23/11/2015 Asia Business Report

Now on BBC News all the latest business news live from Singapore.

Malaysia and the chairmanship of ASEAN to Laos. Chicken chow mein and

beef broccoli. We will look at the appetite for US style Chinese dishes

in the motherland. Good morning Asia and hello world. Thank you for

joining us for Asia Business Report. A new free trade area called

the ASEAN economic community is set to come into force at the start of

the new year. It is the next stage in the development of the

Association of Asian Nations. It will allow the freedom of movement

and the breaking down of trade barriers across the region. The

Prime Minister of Malaysia have hailed the benefits. It will ensure

a truly great single market and production base with freer movement

of goods and services with common standards, far greater connectivity

and the removal of the barriers that make our borders a hindrance to

growth and investment. Earlier I asked a representative from the

Asian Trade Centre when the capital impact on economies and jobs will

begin? It is a tough question because in part it has already had a

big impact. The big part of the AEC is the dropping of tariffs to zero

but that happened a long time ago for nearly all countries and

commodities. There is not a whole lot new that will be coming and that

makes this question kind of tricky. Some of the benefits are already

there and some are still to come. When we get to the first of January

when this goes live, the differences will be fairly modest. A lot of

politically sensitive industries in ASEAN are still protected, such as

agriculture and steel. Yes. Also the movement of people and many services

sectors and areas of all different kinds. It is a work in progress,

even though they will announce the conclusion of the AEC at the end of

this year come and now we are looking towards 2025 which is the

next part of this process. In the short-term, many critics are saying

there are many impediments to this whole integration process such as

transparency, accountability and corruption? Yes, it depends which

country you are talking about. The benefits for a country like

Singapore are very modest in that Singapore is quite open so it

doesn't get many benefits but for the left (trees, is huge benefit for

them to get their domestic house in order -- the last open countries.

The benefits could be more substantial in that case. In other

business news making headlines, China and Japan are stepping up

their battle for strategic infrastructure projects in Southeast

Asia. China has pledged to add another 10 billion US dollars to

fund projects in the region while Japan has vowed to cut by half the

time it takes to approve loans and take on more financial risk.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is reportedly on the brink of striking

a 150 billion dollar deal to take over another company. It would

create the world's biggest drug maker by sales and if the deal goes

ahead come of the chief executive of Pfizer will be the CEO of this

combined company. The French company CMA CGM is in talks to make the

biggest acquisition in the shipping container industry in years. The

talks are expected to run until early next month. Taxi booking

services like Buber are growing but there is a similar one in India for

users for wanting to fly. Users can order helicopters and jets on their

phones and laptops. This business does just that. We met the inventor

as part of the 30 Under 30 series. I was 20 or 21 when I started this.

Many people told me no private jet user would ever use private

technology to book eight -- a plane, so that was the biggest challenge

but now people can see the value we are bringing. Would you say your

business is still a startup or do you call yourself an established

business now? There is a very thin line. When I really felt we moved on

from the startup to doing strong business and getting people to take

us seriously was when we saw 100% growth in our revenue in one month

and actually met our targets happy the target -- targets. The target we

had 431 days was met in days. -- for 31 days. It was also when I still

had prophets left over after paying all my salaries and overheads. How

did you go about setting up a business with private jets and where

did you get the money from? I started the business with $100 in my

pocket to spend, completely on my own and took it from there. And a

few people who had faith in me and gave me business and agreed to be

customers initially because they had seen me perform in previous roles

which is what they -- what to did hurt me from raising money earlier

in the business which perhaps I should have -- deterred. I had to

look towards external funding eventually. I never actually went

out and looked for funding, it came to us. Business owners use us to fly

to five cities in one day which you cannot do on a commercial airline.

The second branch of users are largely inbound tourists and

domestic tourists who use these planes completely for leisure. If

people have money to spend, the economy is rising. The last bunch of

people are those using these planes not out of choice but because they

need to for things like medical emergencies, religious tourism and

so forth. From booking helicopters and private jets to food, chicken

chow mein and beef broccoli. In many places, food like this would be a

typical Chinese take away meal but in China, most people have never

heard of any of these Western favourites which, until now, have

not been served in local restaurants. One restaurant is

trying to change all of that. It is the first to serve American Chinese

food in Shanghai. The owners tell us their story. We are the predominant

proprietors of Fortune Cookie restaurant which is an American

-Chinese establishment in mainland China. A we were really homesick for

American Chinese food. -- we were. His father is a Masterchef in the

United States alone several different restaurants and he cooks

for us beef and broccoli, pork egg rolls, orange chicken and we thought

it was awesome. People told us they would kill for it. I never went to

America before so once I heard American-Chinese food, I wanted to

figure out what kind of food it was. The Chinese way for making this

would be spicy with a lot of pepper but this way it is kind of sweet. If

you are an ex pat, 99% of the time you were going to be happy. When you

are a younger local person, we have a 70% success rate and when it is

the much older generation, from China, unfortunately that success

rate is much lower. Western people would love to come here because it

is not totally Chinese. Lots of Chinese food, Western people cannot

accept. They don't have food like this, so it is very westernized

Chinese. It is perfect for them. It is very legitimate. Delicious! My

favourite is sweet-and-sour pork. Here is a quick look at the markets

and Asian Starks are lackluster in morning trade. -- stocks. Japan is

closed today because of a public holiday and that maybe one of the

factors contributing to the slow movement. ID for investing your time

with us. -- thank you. I'm Kasia Madera with

BBC World News. 16 people have been arrested in

anti-terror raids across Brussels,