Asia Local Markets Weekly: Biting harder

Research evidence excerpt

Asia Local Markets Weekly: Biting harder

Deutsche Bank

Research

Asia Fixed Income Date

21 May 2026

Asia Local Markets

Weekly

Biting harder

Sameer Goel

Over the past week and a half, we have visited multiple cities across Asia as part of

Macro Strategist

our investor access trips, meeting with policy makers, local political/economic +65-642-36973

observers, and market participants. A few quick impressions:

Perry Kojodjojo

Strategist

(1) The energy shock is biting harder across the region and forcing policy makers

+852-2203-6153

into uncomfortable choices, like with the surprising but punchy 50bp hike by Bank

Indonesia this week. The delta remains high on policy gap risks. Vaninder Singh, CFA

(2) FX is proving to be the natural pressure valve in most places as policy tries to +65-6423 8947

balance growth vs financial stability, and which makes political pain thresholds very Bryant Xu

significant to the decision metrics. Strategist

+65-6423 5558

(3) Idiosyncratic stories remain, as always, key to differentiation within the region Joey Chung

– re-centralization in Indonesia, increasing sense of positivity on political stability in Strategist

Thailand, the rising stagflationary risks in the Philippines, to name a few. +65-6423 8298

Chen Kan

(4) China’s global standing is improving but the domestic recovery is still more Macro Strategist

K-shaped, with the new economy carrying the old (DB Economics estimates +852-2203-6159

suggest sequential growth down to 4% in April vs 5%+ in March).

Jalaj Singh

Research Associate

(5) It’s tough to over-appreciate the speed with which China is moving to close the

gap on AI with the US, not in frontier models but in application and infrastructure.

Yi Xiong, Ph.D.

Chief Economist