 Okay, without further ado, I'd like to introduce our panel speakers this afternoon. To my right, I'm joined by the Minister for Transport, Dato Leau-Tiong Lai. Thank you. And to Mr. Dato Tsri, he's right there, where we have Uwe Kruger, who is the Chief Executive Officer of a massive engineering and design consultant service firm, W. Atkins. And around here, we have Chris Heathcutt, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Global Infrastructure Hub, based in Sint Sydney, which is a G20 initiative. And then finally, we have Stephen Grof, who's the Vice President East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Pacific at the Asian Development Bank. Gentlemen, welcome to the panel discussion. Okay, if we can begin today with the Transport Minister, Dato Leau. Talking about the overarching theme here, and that is the massive infrastructure deficit that we do continue to see in the ASEAN region. And whilst that does exist, there are notable cases of success stories here. How do we take these success stories and apply them into the work that needs to be done in the rest of the region? Yes, Adam. Despite the infrastructure deficit in ASEAN, we still can see there's a notable growth. As you can see, the ASEAN growth from 2007, GDP from 1.3 trillion up to 2016 is 2.6 trillion. It's nearly double the GDP. It's a robust growth. And I will say that this is the age of Asian, as well as certainly for the age of ASEAN. More importantly, I'm excited to see the growth of ASEAN and even more excited to see how to unleash the ASEAN economic potential, especially if we can actually really work on the connectivity. We really strengthen the transport infrastructure's perspective for ASEAN in the next one or two decades, because this will really unleash the ASEAN economic potential. And we can see that through the initiative of AEC, which was launched last year and this is the first year, through this initiative, we'll be able to ensure that there'll be flow of goods, I mean, in terms of flow of peoples and also many others, intra-trade within ASEAN will be able to increase. As you know, ASEAN intra-trade as compared to EU is only about 24%. EU is about 60% in terms of intra-trade within the member states, within ASEAN. So this is our challenge and we have to really overcome this and AEC is one of the way that we come out with good policies for ASEAN working together as a team, as an ASEAN economic community. On the infrastructure side, a minister of transport from ASEAN, we get together and we have come out with, we call it the ASEAN transports strategic plan. We name it, we actually decided last year in Kuala Lumpur, then we call it the Kuala Lumpur Transport Strategic Plan from 2016 to 2025. So that means this strategic plan will be able to transform ASEAN to be a high growth center through infrastructure development. We talk about land transport, we talk about maritime, aviation, logistics and also other models of transportation. So it's a very comprehensive, five strategic goals to be achieved through these KLTSP and we are very, very focused in terms of developing ASEAN as an economic community. So I'm confident with the next 10 years that we will be able to come out with very good connectivity plans. Example, the single aviation market, single shipping market. We talk about KL, Singapore, Kunming Rail Link. We talk about how to connect our highways from Malaysia to Thailand as well as any other other ASEAN countries. All this is ready in the plan and we are focused to carry out all the strategic activities. All right, Duttotliya, thank you very much for that opening statement. Then if anybody would like to respond to that, please do put up your hand. In the meantime, you've certainly framed a very optimistic picture about the roadmap for infrastructure development here in ASEAN and on that note, I'd like to bring you and Chris on that, being the head of the Global Infrastructure Hub down in Sydney, which is a G20 initiative. I mean, you know, Duttotliya was talking about some success measures that we've seen in Malaysia beyond some of these Southeast Asian countries. You know, what are the key, you know, critical success factors that you've noticed in the ASEAN region and what sort of lessons should be applied to the further development, the further work that needs to be done in the rest of the region? Thank you very much. The first point to make is to back up the minister's point, which is that infrastructure leads to growth. So the recent IMF study suggested that for every dollar that's spent on infrastructure, four years later, GDP would have grown by between 1.5 and 2.6 times. Now, these are incredibly powerful numbers when it comes to driving growth into countries. And it isn't really driving growth, it's actually freeing up the growth potential that already exists. So infrastructure is a fantastic method for stimulating growth. That's the first point. The second point is the different forms of infrastructure can be financed in different ways. So every country has within it one pot of available finance to spend. And deciding how they spend that finance is incredibly important both socially but also economically. And one of the things that we do see in markets is that in markets which are more used to working with the private sector, they become more adept at selecting the projects which are most likely to attract strong economic interest. And by doing that, they drive those projects forward faster. By driving those projects faster, they unleash some of this growth, which allows them then to undertake other projects. So although private finance and PPP is seen as an expensive way of carrying out infrastructure, it actually brings forward the benefits of infrastructure and makes those available earlier. In terms of best practice, we see some really good stuff going on in the ASEAN region. We see a vast amount of political will at the top of governments. And we see an understanding of the desire to make infrastructure central to countries needs. And that is an incredibly strong starting point. What then needs to happen to really push infrastructure forward in a procurement sense is to clarify some of the procurement structures that are happening within countries. A good example of this is