ASEAN in Data.
ASEAN in Data / Research standards
Research standards

Every number has a context.

What the data measures, when it was observed, and how we show its limitations.

Remittances: received, paid and history

The expanded remittance pack is retrieved directly from the World Bank WDI API and archived with indicator metadata, the query URL, retrieval date and source checksum. Separate series cover receipts as a share of GDP, receipts in current US dollars and payments in current US dollars. Values are never derived from a different indicator. Latest-recent comparisons exclude historical-only series using a documented freshness window; exact-year comparison and annual history preserve older observations and nulls. Dollar charts convert to billions without changing the downloadable source units.

Remittance definitions and coverage →

External balance

Current-account balances, reserve buffers and IDS external debt are distinct from fiscal public debt. External debt uses GNI; IDS gaps for Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore remain missing. Myanmar’s 2019 observations and Singapore, Brunei and Timor-Leste structural caveats remain visible.

External definitions, vintages and reporting coverage →

Credit & banking

Credit/GDP, access points per 100,000 adults and NPLs are separate measures. Laos’s 2010 credit and broad money observations are critically stale and excluded from current rankings; NPL gaps are never zero-filled. Mixed years remain visible. Physical access does not establish financial inclusion.

Credit definitions, vintages and coverage →

Tax revenue

WDI tax and revenue excluding grants stay separate from IMF general-government revenue. Composition shares are not statutory tax rates. Missing WDI observations are not filled from IMF; Myanmar retains its 2019 caveat. Timor-Leste’s Petroleum Fund precludes its inclusion in ASEAN-10 means; no regional means are calculated here.

Tax coverage, institutions and definitions →

Scale & growth

IMF WEO April 2026 figures are projections. Nominal US$ and PPP international dollars use separate axes. Myanmar’s inflation carries a conflict/data-quality caveat; no ASEAN average is calculated. The as_of date is the documented pack snapshot.

Scale definitions, projections and country context →

Living costs & wages

Earnings retain mixed survey years and distinguish PPP from market USD and means from medians. PH minimum wages use the lowest provincial non-agricultural rate, not a national average floor. PLI is separate from wages; housing price-to-income is unseeded for all SEA-11.

Wage definitions, price levels and housing coverage →

Gender gaps

Participation uses WDI modelled ILO 2025; the male–female gap is in percentage points. UNDP GII 2023 and WEF GGG 2025 have different constructs and opposite directions and are never combined. Myanmar WEF observations are missing; parliamentary and enrolment vintages stay visible.

Gender definitions, institutions and coverage →

Climate & disaster

ND-GAIN 2024, INFORM dimensions 2025 and EM-DAT Natural disasters 2015–2024 are separate frameworks. Affected counts sum events, not unique residents; reported adjusted damage under-counts losses. Brunei and Singapore have verified zero Natural events in the window, not zero climate risk.

Climate definitions, vintages and reporting boundaries →

Inflation & policy rates

Consumer inflation and policy rates across the SEA-11. Definitions, revisions & gaps →

Services trade & ICT exports

Services export scale, ICT and travel shares, and services trade openness across the SEA-11. Definitions, revisions & gaps →

FDI by sector & source

FDI by sector and source amounts for ASEAN, companion to the source-map topic. Definitions, revisions & gaps →

Agriculture & food

Modelled ILO employment, national-accounts value added and FAO cereal yields retain their years. Dietary-energy PoU and experience-based FIES use separate panels; missing values remain gaps. Definitions & coverage →

Investment climate

Heritage and Fraser remain separate instruments; OECD measures statutory restrictions, while Enterprise Surveys report firm experience. Wave years and intentional gaps remain visible. Definitions & coverage →

E-government & civic tech

UN DESA 2024 EGDI is a relative composite, not a maturity percentage. UN HCI differs from World Bank HCI; EPI does not measure offline civic space. Definitions & coverage →

Social protection

ILO effective coverage and ASPIRE household-survey reach are separate measures. Adequacy is a share of beneficiary welfare. Philippine ASPIRE observations retain †2018; Brunei and Singapore remain gaps. Definitions, vintages & coverage →

Source · year · as_of

Source identifies the dataset or provider. Year identifies the observation period. as_of records the extraction date where supplied. For manufacturing, it is explicitly the Asia Knowledge library snapshot (6 September 2026), because the CSV omits extraction dates. Fiscal debt attribution to IMF WEO, 2026 projection status and as_of 2026-09-06 are documented by the supplied fiscal-interest writer note and debt context rows. The original debt CSV is unchanged. Interest badges retain the WDI series vintage 2026-07-13 supplied in the pack, not the later library date.

What is—and isn’t—verified here

The values come from the user-supplied verified research packs, copied without modification. Except for explicitly documented direct-source refreshes such as the expanded remittance pack, this website does not claim to have independently revalidated supplied packs against upstream releases. The original fiscal CSV lacks inline provenance; the greenlit interest pack supplies the debt attribution and projection context. Manufacturing source labels name WDI; the linked WDI indicator page provides the definition, not a confirmed extraction record.

Interest: coverage and vintage

The homepage uses the same-year 2024 Philippines–Malaysia pair for interest payments as a share of revenue (World Bank WDI / IMF GFS GC.XPN.INTP.RV.ZS). The full chart retains all supplied revenue observations.

Singapore* has an asset/CPF-linked fiscal structure; Timor-Leste’s Petroleum Fund limits comparability. No missing revenue value is filled from a different indicator. Revenue burden does not establish higher borrowing rates. Do not divide interest observations by projected debt across different vintages.

Full revenue chart → · Original coverage notes

FDI source → recipient flows

The FDI topic separates BoP flows from national-board registrations, approvals and applications. EU aggregates, mainland China and Hong Kong retain their supplied labels. Intra-ASEAN categories may include named source countries, so the rows are not additive. Source access limits and the published intra-ASEAN revision conflict remain explicit.

