Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, whether he plans to allocate more departmental resources to South East Asia in order to increase trading opportunities in that region.

We are looking at doing more to support UK businesses in high growth markets, including regular government-to-government dialogues in trade and investment and supporting trade reviews to identify key market access barriers in parts of Southeast Asia.

In February DIT established the first UK Export Finance post in Indonesia to improve access for UK businesses to trade finance. More recently we have appointed a new commercial cyber envoy in Singapore, and three new trade policy posts in Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia, jointly funded by DIT and FCO.

We have recently appointed Natalie Black as HM Trade Commissioner to Asia Pacific. Natalie will be based in Singapore and will be personally responsible for delivering our regional trade plan and overseeing this work in Southeast Asia.