going on in the Philippines at the moment where they have put in place a single entity to look at how the private sector can help within the infrastructure space. This isn't necessarily finance, but it can be. And that entity has been given the power to make decisions on projects that are taken forward and pushing those projects forward. This is difficult stuff because there are already ministries in place that want to do these projects. But by doing that, you at least look at alternative sources of finance for a project before it goes forward. And that's proving quite attractive to the private sector who are moving into the Philippines quite strongly and is also bought, is actually taken there, spend on infrastructure from 2.6% in the past to 5.2% in the most recent year. And that's a pretty incredible change in terms of the sense of GDP spent on infrastructure. So my sum up would be political will is in place. There's never enough money for infrastructure. We're looking at a shortfall of about a trillion to a trillion and a half per year on infrastructure globally. And therefore making use of as many different forms of funding that you can is incredibly important. I guess the last thing I'd say is thanks very much to the ADB who do an awful lot of the work here, create a lot of the structures and are people who on the ground get things done. Okay, thank you very much for that. And on that note, let's talk about whether the environment is right to be engaging in massive infrastructure development in Asia. And obviously the region needs it in order to propel these economy. And Stephen, I'd like to ask your thoughts on whether this is the right time. I mean, we're looking at a really uneven global economy right now. However, we've got record low interest rates and if not negative interest rates. And many of the stakeholders I've been speaking to, at least those involved in infrastructure development, say, you know, ASEAN should be engaging, fully engaged right now because interest rates are this cheap. What are your thoughts on that? No, I think there's the Chinese saying that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today. So I think that applies here where we have seen historically an underspend in budget allocation towards infrastructure across ASEAN. I think that there has been an awareness that the minister has articulated, that Chris has articulated, there has been a development of political will towards this. But we need to continue to see that momentum. We need to continue to see that investment. Still we have, you know, in order to close the gap that exists, we need to see close to 9% of budget allocated towards infrastructure, 9% of GDP allocated towards infrastructure investment. We're seeing increases in that spend across many of the ASEAN countries, but still there's a lot of variability across the ASEAN countries ranging from 3% or a little bit less, up to 9% in some cases. So we need to see that continued political will, that continued investment. We also need to see continued reforms that are gonna create an even playing field that's gonna encourage private investment. And again, I think there's a number of examples that we're seeing, we've heard about the Philippines, we've heard about Malaysia. There's some interesting things that are happening in Vietnam at the moment as well. So I think that there is that space for private investment is being created, but we need to continue to see the reforms moving forward. And lastly, and the minister touched on this in the context of ASEAN, but the opportunity that deeper regional cooperation, integration brings for that. I mean, ASEAN as a whole is to tremendous economic force. ASEAN as individual countries, much less so. So I think that the real potential for ASEAN to realize great growth, to take advantage of structural transformation that's underway in China and elsewhere in the global economy is going to only happen to the degree that that integration happens. It's not, as you said in the opening, it's not European style integration. It's a different kind of integration. It's appropriate to the region, but that integration is critically important. Okay, you raise a very good point, Stephen, about structural reform and how that program is, or how that progress has panned out in ASEAN in terms of level the playing field here, because I mean, that probably is one of also the big hurdles and challenges. And Uwe, I'd like to bring you in on this on the other side of the equation from an engineering consultancy and design firm and really get down to the crux of whether from your side, you're actually seeing enough progress in the structural reform in terms of leveling that playing field, especially when it comes to procurement. First of all, I think what is certain is, and the minister pointed that out clearly, there's an enormous amount of demand for infrastructure development. And let's be clear, we typically have transportation infrastructure inside when we talk about it, there's much more to it, to have a holistic view on the infrastructure needed, that is the water and wastewater infrastructure that needs to be in place. There's even the social infrastructure that we need to create for a conducive environment for people to live and work in. What we see as a very encouraging development here in the region, that there's more and more the willingness to adapt the structures and to learn from best practice on an international scale. And I think rightfully it has been mentioned that the Philippines have given a very good example. As a matter of fact, we just, Cosette Culignier just joined Atkins. She was the executive director of the PPP Center to make this expertise available for a much wider audience of clients. But I would add there are other ingredients from a engineering point of view, also from a developer point of view that are important for that to be successful. The first, I'm basically adding to the criteria that Chris mentioned here. First of all, we need to have a better understanding of the delineation between the risk distribution between the private and the public sector. And if that becomes clearer, what's the task that the public sector, that the government cannot successfully shift to the private part? And what is