The ASEAN-BAC Welcome Networking Dinner, supported by HSBC Singapore and SingEx, is one of two events marking the start of Singapore Business Federation’s efforts for 2018, the year Singapore assumes the role of Chair of ASEAN-BAC and ASEAN. As part of the ASEAN Business Advisory Council for Singapore, Dr Robert Yap was present along with the Guest-of-Honour, Minister for Trade and Industry (Trade) Mr Lim Hng Kiang.

The other event is an e-commerce roundtable held on 27 April 2016 at Singapore Expo. Jointly organised by ASEAN BAC and the East Asia Business Council (EABC), the roundtable discussed the importance of e-commerce in helping to better integrate ASEAN’s different markets and facilitate the formation of a common market in Southeast Asia. Present at the event were Dr Robert Yap, Executive Chairman of YCH Group; Bennett Neo, CEO of YCH Group; Robert Yap Min Choy, Deputy Chairman and Executive Director of Y3 Technologies and Marc Dragon, Deputy CEO at Y3 Technologies.

Besides YCH and Y3, the event brought together speakers from Alibaba, Zalora, ReeBonz, Hitachi, IBM, Numoni, among others, to exchange experiences and insights on the latest and upcoming trends in the dynamic e-commerce landscape across Southeast Asia and East Asia.

Dr Yap shared that “the year 2016 will be an important landmark for Singapore’s participation in ASEAN and the ASEAN Economic Community. By the time Singapore assumes the chairmanship of ASEAN and ASEAN BAC in 2018, my greatest hope is that companies in ASEAN including Singapore companies will be benefitting from the establishment of a single production and market base of well over 700 million population of which almost 50 percent will be in the middle-income bracket. ASEAN-BAC Singapore’s hosting of the E-Commerce Roundtable together with EABC and SBF signifies our recognition of the critical integrative role that E-Commerce plays in bringing the vision of AEC 2015 into reality”.