SEA Daily Brief: Singapore's Economic Strategy Review picks AI deployment over model-building and sets up a National AI Council, FPT and Microsoft widen their agentic-AI pact across Asia, and Bank Negara and the SC convene a joint Islamic-finance panel

Singapore's Economic Strategy Review bets on AI deployment, not model-building, and stands up a National AI Council

Singapore's Economic Strategy Review (ESR) committees released their final report on June 24, recommending the country position itself as a global hub for developing, testing and deploying AI solutions rather than competing to build the largest frontier models or data centres. Issued through the Ministry of Digital Development and Information, the report frames AI as a general-purpose technology comparable to electricity or the internet, with Singapore's edge lying in its ability to coordinate government, business and research institutions.

The report establishes a National AI Council (NAIC) to drive national AI missions across four sectors — advanced manufacturing, finance, healthcare and logistics — and calls for cultivating leading firms as "Champions of AI," widening access to datasets, computing power and regulatory sandboxes, and tightening AI governance and safety capabilities. For investors, the notable recommendations are on capital: the committees urge expanding growth capital for startups through venture debt, private credit and a strengthened public equities market, while prioritising AI that augments rather than replaces workers.

FPT and Microsoft widen their AI pact, targeting 20,000 agentic developers across Asia

FPT Corporation and Microsoft announced on June 25 an expanded strategic collaboration to accelerate enterprise AI adoption across ASEAN, Japan and South Korea, with particular emphasis on Vietnam. Under the deal FPT acts as a Microsoft "AI Frontier Company" — an early adopter and reference deployment for Microsoft's next-generation tools — embedding AI agents into core enterprise workflows rather than treating them as standalone pilots.

FPT said it has 30,000 AI-augmented engineers globally, including more than 3,000 Microsoft-certified engineers, and aims to equip up to 20,000 developers with agentic development capabilities over the next three years using Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot. It also introduced FPT CASAN, a five-level AI-transformation framework. Microsoft ASEAN president Mayank Wadhwa said Vietnam is "entering a pivotal phase of AI adoption where organizations are ready to scale beyond pilots."

Bank Negara and the SC stand up a joint advisory panel to push Malaysia's Islamic finance agenda

Bank Negara Malaysia and the Securities Commission Malaysia held the inaugural meeting of the Malaysia International Islamic Financial Centre (MIFC) Advisory Panel on June 22, the regulators disclosed on June 23. Co-chaired by BNM Governor Dato' Sri Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour and SC Chairman Dato' Mohammad Faiz Azmi, the panel is an inter-agency advisory and consultation platform meant to support Malaysia's position as a global Islamic finance marketplace and to steer the newly reconstituted MIFC Business Network.

The panel brings together the Ministry of Finance, the investment and trade ministry, Bursa Malaysia and the country's largest state funds — the Employees Provident Fund, Khazanah Nasional, Kumpulan Wang Persaraan (KWAP), Permodalan Nasional and Lembaga Tabung Haji — alongside the Labuan Financial Services Authority and business envoys Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar and Tan Sri Abdul Wahid Omar. Its formation marks the transition of the former MIFC Leadership Council into an industry-led MIFC Business Network supported by public-sector agencies.

Eyes on the Day Ahead

No single hard deadline falls in the next 24–48 hours, so the items worth tracking sit across the coming week. The detailed sector-mission mandates under Singapore's new National AI Council — and whether they carry procurement budgets — are the key follow-through from the ESR report, with the full document on the MDDI website. In digital assets, Thailand's SEC has signalled it will publish crypto-ETF guidelines within weeks and is targeting late Q2 2026 for its tokenised-fund framework, while in Malaysia the first proof-of-concept pilots under Bank Negara's three-year asset-tokenisation plan remain the near-term catalyst to watch.