where the private expertise comes in? Give you an example, kind of the planning phase of a project is an area where the private sector cannot take on the risk. That is part of the duty of the public room. The second thing which is important according to our experience again from a worldwide perspective is that investment certainty has to be improved. There's a lot of money available internationally and you pointed to the low interest rates and almost to the difficulty many pension funds have to place investments at the moment. The question is how do we create enough investable projects out there that are really thought through to the extent that international money can find its place here in the region to be invested. That needs structuring expertise on the one hand side. And it needs this investment certainty that means that the supply chain once it is geared up can actually deliver in time and according to budget. Many of you also in the audience might have seen the recent study by McKinsey and colleagues that about 90% of large scale infrastructure projects on a worldwide basis are significantly above budget and behind their time schedule. That's a disastrous track record of this industry. And that the only way to solve that and that's my last point is embracing technology more. We all found this book by Klaus Schwab in the conference map about the force industrial revolution in our area and infrastructure. It is all about digital engineering and embracing the digital revolution in our industry which arguably has been one of the slowest to innovate. If you look what happened to the telecom space on the automotive space for example. So really thinking through scenario planning a large and complex projects and really collectively with all participants in an infrastructure projects try to optimize and utilize the money available be it taxpayers money or be it private money to the most efficient way possible. That's a task that the industry has to embrace better and we will be able to deliver in time and according to budget if we take advantage of what technology and the digital world can create for us today. Well these are one of the challenges that you've just brought up today in terms of striking that right balance between the public and the private sector and meeting those objectives and sometimes it's a little bit opaque and you raise the issue of infrastructure projects coming in way above budget and that is one of the issues that ASEAN has to deal with. And Minister Liao if I could bring you in on this conversation because Malaysia has seen an acceleration of infrastructure development projects and to be honest many if not all of them nearly always come significantly above budget. You know how can I mean Uwe is talking about the employment of technology in order to make things more efficient but beyond that how else do you think governments around the world including Malaysia can actually tackle that issue? First I must say that the government must keep the policy momentum to grow as you know that Malaysian government is very committed to infrastructure development and we know that even some of the project is off budget. Some of the project we have to go for the PPP project, Public Private Partnership and we also know the cost of public private partnership is high, higher than the government funding. But to ensure sustainable growth we know we have to keep the economy and continue to grow. We need this infrastructure. We need the highway, we need the Pan-Boneo Highway, Sarawak Pan-Boneo Highway. We need the double track from Gamas to Johor Bahru to complete the Singapore Commingling. Now we need all this budget but we are committed to this and that's why we go into some of them is off budget. But even that we are able to sustain our economy growth because we are confident if we do it now we will be able to reap the economy growth and we will be able to pay off in the years to come. And looking at the budget that's why we are managed to, in terms of fiscal deficit we still control the deficit about 3.1 percent. And I would say that the government must be committed on infrastructure development and we must understand that only through infrastructure transportation development we will be able to create more growth. I also agree with what Kruger said that digital economy now is coming in. How the government now, besides the real infrastructure development digital infrastructure development need to be in place for the digital economy to grow. Okay, I think we've raised some great points here and there seems to be in some ways a conflict of sort between the priorities and the objectives sometimes when it comes to embracing some of these infrastructure projects. I mean, on the one hand, I want to bring you in again, Chris, on this note because Uwe made a very good point that for the private sector to be engaged that there needs to be, of course, the economic priorities need to be addressed. They need to have sort of a guarantee of sorts and Malaysia has embarked on this road before with the independent power producers. I mean, how do you proceed with infrastructure development with that kind of model and trying to address the needs on both sides, public and also the private sector? Okay, so the private sector needs the right amount of security to achieve their aims of making a financeable project. Apologies, maybe, but they will always want more security. We've seen interesting models where an initial position taken by a country has then been eroded back to a more economically efficient position. So if you look at the Korean model, the Korean public, when they started out in their push to use private finance, their early projects were very heavily government guaranteed. And as the private sector became more aware of the strengths and weaknesses of working with that country, became more capable of working in that country, as the country began to understand better how to work with the private sector, the trust began to grow and the government's guarantees dropped away slowly until they came down to a much more reasonable balance of risk and return between the two. So government has an important role to play. They are the people who do the planning. They are the people who make the priorities. They