FDI definitions, coverage and revision notes →

Governance, press freedom & risk

WGI institutional estimates, RSF press freedom and INFORM multi-hazard risk are separate frameworks. No combined governance-risk score is calculated. The supplied scoreboard lacks source/as_of columns; source definitions come from its README and brief, and dates are labelled as pack snapshots. WGI zero is a reference point, not a missing observation.

Governance scoreboard methods →

Tourism arrivals, not receipts

The tourism recovery chart uses the supplied visitor arrivals scoreboard. Timor-Leste is a coverage gap in that source publication. Regional pre-pandemic context comes from the supplied brief and gaps note; it is not a country time series. Receipts remain unseeded because the checked sources were stale or incomplete.

Tourism methods & gaps →

Poverty & inequality

National poverty lines are country-specific and remain separate from PPP panels. International estimates have mixed survey years and welfare types; the Philippines uses the supplied FIES income series, never a substituted consumption estimate. Singapore’s SingStat Gini is flagged separately. Empty poverty and Gini cells are not zero.

Poverty definitions, vintages and coverage →

Health outcomes

Health panels retain separate definitions and observation years. Physician density has mixed vintages, with stale observations marked †. Singapore is a regional ceiling outside the PH / MY / TH / VN / ID peer five. Philippine longevity, child mortality and immunisation claims do not extend to maternal mortality or UHC, where Indonesia has the less favourable peer observations.

Health methods, vintages and sources →

Logistics & infrastructure

LPI edition years differ from WDI storage dates. Older observations remain labelled; components are distinct from overall scores. Container transshipment inflates hub volumes relative to domestic demand. Missing LPI, freight and discontinued paved-road series are not filled. Singapore is regional context outside the peer five.

Logistics methods & gaps →

Digital landscape

Access, speed and financial inclusion use separate panels. Ookla is locked to September 2025 via World Bank IEP, without live 2026 observations. Older internet and Findex years remain labelled. Brunei and Timor-Leste Findex and Myanmar mobile speed remain gaps. Multi-SIM subscriptions do not count unique users.

Digital methods & gaps →

Trade dependence

Country shares use WITS 2023 merchandise trade. EU-27 sums members present, with incomplete coverage retained. Timor-Leste WITS exports include re-exports; domestic-export denominators are not substituted. ASEANstats regional figures are a separate source family.

Trade definitions, denominators & gaps →

Education & human capital

Schooling stock, literacy and PISA learning scores remain separate measures. PISA gaps for Laos, Myanmar and Timor-Leste stay empty. HCI is explicitly the 2020 vintage; literacy and enrolment retain country years. Singapore is regional context outside the peer five.

Education definitions, vintages & gaps →

Labour & youth

Labour charts use modelled ILO/WDI 2025 estimates without mixing national official figures. Youth unemployment uses the labour force aged 15–24 as its denominator. Cambodia’s low estimate carries an informality and survey-capture caveat. Informal employment is missing for all SEA-11 and is not plotted.

Labour definitions, methodology & gaps →

Demographics & urbanisation

WDI/UN demographic panels retain 2025 population, growth, urban and dependency observations and 2024 fertility. Thailand’s negative growth stays signed. Singapore’s urban share is definitional. Median age is missing across SEA-11; dependency is a distinct age-structure measure.

Demographic definitions, vintages & gaps →

Energy & commodities

WDI access, net imports and fossil electricity keep their own observation years. EI power-mix shares cover only Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. Singapore’s import ratio reflects entrepôt activity; renewable consumption can include traditional biomass. USGS nickel retains a common scale, and missing EI hydro observations remain gaps.

Energy definitions, vintages & coverage →

Definitions

Government gross debt is shown as a percentage of GDP, using the fiscal scoreboard’s debt field; the precise institutional coverage requires upstream documentation. Fiscal balance is also a percentage of GDP: negative values denote deficits. Growth and inflation use the pack’s 2026 percentage fields; nominal GDP is in US$ billion.

Remittances use World Bank indicator BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS, personal remittances received as a share of GDP. Manufacturing uses the matrix’s manufacturing value added share of GDP (WDI definition reference NV.IND.MANF.ZS). Value added is not gross exports; electronics definitions in the matrix vary by country.

Missing means missing

Blank CSV cells become null, displayed as an em dash. They are never replaced by zero or interpolated. Remittances retain their mixed years, including the older Myanmar observation. Country profiles show missing manufacturing observations where the selected peer matrix has no row.

Compare with care

SEA-11 is this site’s geographic scope: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Timor-Leste. It is not a historical membership classification. Philippine peer framing uses Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. Country profiles highlight the viewed country in terracotta, with regional peers in blue. Homepage and topic charts default to highlighting the Philippines. Blue is also used for links.

Singapore’s gross debt needs its investment and CPF-linked issuance context. Timor-Leste’s fiscal balance needs its Petroleum Fund context. Myanmar carries conflict and data-quality caveats. Rankings do not establish debt sustainability or investment attractiveness.

National flags

Flags are national emblems, self-hosted on this site. Wikimedia Commons file pages and individual usage information are recorded in the flag source manifest.

Wikimedia Commons flag file pages

Reproducibility & licensing

Charts use the supplied CSV values. Bar baselines are zero, scales adapt to the displayed set, and values are rounded for readability. Downloads preserve full original precision. Pack checksums are available in the data catalog. No illustrative design-canvas values are used.

Original ASEAN in Data material is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). Source datasets and third-party assets retain their own terms; this license does not relicense the research packs. See our license and terms of use for attribution, ShareAlike and source-rights guidance.

Inspect the data packs →