Singapore

SPECULATION was rife about how Country Garden's vast Forest City project on a man-made island in the Johor Straits near Tanjung Pelepas will proceed after the Malaysian government gave the go-ahead for the Chinese developer to build - but with conditions attached.

But while Country Garden will not be launching the Forest City project anytime soon, it is accelerating its pace elsewhere, said Liu Zhenyu, Country Garden's group deputy general manager of marketing centre and general manager of overseas strategy. The Hong Kong-listed developer is gunning for its first residential project in Indonesia this year. It is exploring some land sites in Jakarta where "the market is flourishing, unlike Singapore".