are the people who provide the environment in which these projects can flourish. The private sector has a whole load of other strengths and weaknesses to play with. Government should never forget that they can at times play a role to free up projects. And this is in any country. If you look at the UK, they've recently financed a project called the Thames Highway Tunnel, which is a 27 kilometer drain under the River Thames. Now that's a massive tunneling project and the government have had the private sector finance and own that project, but the government has taken the final backstop risk on the tunneling risk. So they looked at that tunneling risk and said this is not a risk the private sector can take and therefore they decided as a government that they would put a single point guarantee of that specific project risk and that created a fundable project. So I twitch horribly when people say guarantee because government's guaranteeing the private sector to undertake infrastructure projects is a fairly pointless game because all of that risk still sits with the government. The cost of the private sector taking part of it is you get some benefits from it, but not nearly enough. What you need to be doing is being very smart, recognizing who can hold which risks most effectively and then making sure that any risks which the private sector can't deal with, they don't have to deal with. So don't try and push toll, pure toll road risk down onto the private sector in a country that has no track record of toll road. It just won't work, you will get no over that. We've recently put out a piece on risk matrices by the Global Hub and by the World Bank together and I'd say anybody who's looking at these sort of risks can look there to see an idea of where they should start. Okay, Stephen, I wanna bring you in on this note as well. I mean, looking at what the best model is for the rest of ASEAN, how do you balance that issue of who, where the risk should fall when you're embarking on these infrastructure projects? Well, I think, I mean, I think Chris did a good job at sort of articulating that there's, you know, that there's different, obviously there's different kinds and classes of risk that we're dealing with, but there's also a real difference between what is real risk and quantifiable risk and what is perceived risk. And the degree to which these relationships are built and strengthened, the perceived risk goes down. And so I think that's the role of, you know, governments, obviously, to level playing fields, to, you know, get a better understanding of what the private sector's impressions and understandings of risks are, but also institutions such as ours or the Global Infrastructure Hub or others to help private investors understand what the real risks are and play that kind of intermediate role. One point I'd also really like to make sure that we don't overlook is U's point on investable or bankable projects because we do have a finance challenge to a certain degree across the region or across the globe, but we also have a huge bankable investable project gap that needs to be addressed and how we get moving on that part of it is critically important because the degree to which we can build and identify and engineer bankable projects, finance will come. And that might be government finance, it might be private finance, but it needs to have better articulated projects at the end of the day. And the last point one we haven't touched on yet and this is a specific challenge to ASEAN is capital market development because we also need instruments that can help intermediate finance that's already there and capital markets, shallow capital markets which are common across the ASEAN countries are challenged to making sure that the finance that's already there can find its way into these kinds of projects to the degree that they already exist. Okay, Dato Liao, to what extent is that a big issue for countries like Malaysia that Steven just rated in terms of deepening and broadening the capital markets as a source of funding to meet the infrastructure needs of Malaysian ASEAN nations? Well, we are able to handle this because our economy is a growing economy. Most importantly, it must ensure peace and stability to ensure that there's enough growth and as well as export must be more than import. And what we are doing now in Malaysia because you can see that although the world economy is into the uncertainty term but Malaysia is to grow at about 4% to 5%. So as long as we can ensure that there's economic growth we will be able to expand and further deepen our capital market. We will be able to get good rates for our loan. If I may, I think that the minister is absolutely correct when we're speaking about just Malaysia but I think the challenge is that Asia as a whole ASEAN specifically is a capital surplus region of the world. Where is that capital going? That capital is going to low yielding treasury securities in the US and in the Eurozone to a certain degree. That's a flight to safety. There's all sorts of reasons why that happens but that's why there's been over history of course great progress in Malaysia and some other countries but we need to expand that more broadly across ASEAN countries as a whole because the degree to which we can bring that finance back into the region is going to help propel this infrastructure investment over time. All right, we have a question from the audience in the back over there who wants to raise an issue and if we could just get the gentleman to stand up there. My name is Mark Desmit. I'm CEO of an asset management firm 0.72 asset management here in Asia. I just wanted to pick up on this point because a day doesn't go by in the newspapers where we hear about the low yields and the struggle that retirees are gonna have given the traditional fixed income instruments to your point and are now yielding next to nothing. And it seems like infrastructure is an ideal alternative to that they're long dated in nature. They're often price adjusted. So to encounter sort of inflation. So I wonder whether the left hand or the right hand in governments are talking to each other about this. The retirement system is talking to the transport ministry or other areas in order to facilitate the right