 Good evening, everyone. So my name is Alex Dayant. I am the map guy at the Lowe Institute. So yes, look, I led this research project. And so really today, it marks the culmination of two years of hard work where my team and I, so Grace, Roland, and many others, have really spent a lot of time trying to analyze and really measure development flows in Southeast Asia. And so I must admit, I'm very happy this project is other, because I'll be able to have a social life now again. I'll be able to have normal nights. But mostly, I'm very happy to see that many of you here tonight. You know, it's really like, I mean, this is a great turnout. And we had a lot of attention today in the media on this specific project. So yes, thank you very much to all of you for being here tonight. It's a great compliment for us. So, look, what I'm going to do is I'm going to organize my presentation in three parts. The first part, I'm going to explain to you how we build the roadmap. The second one, I'm going to show you how it works. And the third part is I'm going to show you to talk to you about some key findings. So well, how do we do the Southeast Asia roadmap? We have collected data on more than 100,000 projects from 97 different development partners, not 70, like the minister was saying, 97. From 2015 to today. And so for traditional partners like Australia, New Zealand, France, or even the World Bank, we had two primary sources of information. One is the OECD, where all development partners are required to actually report their development program. Another platform is called the IATI, the International Aid and Transparency Initiative, where you can find way more detailed project information. But we also engage with the development partners directly. So we got in touch with the bank, with the French government, and so forth. But for the non-traditional development partners, you can imagine it was a whole different story. I mean, China doesn't have a repository of all its AIDS projects in Southeast Asia. India doesn't have the same either. Taiwan doesn't have either. And so we had to adopt a more hands-on approach, where we had to go through every Southeast Asian budget document. We had to go through every press release, social media post, just to be sure that we found enough information for each project to not only see that this project was happening on the ground, but triangulate this information just to make sure that this project was a real thing. And once we had gathered all this information, we sent it directly to each Southeast Asian countries to the aid and development management units in Southeast Asia for them to validate this information. And once they have validated this information, then we put everything on a cool little interactive that I'm about to show you now. So this is the landing page of the Southeast Asian map. It provides high-level information of official development finance at the regional level. A key visual that you will see throughout this interactive is the presence of those two green circles. The outline circle represents the amount of development finance committed. That is the amount promised or signed for a specific project. And on the other hand, the field circle represents the amount of financing that has been actually delivered on the ground. And we figured out there was an important distinction to make because we realized that many development partners are committing a lot, but they're actually not implementing that much. We have collected data covering the period from 2015 to 2021, which represents the most recent years for which we have complete information. And by default, the landing page displays the aggregate figures for all the years expressed in constant US dollars. On the left panel, you will find the ranking of development partners in the region. By selecting any of the 97 different partners listed, you can access the specific financing details in Southeast Asia. And after selecting a specific partner, you have the opportunity to explore the distribution of the development finance across various sectors. We have also implemented a filter selection where you can get more specific results on the data. In this section, we have also created pre-selected filters, for instance, looking specifically at climate development finance or looking at the footprints of non-traditional development partners in the region. So every time you select a Southeast Asian country, you can either have a look at the detailed analysis we have made on this country, or you can jump directly on the project map page, where you will see individual projects starting to populate the map. When clicking on a project, additional information will be displayed. This includes the project description, the sector it belongs to, relevant internet links, and the transaction history of this project. And from the project map, sorry, you can also narrow down your search by selecting a specific development partner or sector. And the map will automatically update with the relevant information. But while we think this is a cool feature of the aid map, we have also to acknowledge the fact that you cannot put all type of project on a map. You can put scholarship or budget support. And so for this, we had to actually broaden the scope of our ambition for the map, and we had to create a new analytical tool for you to be able to cut the data in the way that you find interesting. And so the first of this tool is the database page. It serves as a repository for the extensive collection of over 100,000 projects that we have compiled. And so when you click on a project, detailed information specific to that project will be displayed. We have also implemented a filter box to help you look for a specific project. And most importantly, you can freely download our entire data set and create your own analysis by clicking sorry on the top left button that says download the data. Another feature of the Sassi Stéja aid map is a graphing tool that allows you to create trend analysis. Here you can select from a range of different variables that will allow you to generate the graphs that you are interested in. For instance, you can compare the