Mr. Suan Yong Foo joined AMRO as a Senior Economist in December 2019, following a two-year secondment from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). He has served as AMRO’s desk economist for China since early 2021, and previously covered Hong Kong, China.
Between 2003 and 2017, Mr. Foo rotated across financial supervision, macro surveillance and international functions at MAS. His roles included Deputy Director of Regional Development (2014 – 2017); Lead Economist for Macro Surveillance (2012 – 2014), and Secretariat Officer (2009 – 2010).
At MAS, he was part of the workgroup for Singapore’s IMF Financial Sector Assessment Program in 2013. Furthermore, he co-led international analyses of changes to the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation and served as lead negotiator for financial services in Singapore’s free trade agreements with Sri Lanka (2016 to 2017) and Turkey (2014 to 2015).
Mr. Foo has co-authored several publications. He anchored the thematic chapters of AMRO’s ASEAN+3 Regional Economic Outlook (AREO) report from 2018 to 2020, focusing on growth sustainability, strengthening resilience, and deepening regional integration. He also contributed to various China-focused research papers and worked on the inaugural Asian Financial Development Report on Infrastructure Finance (2019), which was presented at the Boao Forum for Asia.
Mr. Foo received his Honours Degree in Social Sciences (Economics) from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2003, having completed the course on the MAS Undergraduate Scholarship.
He was also an NUS Scholar between 1999 and 2003, and a Singapore Public Service Commission (PSC) Humanities Scholar between 1995 and 1996 while at Raffles Junior College (RJC). He received his Special Testimonial from Raffles Institution (RI) in 1994.