outcomes for both the country in terms of infrastructure and retirees and savers in terms of planning for their long term future. It seems like this is a real win-win situation but I don't hear a lot about the coordination in government that's taking place to facilitate that. Would you like to direct that to the minister? Maybe to the minister and I'd be interested in Mr. Kruge's viewpoint on that as well. I would like to respond to that because definitely the government have to consider this the whole operating fund have to ensure that the budget is for all the citizens. It cannot just focus on just infrastructures and focus on other development. But as I've said for Malaysia, for our budget last year, we placed about 8.5 billion on transport development. It's more than 10% of the whole thing but we also cater for other needs. But when we put this budget on transportation development, infrastructure development, we know that this will give more returns to us in the very near future and we create more economic growth at the end of the day. We should be able to benefit the people, the people in Malaysia. And that's how we manage our fiscal deficit and we have to be sure that our growth will surpass the pressure that we face for the loan that we take. So I would say that Malaysia is fortunate because we are very resource countries and we have a lot of what are called connectivities to the world and in the center of the ASEAN and as ASEAN as a whole, I reply to what Grof said just now. Although ASEAN, there are some deficits in certain parts but as a whole, we know that that would create a lot of opportunities for the people in ASEAN and connectivity will enhance our economic growth, especially after China launched the One Belt One Road and that actually creates connectivity between ASEAN and China, ASEAN and other parts of the world, ASEAN and EU and this actually expands our scope. We are not just looking at Malaysia as a loan, we are looking at ASEAN, we are looking at China, we are looking at EU through all this connectivity. So once the market is big enough, so we are not worried about the investment that we put in. We know that investment that we put in will be enough, we'll get enough returns from all this market that is open up now. ASEAN with the TPPA that we signed and as well as the Belt and Road Initiative, all this will actually create the kind of impact on our economy. So we have to get ready ourselves. ASEAN must be ready for all this infrastructure, transportation infrastructure. If we are not ready, then we will not be able to tap this economy. We will not be able to garner and harness the strength that we have in ASEAN. That's why AEC is very important. That's the reason why I say that I'm very excited to see that the next decade, how ASEAN transforms its transportation infrastructure perspective. Uwe, can we bring you in to respond to what the member of the audience just said as well? I think it's an excellent question and I believe there are two aspects to it. The one is that Stephen already alluded to what we need is a further liberalization of the investment vehicles that can be addressed. The bonds are not the only way to look at infrastructure, infrastructure, finance. And if there were more opportunities, you would see more international pension funds investing into these infrastructure opportunities because it's exactly as you say in a extreme low yield environment, infrastructure all of a sudden is the star for investments into long-term assets. So it's a fundamental opportunity that we are facing here at the moment, not only for Asian funds, but also for international ones investing here. The flip side, as Stephen and I mentioned now before, is we need to carefully look at what is investable. So it's not about coming up with a laundry or a wish list of iconic projects that would be nice to have for this kind of money to be attracted because also the responsibility that these funds have to adhere to, it needs to be really a good investment case to be made. That needs a lot of financial structuring that has to come in the first place and it needs the clear commitment and the believability that the structural legislative framework that is being set in place is stable. So it's surviving kind of the next election period or whatever it might be. And if the capital market believes in that, be it a domestic one or international one, you will see much more capital being available. Well, Stephen, can I bring you back in on this conversation because how does one approach that issue and challenge of plugging the funding gap here? I mean, you know, Uwe has just made a great point in terms of having to outline the investable projects and what makes sense economically, obviously, but I mean, you know, there's no shortage of funds out there. I mean, it's true. The savings rate around Asia is very, very high. I mean, we're sitting with hundreds and hundreds of billions of US dollars sitting in these pension funds. And you know, in an economic time where governments are all too eager to get these pension funds to lever up or at least to take a little bit more risk onto their balance sheets, why is it so being so difficult to actually tap into that source of funding? Because I mean, if you have an implicit guarantee from the government, there shouldn't really be a problem. Well, I think it comes down to incentives at the end of the day. And the incentives I think are problematic when it comes to, you know, governments to a certain degree and certainly when it comes to institutions such as my own. I think we have a high level political commitment to this. I think there's no question that ASEAN leaders recognize the need for infrastructure investment. They recognize the need to create a level playing field that will crowd in private investment into infrastructure. So all of this I think is well understood at the political level. And it's well understood, you know, at the management level of institutions such as my own. I think the challenge comes at how do you translate that political commitment into design and execution at lower levels within governments or within institutions that are making these, or that are helping, you know, design these types of investments. Because still what you have is