Singapore is the second most preferred city in Asia-Pacific for cross-border investments this year. (Photo: straitstimes.com) DesmondSim, head of research for Southeast Asia at CBRE – a global commercial realestate services company, said Singapore remains an important hub for foreigncorporations looking to access Southeast Asia.
The survey notes that Singapore is turning out to be a viable alternative toChina’s Hong Kong for companies setting up Asia-Pacific headquarters.
Theupbeat news comes in the wake of the Economic Development Board’s report thatSingapore attracted about 17.2 billion SGD (12.9 billion USD) in fixed assetinvestments last year amidst the pandemic.
Japan’sTokyo topped the study due to the availability of high-quality assets andstrong liquidity. Seoul came in third, followed by Shanghai of China and Ho ChiMinh City of Vietnam.
Thesurvey polled 492 investors, who were mainly based in Asia-Pacific, betweenNovember 9 and December 14 last year.
Itrevealed that there was a broad-based improvement in market sentiments, with 60percent of investors intending to buy more real estate, the highest level since2016. The recent commencement of vaccination programmes in several countriesaround the world has further boosted market confidence.
Butinterest in the office sector, which used to be the most popular for investors,dipped with the rising adoption of remote working. Demand for retail and hotelsalso remained soft, the report added.
Meanwhile, logistics came up top as the most popular sector for investment, asthe pandemic drove the acceleration of e-commerce, boosting demand for thisasset class, the report said. Investors were also more interested in datacentres, as demand surged for video conferencing and other platforms to supportremote working. This has led to increasing requirements for data storage./.
VNA
