Saturday, April 20 2024 | ASIA TODAY INTERNATIONAL - Reporting the Business that Matters in Asia
THE military has successfully unravelled Thaksin’s support base, but in doing so has destroyed Thailand’s pro-democracy movement, says political analyst, Pavan Chachavalpong . . .
THE THIRD ARROW of Abenomics means moving ahead with reforms to generate future demand, says noted economist Robert Feldman. The other two arrows involve stimulus and monetary policy, and they have led to Japanese companies making more money today than they did in the ‘bubble’ years of the 1980s . . .
WASHINGTON — The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) is an international financial institution which offers political risk insurance and credit enhancement guarantees to help investors protect foreign direct investments against political and non-commercial risks in developing countries. MIGA is a member of the World Bank Group and is headquartered in Washington. It was established in 1988 as an investment insurance facility to encourage confident investment in developing countries.
Here, Petal Jean Hackett, an Economist in the Economics and Sustainability Group of MIGA, responds to a series of questions from ATI on current investor sentiment. She says recent surveys suggest that macro-economic conditions and political risk are today the major concerns of investors, outstripping such issues as market risk and access to finance. Investors polled in a MIGA-EIU Investor Survey, she says, identify a number of risk mitigation techniques,
including investing gradually to develop familiarity with the local environment, forming joint ventures, and engaging with host country governments . . .
CHINA has given priority to innovation and is on a journey from Made in China to Create in China, says Francis Gurry, Director-General of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). Creative output, he says, is a key as educators prepare people for jobs five years into the future which cannot even be defined today . . .
REALITY bites. Singapore is running out of land, population growth is continuing. The nearby option – for both workers and retirees – is Malaysia’s emerging Iskandar development, just across the Straits of Johor, where lower housing and schooling fees beckon . . .
ATI Magazine August/September 2014 issue
THE Bank Payment Obligation (BPO) is likely to revolutionise the way trade finance is conducted, with exponential growth in BPO transactions likely as more global and regional banks adopt the product . . .
WITH India’s new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, killing off a new trade deal reached in Bali in December, a group of nations may push ahead on their own in what would see further fragmentation of the multilateral trade system . . .
THE G20 meeting in Brisbane in November will be presented with a set of 20 mutually-reinforcing recommendations for action drawn up by 400 global business leaders and policymakers who want to see structural reforms to remove impediments to growth . . .
LOW growth, higher unemployment, growing inequity and serious erosion of trust are part of the legacy of the global financial crisis, says OECD Secretary General, Angel Gurria . . .
SIMPLY producing more food without meeting minimal quality and safety requirements would undermine China’s response to the global food and nutrition security challenge, says the World Bank . . .
ATI Magazine June-July 2014 issue
Robert Horn
ATI Correspondent
THE military seems to have learned from its previous mistakes – the well-being of business, including tourism, has been made a priority.
The most daunting challenge will be to manage the re-ordering of the political system to everyone’s satisfaction . . .
ATI Magazine April/May 2014 issue
ASIA is at the beginning of a 150-year cycle of wealth creation, led by China — the factory of the world which is now the factory of the world’s billionaires — according to Wealth X, a Singapore-based research firm dedicated to identifying and validating ultra high net worth (UHNW) individuals around the world . . .
ATI Magazine April/May 2014 issue
“THE West needs to move away from the concept that the evolution of China will spawn a system that looks like other Western democracies. There could well be another way which does not presently exist” . . .
ATI Magazine April/May 2014 issue
WITH the legal market globalising, China is not alone in fearing an inflow of foreign law firms, which have already snared most of the big deals being done in Singapore and Hong Kong, says Hunt & Hunt’s Jim Harrowell, one of Australia’s most experienced international lawyers. “I have some sympathy for them,” says Harrowell, but he is hopeful that Australian firms will be able to enter joint ventures and profit sharing with their Chinese counterparts by the end of this year . . .
ATI Magazine April/May 2014 issue
A Culture of Blame . . .
Too much compliance kills entrepreneurs
AUSTRALIA does not have an effective business judgement rule, says John Colvin, Chief Executive of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Over-regulation is starting to hinder competitiveness, he warns . . .
FORMER Presidents Megawati’s ambitions for her daughter are being blamed for an unexpected setback to the Presidential hopes of the popular Joko Widodo — as Islamic parties snare a total 39 per cent of the vote in legislative polling in Indonesia . .