How to catch up with economic security issues across Asia

The growing global geopolitical turmoil made us realise the significance of sensing risks occurring overseas and making quick decisions to minimise potential losses at home. The idea of “Economic security” became an essential theme for policymakers and business owners immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So does it for our scoutAsia users. 

Today, we are launching an additional AI-driven news monitoring topic on Supply Shortage to meet our customers’ needs. 

More news articles around economic security, but it covers too many different issues 

In Q1 2022, the number of articles from our region-wide coverage of news sources mentioning “economic security” has gone up about 50% from the same period last year. However, the definition is quite broad and highly technical sometimes. “Economic security” addresses a wide range of issues around technology, data, product and resources that matter to people’s lives, businesses and national security today. From business communities, attention is significantly paid to some major issues such as supply chain management, physical trades and logistics, cyber security, talent drain, human rights and patent issues. 

(The data is presented at Nikkei’s flagship event, The Future of Asia, on 26th May)

As we learned from our customers that the supply chain problems are one of the most crucial and immediate concerns, we came up with additional news monitoring features on “supply shortage”. This can be found in the ScoutAI filtering drawer for news search or in the alert settings. 

Here are the details of the new topics. 

Supply Shortages

It focuses on articles talking about shortages of supply across different sectors. These could arise from the direct loss of product supplies or the depletion of reserves, or logistics-related (for e.g. unable to transport) reasons.
“Supply” refers not only to physical raw materials but could include services, manpower shortages, and other resources. 
Our machine will specifically pick up articles reporting on supply shortages faced, the reasons why, and the impact on operations/production of the respective companies/industries. You might also find articles relating to peripheral areas surrounding shortages like government intervention, and consequences of shortages (e.g. price hikes, or export bans)

Examples of tagged articles on 23rd June, 2022:

Together with the AI topic on “Supply Shortage”, we have launched another “Trade talks” topic. It focuses on articles relating to trade discussions and agreements between different nations. 
Tagged articles should include news on nations entering trade agreements/discussions, and the development of their trade talks. We might also see commentary articles surrounding the trade talks, as well as articles on multi-national trade partnerships/forums. 

Further topics related to economic security issues & outcomes 

There are some more news monitoring topics that cover risk-related matters and the impact on business in Asia.  

• Cybersecurity
  News about cybersecurity incidents, attacks and trends.
• Severe Business Disruption 
  Events that may disrupt businesses severely; such as cyber disruption, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, industrial accidents, strikes, nationalisation and supply chain problems.
• Layoffs  
  Actual or planned job reductions by businesses.
• Business Contraction 
  The topic picks up news related to exits from a particular market/country, production cuts or store count reductions.

We are also monitoring news across the region to pick up positive business sentiments, but will talk about it next time! 

If you are interested in more about the features, sign up for a free trial today.