you have, we mentioned the challenge about budgets and that we need to increase the budget spend across ASEAN on infrastructure. And yet there are challenges to even, even if they're only having 5% budget allocation towards infrastructure, 5% of GDP allocated towards infrastructure investment. A lot of the governments are struggling to make that investment at 5%. And so much less if you're trying to say, well also crowd in the private sector here. So then you have a staff of, you know, line ministries that are struggling to spend the budgets they already have. Plus they're now expected to design projects that are gonna crowd in the private sector. So I think that we need to get incentives in place that recognize the need for this kind of, the design of these types of projects which are going to be of a different gestation period. They're not the same as a standard road investment or road design. It's a different kind of animal. So we need to look at those incentives. We also need to look at skills also. We haven't talked about skills here. And this is also where we see gaps across the region. So you need to be looking at investing in skills upgrading across the board when it comes to this. Because we don't necessarily have the expertise or experience that we need across the region in order to make, design and develop and execute these kinds of projects. Okay, it sounds like it's a very complicated process to reach that happy, medium or equilibrium. Chris, you know, what are your thoughts on this? Because, you know, we're talking about the right incentives that need to be provided for the right kinds of projects. So what is the best way forward when governments around the ASEAN region look to embark on this? Because certainly there's a case to be made that perhaps some infrastructure projects have been implemented in certain emerging markets may not have an economic case. And yet, you know, people, governments still embark on these projects. So, you know, does this mean that ultimately, at the bottom line, the governments are just going to have to guarantee something? Gosh, the point about project selection is a huge one. You can look in Spain and see the Don Quixote Airport, which is a four billion euro airport, which they've just sold for 40 million because it was built in the wrong place with no connections and it was never, ever going to attract any use. So people do make mistakes and those mistakes are really dire for economies. Working out a selection criteria, making that selection criteria live longer than a single government, making decisions that are based upon a long-term economic view of where a country is going, are all essential parts of gaining that multiplier I was talking about to start with the 1.5 to 2.6 times. Choose the wrong projects. Infrastructure is highly destructive. So that's the first thing. Moving to a guarantee, the worst projects a government selects, the more likely they are to have to guarantee them. So if you look at a well-selected, well-thought-through project which has strong economic rationale and potentially also links into hard currency for countries where the bond markets are thin, that is the sort of project which you can, I'm gonna say relatively simply, there's no such thing as relatively simply in infrastructure, that you can take to the private sector and can be funded. If you look at something which is a stadium, I financed Wembley Stadium in the UK many years ago, so I have to say I'm a hypocrite on this. But if you took something like a stadium, that's much harder to finance. It's much harder because actually, there isn't the same economic return on it that you need. So project selection is critical, but the second thing is, you've got each of these different government ministries who has their budget to spend their money. They have a certain amount of capability, they have a certain number of projects. If their default is to procure the easier projects, then you will get less and less financeable projects going to the private sector. So there is a mindset change that is needed. I'm not pointing to the thing of any particular country here, it's a general point. There is a mindset change that is needed within ministries to say can I get this done without spending my pot of money? Because if I don't spend my pot of money on this port or airport, then I have it available to build a school or a hospital or a toll road. So we have something of a low hanging fruit problem going on and the question is where do you want to spend your incredibly hard fought tax dollar? Do you want to spend it on a port or do you want to spend it on a school? This is the sort of decision making that has to happen and it is incredibly hard. It is very different to the way things are done normally and have been done in the past and it takes a great deal of political courage as well. Yes, well actually it's interesting you raised that because one example of the success of course is Singapore and many people say that Singapore's track record for infrastructure development is second to none, but there are different challenges that the other ASEAN nation face. On that note, I believe we have Mr. Yo-Kye Tsiang who's from the Economic Development Board of Singapore that would like to interject and actually pose a question to our panel speakers today. Mr. Yo-Kye, there we are. Welcome Mr. Yo-Kye. Thank you, thank you. Constantly investing in infrastructure despite the fact that we are a small country or maybe because we are a small country we are looking to see how we can continue to optimise it and I, well maybe I can offer three points I think may be useful. The first is in terms of how the projects are structured and the public-private partnerships the minister is probably familiar, Water is a very important resource for Singapore and we are constantly looking to see how we can improve that infrastructure and we are supported companies to in fact innovate around technologies related to water reclamation with the intent that they can build it in Singapore showcase it and then commercialise it from Singapore. So I think that's one and we're happy to share our experiences and models in terms of what we've learnt what mistakes we've made that would be one perspective. The second would