector/Industry)

The remarkable political pact (MoU) signed between PM Ismail Sabri Yaakob and 4 leaders of the constituent parties of the PH opposition alliance ensures political and economic-policy stability until the end of July 2022. PH gained an assurance of political reforms (an anti-defection law, lowering the voting age to 18, greater representation in parliamentary committees and equal funding for opposition and ruling-party MPs) in exchange for its conditional pledge not to dislodge the government for nearly 11 months, and support the Budget for 2022. The pact does not contain any steps to counter the gerrymandering of constituencies that UMNO and BN have effected over the past five decades. And it says nothing about policies other than purely budgetary matters. The UMNO-PAS-Bersatu alliance (a pure Malay-Muslim ruling group) has since moved swiftly to exploit those loopholes -- by advancing a series of discriminatory steps that deepen the racist underpinnings of Malaysia's constitution (negotiated by the departing British in 1948-57). A key policy being advanced requires all freight-forwarding and logistics companies to be 51% Bumiputera owned by end-2021; this will have a severely negative impact on non-Muslim-owned companies big and small (with most conglomerates having a freight-forwarding unit, and numerous small-businesses being based on trucking and logistics).The 12th Malaysia Plan (tabled last month) includes a policy requiring that all Bumiputera companies only be sold to Bumiputeras. And the infamous RUU 355 legislation (enhancing the powers of Shariah Courts over criminal cases, and allowing them to use traditional Islamic punishments) is progressing rapidly under this government.  These 3 legislations may endear the UMNO-PAS alliance to Malays nationally. They are aimed at putting PH's leader Anwar Ibrahim on the spot, as (despite founding the Islamic students' movement ABIM in the 1970s) Anwar leads an explicitly multi-racial party (at the head of a genuinely multi-racial alliance) and has eloquently advocated a race-neutral Malaysia over the past decade. More enduringly, these policies (unless reversed by a future PH government) risk permanently alienating much of Malaysia's business community (who will then choose to invest outside Malaysia rather than within it, turning Malaysia increasingly into an economy of generally-inefficient GLCs and foreign-owned MNCs). Despite the appearance of policy stability from this pact, the policies of this government are permanently handicapping Malaysia and threaten its longer-term economic viability.

The remarkable political pact (MoU) signed between PM Ismail Sabri Yaakob and 4 leaders of the constituent parties of the PH opposition alliance ensures political and economic-policy stability until the end of July 2022. PH gained an assurance of political reforms (an anti-defection law, lowering the voting age to 18, greater representation in parliamentary committees and equal funding for opposition and ruling-party MPs) in exchange for its conditional pledge not to dislodge the government for nearly 11 months, and support the Budget for 2022. The pact does not contain any steps to counter the gerrymandering of constituencies that UMNO and BN have effected over the past five decades. And it says nothing about policies other than purely budgetary matters. The UMNO-PAS-Bersatu alliance (a pure Malay-Muslim ruling group) has since moved swiftly to exploit those loopholes -- by advancing a series of discriminatory steps that deepen the racist underpinnings of Malaysia's constitution (negotiated by the departing British in 1948-57). A key policy being advanced requires all freight-forwarding and logistics companies to be 51% Bumiputera owned by end-2021; this will have a severely negative impact on non-Muslim-owned companies big and small (with most conglomerates having a freight-forwarding unit, and numerous small-businesses being based on trucking and logistics).The 12th Malaysia Plan (tabled last month) includes a policy requiring that all Bumiputera companies only be sold to Bumiputeras. And the infamous RUU 355 legislation (enhancing the powers of Shariah Courts over criminal cases, and allowing them to use traditional Islamic punishments) is progressing rapidly under this government.  These 3 legislations may endear the UMNO-PAS alliance to Malays nationally. They are aimed at putting PH's leader Anwar Ibrahim on the spot, as (despite founding the Islamic students' movement ABIM in the 1970s) Anwar leads an explicitly multi-racial party (at the head of a genuinely multi-racial alliance) and has eloquently advocated a race-neutral Malaysia over the past decade. More enduringly, these policies (unless reversed by a future PH government) risk permanently alienating much of Malaysia's business community (who will then choose to invest outside Malaysia rather than within it, turning Malaysia increasingly into an economy of generally-inefficient GLCs and foreign-owned MNCs). Despite the appearance of policy stability from this pact, the policies of this government are permanently handicapping Malaysia and threaten its longer-term economic viability.          

Malaysia: Stability Paves Way for Better Policy; UMNO-PAS Long-Term Challenge