VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Singapore will drop a requirement for travellers who are not fully vaccinated to show COVID test results or purchase coronavirus travel insurance from Feb 13, the government's virus taskforce said on Thursday.

Masks will also not be required to be worn on public transport, the health ministry said in a statement, as authorities lowered the disease outbreak response level to "green" from "yellow", indicating COVID-19 is not threatening.

However, masks will still be mandatory in healthcare settings, where there is interaction with patients and in indoor patient-facing areas.

"Within Singapore our COVID situation has remained stable over the recent months, despite increased travel over the year-end holidays and China's shift from zero COVID," Lawrence Wong, deputy prime minister and co-chair of the virus taskforce, told a media briefing.

"Our population has developed a high level of hybrid immunity," he said.

Around 80% of the city-state’s 5.6 million population have achieved minimum COVID-19 vaccination protection, and around half are up to date with their additional booster shots, health ministry data showed.

"We've had to deal with many unexpected curveballs and surprises along the way. But we managed to reach this point together because we all did our part," Wong said.

The public can also remove COVID-19 contact-tracing apps, and the government has deleted identifiable data from its servers and database, health minister Ong Ye Kung said.

Since April last year, Singapore had lifted most of its COVID-19 restrictions with many international events returning to the city-state, attracting tourists and businesses.

The Asian financial hub is expecting the tourism sector to recover to pre-pandemic levels by 2024. (Reuters)

As a swift and broad rally in Asian stock markets after China's reopening from COVID curbs peters out, investors are targeting beaten down stocks in sectors including retail, hospitality and technology to lead a narrower advance from here.

The initial wave of optimism over the lifting of lockdowns in the world's second-largest economy lifted a host of trade and tourism stocks around the region, led predictably by the most obvious beneficiaries - sectors such as Macau hotels and Thailand tourism.

But three months in, investors reckon it is time to get more discerning.

"We believe the next phase of the market's recovery will be focused on companies that can deliver resilient earnings growth," said Robert Secker, portfolio specialist in the equity division at T. Rowe Price.

Herald van der Linde, HSBC's head of equity strategy for Asia Pacific, points out that travel and gaming stocks have already benefited.

"I think in the remainder of 2023 it is all about how the recovery in China filters through to consumer companies and banks outside of China," he said.

For investors looking for their next leg of growth, analysts recommend sectors that stand to benefit from the pent-up demand of Chinese consumers, such as hospitality firms, retailers, and industries that struggled during the economic downturn, including online recruiters and shopping mall operators.

Investors are banking that sky-high Chinese household savings, which jumped to 17.8 trillion yuan ($2.62 trillion) last year, will be released and boost these sectors.

Man Wing Chung, lead manager for Value Partners' Asia ex-Japan Fund is adding to technology hardware and semiconductor stocks in Taiwan, saying their "valuation has already priced in a lot of the negative sentiment on the downward tech cycle."

While shares of Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC (2330.TW) have risen 45% from their October lows, they still trade at 15.5 times forward earnings, below a 5-year average of 18.8 times.

Driven by expectations people in the world's most populous country will rush to travel and socialise after three years of the most stringent pandemic lockdowns, shares of Macau gaming companies Sands China (1928.HK), Wynn Macau (1128.HK), MGM China (2282.HK) have all more than doubled in the past three months.

Singapore Airlines (SIAL.SI) is up 12%, while Trip.com Group Ltd (9961.HK) has gained 68% in the same period.

China's market has naturally benefited most, with the MSCI China index (.dMICN00000PUS) up nearly 50% since start of November, far outperforming the 13% rise in the MSCI Southeast Asia index (.MISU00000PUS) and 26% gain in MSCI's broad Asia-Pacific index (.MIAPJ0000PUS).

That has led investors to hunt for sectors and companies with depressed valuations outside China.

Also, since China accounts for more than 20% of exports from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a recovery in China will lift up growth of the entire region, said Value Partners' Chung, who is overweight on markets in the ASEAN bloc.

Data from stock exchanges in Taiwan, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea shows foreigners purchased $8.8 billion worth of stocks in January, with Taiwan and South Korea witnessing their biggest monthly purchases in at least two years.

Foreign investors had sold $57.2 billion in regional equities last year.

GLOBAL PUSH OR CHINA PULL?

After a torrid 2022, investors have been betting that a swift recovery in China's economy will somewhat cushion the impact of a global slowdown and possible recession.

Value Partners' Chung said the concerns over global recession have been largely priced into the market and the benefits from China reopening have yet to be felt.

With global inflation showings signs of easing and investors expecting major central banks to soon end their monetary tightening, their attention has been switching to the possibilities of a global recession.

"Everyone seems to 'know' we're going to have a recession, and everyone seems to 'know' it will be mild," said Christy Tan, investment strategist at Franklin Templeton Institute.

"China and its reopening trade, on the other hand, are in early stages and may be the additional tailwind for Asian equities later this year." (Reuters)

India will drop the pre-departure COVID test requirement for travellers coming from or via China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Thailand and Japan from Monday, the health ministry said, as COVID-19 infections have fallen sharply globally.

The random testing of 2% of all travellers landing in India will continue, the health ministry wrote in the letter dated Feb. 9 to the civil aviation ministry. (Reuters)

A South Korean court on Friday convicted a lawmaker who led an activist group for victims of Japanese wartime sexual exploitation of embezzling group funds and fined her nearly $12,000, while clearing her of other charges.

Yoon Mee-hyang was indicted in 2020 on several charges of fraud and embezzlement during her days as head of the group, which advocates for surviving "comfort women" - a Japanese euphemism for those forced to work in its wartime brothels during its 1910-45 colonisation of the Korean peninsula.

The Seoul Western District Court said Yoon embezzled at least 17 million won ($13,500) of group funds raised through donations.

"The organisation runs on the money from ordinary people ... but the defendant failed to meet expectations," the court said in its verdict, according to the News1 agency.

Yoon was fined 15 million won ($11,900) but the court acquitted her of other charges including illegally receiving government subsidies and coaxing a victim in failing health to donate her fortune to the group.

Yoon, who had apologised for causing controversy but denied the charges, smiled as she left the court.

"It proved my innocence on most of the unreasonable charges pressed by the prosecutors," she told reporters, adding she would appeal against her conviction.

Prosecutors had called for a five-year jail sentence, which would have forced her to give up her seat in parliament.

Calls to the court and the advocacy group known as Jungdaehyup, or the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, went unanswered.

Yoon's case threatened to damage the campaign on behalf of the surviving victims of the Japanese military.

The legacy of Japan's colonial rule, especially the issues of sexual exploitation and forced labour, remain highly sensitive in South Korea and have for decades frayed ties with Japan. (Reuters)