probably be project financing and in 2012 we launched a vehicle which is backed by the Singapore government to provide long-term financing for infrastructure projects from Singapore-based companies in the region. I think that's our small contribution in the perspective. It's not in the trillions of dollars but it's a small contribution. And the third related to the point that I think Stephen made was about talent. And two years ago together with the Singapore Management University we created a program to train infrastructure leaders. So project financing, project development and we certainly welcome participants from the region both from the public and private sector. And I think those three, structuring, financing and talent are probably the critical components that help us come some way towards addressing the infrastructure gap. Thank you. Uwe, I'd like to bring you in now because you mentioned earlier that one of the big enablers is technology and embracing that to achieve a sort of efficiency there and Mr. Yo, they're talking about the skill sets as well as Stephen addressing that. And from your perspective as a design from consultancy engineering, what more needs to be done with some of these ASEAN countries? I mean Singapore obviously is best in class when it comes to infrastructure but are you seeing enough of development on that front in the rest of the ASEAN countries and how can that be facilitated? Let me put that in perspective for a moment again probably with one statistical piece of information. If you look back the last 30 years, typically all industries around us have increased productivity by something in the range of 40, 50, 60%. In construction, be it now residential real estate, commercial real estate or infrastructure, this curve has been flat. So we have not captured the same kind of efficiency gains in this industry. And even if you look at the things that you can observe by just looking out of the window, we build buildings today pretty much in the same way we did 50 or 80 years ago, it's embarrassing. And it's only the last two, three, four years that that has massively changed. And it is because of the advent of digital engineering and digital technologies. So the capability today, not only to the 3D engineering, which we've done for quite a while, but to have a force and fifth dimension which is time and cost as well. And if you have this kind of holistic digital model of an asset that you are designing, engineering, building eventually, then of course you have numerous ways to try to optimize that before the first shuffle goes into the ground and hence save a lot of money in doing so with all the stakeholders and all the supply chain elements being in place. And that has of course a couple of prerequisites. The one is skills as Steven and our colleague from the EDB just highlighted. It requires a completely different breed of engineers and experts in financial structure and coming together in these enormous projects with enormous complexity to master these models that we can create today. And if you think about it, the additional advantages that you not only optimize the CAPEX to build this asset, you can now think about how do I optimize the OPEX so the costs that occur in the lifetime of that infrastructure asset or building that I'm creating, which by the way is 80 or 90% of the cost from a total cost of ownership perspective for enormous opportunities that we have today that we haven't had or we haven't utilized just a couple of years ago. So that's where I see an enormous optimization potential that we need to embrace as an industry and that will deliver exactly what I mentioned before this cost and time certainty that is needed to attract more private money in this industry because we can for sure say after the end of a planning and design phase this is how we delivered, this is what it cost and this is when we actually can hand over the assets for public use and that will make a huge difference. Thank you. We've got another six or seven minutes left with today's this afternoon's panel discussion so this will be a great opportunity to open it up to the floor. So if anybody has any questions or observations they would like to talk about please put your hand up and your name. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you panelists. My name is Sandra Wu from Cokeside Cogill. Our company also heavily involved in the infrastructure. We all understand building the infrastructure is good essential to stimulate the economy. My question is to minister and the panelists who would like to answer because I wonder we would like to we would like you to share with us your insight while chasing for economic growth how you address the environmental and the social issue at the same time. One panelist in the morning section just saying that the ecosystem happening in the other country not happening in ASEAN. Maybe you can say something on behalf of ASEAN and today the topic is learning the best in ASEAN infrastructure. So I wonder whether ASEAN can build up our own infrastructure, the ecosystem model and we can showcase the best practice to the world. Oh definitely. I think we have to showcase the international standards. Every infrastructure project in Malaysia we have to go through the we call it EIA Environmental Impact Assessment as well as a social impact assessment. It's not just environmental impact. We also look at the social impact to the surrounding people. How it affect changes to their lifestyle and so on. So we also like to emphasise that we also assess as what Chris said just now whether which project come first you know whether you want to develop school first or port first. Definitely we have priorities and everything there's an urgency as well as importance for all the project. And we in the government they have to prioritise and the government need to see the return as well as especially how it could impact our economy after the completion of the project. Because this is all example of the high speed rail that we are talking about now Singapore and Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur. And this is undergo a tremendous study and very advanced study and we come out with a viable project because most important that is it will be the economic