amount of grants or loan provided to Sassi Stéja. Or the amount of development finance disbursed in the infrastructure sector versus the amount of money disbursed in human development. You can also add different filters, but you can also change the type of graph that you are interested in. And so we also have implemented a tool that enables you to do a direct comparison between different partners. For instance, you can easily compare Australia's development finance in Sassi Stéja to that of China. And once selected, this section provides a wealth of information about these two partners, including their allocation on development finance, the sectors they prioritize for financing, and their major projects in the region. And so obviously you can do the same with each Sassi Stéja countries as well. Yes, I like that someone likes this picture. Continue. Yes. Thank you, thank you. And so from our menu section, you can access all the information on the website, notably the many country analysis that I've mentioned before, but also a series of semantic analysis on climate, on infrastructure, and so forth. And more importantly, you can access our methodology. You can download the whole data set again. And one of the things you can do also is actually have our key finding reports, but you should all have one be seated on one of them. So this is it for the interactive. Now let me talk to you about our key findings. Do you like it, though? Nice? Yes, I like this. A round of applause, please. Thank you very much. OK, key findings. Yes, so the first key findings is that between 2015 to 2021, SAS has received about $200 billion in official development finance. So just as a reminder, for us, official development finance is the combination of grants, concessional loans, so loans that are below market rates, and non-concessional loans. So those loans are a bit more expensive to the concessional loans, but they still have their purpose for development. So SAS has received around $28 billion per year in official development finance, mostly targeted at the most pressing development needs of the region, such as health, education, social protection, but also infrastructure. Almost half of it is concessional by nature, so meaning it is under the form of grants or cheap loans. And the other half is actually non-concessional loans that are mostly provided by China's main policy bank, so the Ex-Im Bank of China or the Chinese Development Bank, but also by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. In terms of trends, development financing has been decreasing over the years, mostly reflecting a diminution in ODA in official development finance, dispersed in both Indonesia and Vietnam. That together, I count for almost half of all the development finance going to Southeast Asia. And as you can see, there is a peak in 2020, so the COVID-19 in 2020 and the reactivity of development partners means or led to a 55% increase in funding where official development finance reached a peak of $35 million. So where is this funding coming from? Well, as you can see, China is the largest development partners in the region, but not by far. It is followed by the multilateral development banks, so the ADB and the World Bank, that focus actually less of the development finance and infrastructure. So infrastructure is the yellow bar that you can see on this graph. And Japan is the largest bilateral traditional partner of the region. So where is this funding going? Well, most of it is directed towards the region most emerging and developing economies. So really, we're excluding Singapore and Brunei, although you could find project information for Singapore and Brunei in our map. And Indonesia and Vietnam are receiving, as I mentioned before, around half of the ODF delivered in the region. So the second key finding is that development finance plays a major role in meeting Southeast Asia development need. So Southeast Asia is one of the most dynamic region in the world, and it has experienced decades of rapid economy growth, which have actually lifted millions of people out of poverty. And so today, one could argue that the region is past the point of aid and development. I mean, especially when you look at the magnitude of private sources of investment, such as private sources of financing, such as domestic private investment, foreign direct investment, and remittances. But the reality is that actually those type of financing don't always go to a specific area, such as health, education, social protection. And even in infrastructure, actually, most of the infrastructure is financed by the public sector. And so this is why aid and development remains actually a key component in helping Southeast Asia in filling those gaps. And actually, we have estimated that ODIF, so official development finance, is equivalent to around 10% to 15% of total government development spending on infrastructure, on health, on education, and on social protection. And this can actually jump to 80% when we consider the small countries, the smaller economies of Southeast Asia, such as Timor, Leste, and Laos. Now, the third finding is that China is the leading development partners in Southeast Asia. But it's actually declining, and it faces competition. So China accounts for a fifth of development financing flowing to the region. This is massive, actually. I mean, this is around like $5.5 billion per year to the region. And an important feature of China's development finance is that it's going, it is delivered through non-conception loan, mostly delivered by the two policy bank I mentioned before, so Exim Bank of China and China's Development Bank. And so a lot of this funding, this financing is going towards infrastructure. One of the interesting that we've realized when we did this analysis is that actually Chinese financing is decreasing, as you can see, over the years. And so there are a few reasons behind this decrease, we believe. The first of them is that China's economy is actually experiencing a slowdown. So there might be a reason for Beijing to actually prioritize its funding to its domestic market rather than spending money abroad. The second point is that China