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One of every ten persons in the world today lives in Southeast Asia. This constitutes a huge market with steadily increasing purchasing power.
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Southeast Asia is an area of immense richness and diversity, spanning three time zones and ten nations - Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Several centuries of human migration, the influence of the great religions and civilizations of the East, the coming of western rule followed by independence, have resulted in a region made up of countries that are diverse in size and populations, religions practiced, languages used and the historical circumstances experienced by each.
Economically, Southeast Asia belongs to the developing world. However, four of the 10 Southeast Asian countries have joined the world's top 20 most competitive economies.
As of 2007, the population of the ASEAN region was about 580 million with annual growth of 1.9%. Its GDP (PPP) per capita is over US$ 5,900.
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