Vietnam safer for business, Indonesia most dangerous: PERC

Tan Ee Lyn, Reuters, Hong Kong

Business executives are increasingly uneasy about security risks in Asia-Pacific countries which they previously considered safe, with Vietnam now considered a safer place than anywhere else in the region, including the United States.

The survey by the Political & Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) found confidence in Australia, Japan and Singapore had fallen sharply since the Sept. 11 air attacks on the United States.

Ninety executives from the tourism and hotel industries were polled in the survey, which was conducted last week, PERC said on Wednesday.

Australia, which had been ranked the safest location in PERC's last survey before the attacks, fell to third place while Japan slipped from second to fifth spot.

Singapore, which has been seen as the fourth safest place in the region, fell to the second last spot in the survey, just above neighboring Indonesia, which has been racked by anti-U.S. protests since American forces began attacking Afghanistan.

The U.S. fell from third to eighth.

Hong Kong was considered the second safest place in the region, up from fifth in the previous survey.

"Interestingly, the biggest deterioration is not in countries that had poor scores prior to Sept. 11, but in countries where scores were particularly good before - places like Australia, the U.S., Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan," PERC said.

"The sense of security that was evident before the terrorists struck New York and Washington in these relatively prosperous economies has vaporized," it added.

"In the case of Singapore, the marked worsening of perceptions probably reflects much greater awareness of the island's vulnerability to social disruption in neighboring Malaysia and Indonesia," PERC said.

Vietnam stood out as the country believed to have the least risk of unrest as it is not really exposed to social problems of its neighbors.

Post-Sept 11 Pre-Sept 11

Vietnam 4 4.5 Hong Kong 4.44 2.83 Australia 4.67 1 Taiwan 4.8 3 India 5 6 Japan 5 1.5 Thailand 5 4.5 China 5.33 5.25 South Korea 5.5 4 U.S. 6 1.92 Malaysia 6.8 5 Philippines 7 6.5 Singapore 7.5 2.17 Indonesia 8.5 8.5

The worst possible grade is 10, which indicates places where respondents feel most threatened by risks of social unrest