Sunday, December 3 2023 | ASIA TODAY INTERNATIONAL - Reporting the Business that Matters in Asia
IN its broadest definition/vision, China’s Silk Road project could include 65 countries, involving 4.4 billion people and about 60 per cent of world GDP, says economist Stephen Jen. China has already signed Belt-and-Road MoUs with about 30 countries . . .
ONLY 14 per cent of bank lending today goes to business to enable it to invest, and the businesses that suffer most are small businesses. “The world has changed,” says Efic’s Managing Director, Andrew Hunter . . .
GOVERNMENT pledges to undertake structural reforms, such as liberalising foreign investment and land use, will help catalyse the effects of higher Government spending . . .
MANY ECONOMISTS - agree that Beijing will show “forbearance” toward China’s distressed corporate borrowers, but the same people also agree that Beijing will not be able to forestall a collapse of confidence should an unforeseen “black swan” event occur. For China, the “black swan” could come in the form of a fraud in peer-to-peer (P2P) lending or in China’s online payment systems, such as Alipay. A new scandal would almost certainly lead to destruction of consumer confidence, they say . . .
AUSTRALIA and Singapore are working towards a Closer Strategic Partnership (CSP) modelled on Australia’s Closer Economic Relations (CER) agreement with New Zealand . . .
HE WOULD be the last person to suggest it, but Benjamin Chau probably knows more than most about the intricacies of nurturing business-to-
business and business-to-consumer relationships in Asia. For 20 years he has headed the team now crafting 35 trade fairs, including 11 of Asia’s largest, five of which are the world’s largest, for the Hong Kong Trade
Development Council.
Here, Chau explains how he entices buyers and sellers to ‘dance’
together, and how he creates new concepts to increase visitor numbers. Last year he hosted 37,000 exhibitors and 760,000 buyers from 86
countries and regions, while driving 24 million inquiries through the
HKTDC’s dedicated website . . .
AN ECONOMIC crunch has seen
retail rents drop by as much as half in Hong Kong, creating new opportunities for SMEs to establish a physical foothold in a city importing huge quantities of food and beverages for its tourism and hospitality sector . . .
CHINA’s reforms have done more to liberalise economic activity —
creating markets and freedom to compete -— than to impose disciplines and hard budget constraints on borrowers, warns the IMF’s David
Lipton . . .
THE TERM ‘covenant-lite’ has cropped into the lexicon of financing in Europe, where it is seen as a manifestation of competition among non-bank lenders. They are filling the void left by banks . . .
THE Great Recession of 2008-2009 marked a turning point for trade. Restrictive trade measures introduced by G20 countries between October 2008 and October 2015 covered 4.8 per cent of world merchandise exports, valued at $851.8 billion . . .
BUSINESS LEADERS have entered their first direct dialogue with the World Trade Organisation to
hammer out an agenda of contemporary challenges needing WTO action. Disruptive technologies,
E-commerce, freer people movement and finance for SMEs are on the list . . .
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY has become more
central to the economies of developing countries as creative industries emerge in increasing numbers. They sell access, which is copyright, and regulators are struggling to define how the digital value chain
works . . .
ASIA is still plagued with excess capacity, especially in China, and a
V-shaped recovery is unlikely any time soon, despite a glimmer of hope in the latest Singapore figures. Consumers are not opening their wallets . . .
FOR most of the countries of Asia, growth in their trade with Europe has provided a most welcome source of diversification away from China. That trade may now be threatened, along with investment flows . . .
Florence Chong
Editor, ATI Magazine
LONG-TERM planning has allowed GHD to build itself into one of the world’s largest private companies and the largest private Australian company servicing the engineering, architecture and environmental
consulting sectors. Reflecting on his eight years as Chief Executive, Ian Shepherd, who is retiring after three decades with the firm, explores GHD’s extraordinary growth in recent years . . .
THE combined forces of the emergence of the Asian middle class and ageing have converged to give some companies a huge lift in export sales, primarily to China, says Peter Osborne, Managing Director, Asia, of the Australian nutraceuticals company Blackmores. The challenge is to diversify into other markets to provide sustainable future growth . . .