return and it's sustainable. So that's why every project it will go under cruise trinears assessment by the government as well as the private sectors. Just to quickly add on that I think it's a great question and I think we need that we also have to there's the environment and the social elements here but we also have to think in this region in particular which is very susceptible to climate and disaster risk is the elements of disaster and climate resiliency that need to be incorporated into these projects over time because the cost of having to rebuild something is significantly more than anticipating what those impacts might be and changing design such that it is more resilient to those types of impacts in the longer run. So this is something that adds cost up front but it's definitely worth it when you look at a life of project total cost. So these are things that are incredibly important. You know Sandra made a very good point earlier when she was posing that question to Dato Liao talking about embarking on these infrastructure projects for economic profit or economic growth. Chris I want to bring you in on that. I mean from your observation from Global Infrastructure Hub is too much attention being placed on economic profit versus economic growth in when governments around the ASEAN region are looking at feasibility studies for these big, big ticket very expensive projects. It's a very difficult area particularly politically if you are seen to be selling off assets or giving assets to the private sector and the private sector are seen to make a lot of money from those then you stand the risk of being criticised for that. The reality is that what we need to do is to make sure that we link the profit factor in these projects through to the benefit that we get from these projects. If we can't make a case that says we are allowing equity to make a return on this project of X and that return is buying us cost certainty, delivery of time certainty a more innovative view of how the asset was to be created a better understanding of the full life costing of that asset. If we cannot make the case that the profit is more than offset by the benefits of using these methods then we should not be following these methods. And one of the things that we'll be doing at the hub is looking at the data that needs to be collected wholesale by the MDBs, by the G20 countries about projects that are operating so that we can actually start making this case on the basis of projects that have been completed rather than some of us saying actually we're pretty sure it's right. We've got a couple of minutes left so I'd like to take the opportunity to just go around the stage here just to get closing final comments and observations and what was the most important thing that was learned from today's discussion at the panel. Dato Liao, if we could start with you your closing comments and what we've all learned from our discussions here today about the path of infrastructure in ASEAN. I must say that ASEAN is ready for further and more transport infrastructure project because we need to enhance economic growth. And one thing is that we also, with the rise of AEC, we need to increase our intra trade within ASEAN countries. So I think this is important and this message is important for all our stakeholders. We have to be committed and we make sure that we are able to connect to the world. Thank you very much, Uwe. The parting shots. I think it's an exciting point in time with regard to all the infrastructure projects that are being considered. Let me probably at the end make again another point on technology. As Chris pointed out, there's a lot of creativity coming from the private sector as well that we can utilize better. If you just think about the future of intelligent mobility, driverless cars that we need to realize early in time now as we plan transport infrastructure for the future, make it future-proofing and embrace these new opportunities that technology bring. Digital asset management is another area for that. So I think if we embrace that more and if this partnership becomes more synergistic between the public and the private sector, not only will we attract more money, we will create a much better user experience for our people here on the ground as well, which I think will be applauded by everybody using these assets at the end of the day. Thank you, Uwe. And Chris, can we get final closing comments from you? I'm very excited by the vision that I am beginning to see for ASEAN, the connectivity agenda that I think will drive ASEAN from being a group of small countries to trading off each other's strengths and becoming a greater whole. I think that's got to be an exciting vision and I certainly look forward to infrastructure playing a strong part in that. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you. I think there's a tendency in these types of discussions to focus on the challenges and we've spent a lot of time talking about the challenges, but I think there is a huge amount of progress that we've seen in ASEAN over the last 10 years and there's a huge amount of political commitment. There are reforms underway. We've seen a lot of progress in PPPs across a number of different countries. So there is the will there. There is progress. We just need to continue that momentum. Okay, thank you very much, Stephen. And then just to say in conclusion, you know, ASEAN and Stephen just alluded to, of course, does have a very bright future. There are opportunities out there and certainly lots of challenges as every nation region has to face in today's world. And I hope through today's panel discussions that all of the stakeholders have got something out of it and an important message there that can put ASEAN on a path for sustainable development when it comes to infrastructure because obviously we all know that infrastructure is key in igniting and unleashing the economic potentials within the region and we've got enough cases to prove that here. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our esteemed panelists here, Dato Leal and Uwe Kuga and also Keith Heathcudd and Stephen Dorff. Thank you very much for joining the panel today and also your participation from the audience. Have a fantastic afternoon.