is actually, through this analysis, we've realized that China is actually experiencing some complication when implementing its project on the ground. So for instance, they have two examples, like the Jakarta to Bondung High Speed Rail in Indonesia, the East Coast Rail Link in Malaysia. Both of those projects have experienced actually difficulties and many, many delays, some problem with land reclamation in Indonesia. And this has been even more evident during the global pandemic, where international border closures and health restriction measures meant that basically the Chinese workers that were implementing those projects on the ground were not allowed in the country. And those projects have actually stalled for a little while. And the third reason behind China's financing decrease is it's actually a phenomenon that happens all around the world, but it also happened in Southeast Asia, is that China is providing a lot of financing, a lot of financing through loans. And some of the countries struggle to actually pay back those loans in Southeast Asia, for instance. Laos has already asked twice China to push back the debt repayments that Laos owned to China. And so we believe that maybe, you know, China is actually becoming more cautious in the provision of its loans around the world. And so these basically, those three reasons have contributed to like a decrease in Chinese financing in Southeast Asia. And so we believe that now like China is actually facing quite a competition, especially in the infrastructure sector. And so this is our next key finding, is that infrastructure is where the real competition is in Southeast Asia development financing. So in this analysis, as in the aid map, infrastructure is composed by four sectors, energy or power, telecommunication, transport, and water and sanitation. And so infrastructure accounts for around 40% of the total development financing spent in Southeast Asia, around $11 billion per year. And China is the leading financier with two-fifths of the infrastructure development financing delivered. But what we have realized is that actually China is far from being the dominant player in each of the sectors I mentioned before. So if you look at this graph, this is that in the energy sector, China accounts for half of it. And that might be the only place where actually China is leading the pack. In transport actually, Japan is the partner that spends the most in Southeast Asia. In communication, China is actually on par with Korea. And in water and sanitation, China doesn't actually play a big role. And that maybe is like translating the fact that China focuses on economic infrastructure rather than social infrastructure. But when you flip the coin, I think this is something you can say in English, when you look at the other side, when you look at commitments, not disbursement, well, the story actually changes a little bit. China's infrastructure commitment averaged around $12 billion per year between 2015 and 2021, which is three times the amount of Japan, the next largest infrastructure partner, and more than half of the total commitment of the total commitment on infrastructure. So what does this tell us? Well, it tells us two things. Like the first thing I believe is that, you know, China is facing difficulties in implementing its project, and that has definitely reduced its infrastructure financing. But also the commitment shows us that China is still ambitious and still wants to remain the, you know, the main infrastructure provider in Southeast Asia. Now to my last key findings, and I'm doing very well with time, I'm kind of heavy about this. So climate development finance has increased steadily in Southeast Asia. So yeah, one of the things that we're doing in this tool, and that we will be actually doing in the Pacific A map, so keep an eye on this, is tracing climate development finance. So Southeast Asia is one of the most vulnerable region to climate change. And so what we have seen is that over the years, climate development finance has actually been increasing steadily over the years, mostly financed by the Asian Development Bank, by Japan, and by China. And so in 2021, around 11 billion dollars were spent in development finance on climate, which represents around two-fifth of the region mix, of the region development finance. But what we've realized is that the outlook for climate finance is mixed in Southeast Asia, and there are like three reasons behind this. The first one is that we've realized that the increase in climate finance is mostly due to an increase in projects that have a significant component on climate mitigation and adaptation, whereas projects that have a principal focus on climate adaptation and mitigation are actually flat. So that's one of the first new ones to look into. The second one is that with respect to the energy transition, we've seen that there is actually a decrease in non-renewable energy projects in Southeast Asia. And so this is a good news. But we've also seen that actually there is a decrease in renewable energy projects. And so in a way, this is coming from the fact that actually energy projects overall across the board have decreased in Southeast Asia. So it's at odd with the region's need for more and cleaner energy. And the third point is that, again, in this tool, we're tracing both disbursement and commitment. And so yes, like the disbursement of climate projects have increased, but when we look at commitments, which actually gives us an indication of the future disbursement, or the outlook of disbursement on climate, well, commitment on climate finance has actually been decreasing over the years. And so this tells us that there's a risk that we might see less and less climate development financing in the future. So this means that, yeah, the outlook for climate development finance isn't certain in the future. So anyway, those are my few other key findings. I hope you enjoyed this. Please do visit Southeast Asia, semap.lawinstitute.org, I think it is. But yeah, thank you very much. And if you have any questions, please do ask them at the end of the presentation. And please, my fellow panelists, come on board.