GlobalEDGE Blog: High-speed Silk Road by Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) Since the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was founded in 2014, there have been many discussions around this multilateral development bank concerning its purposes and functions. Despite the skepticism, AIIB, once launched, will accelerate Asia’s infrastructure development and international trade. This blog will briefly explain the impacts of the high-speed Silk Road, one of such projects that AIIB has announced recently. The Silk Road aims to eliminate the connectivity bottleneck in Asia and it will connect 17 countries in central and southeast Asia with a high-speed rail network. A flow of efficient trade across the world’s largest continent is truly needed in the global economy.
First, the high-speed rail network will deliver fast and efficient transportation so goods can be exchanged frequently. China is said to be the biggest beneficiary of the Silk Road project. ICBC - In Photos: The 25 Largest Companies In The World 2015. Infographic: Panama Expansion Summary. An infographic released by the Panama Canal Authority provides a useful summary for explaining the canal’s expansion plans, with a map of how the finished route is intended to look when it is completed in 2016. In a previous article by PTI, an infographic was shown of how a Panama Canal transit would work from the start of the Gatun Locks to through to the Pacific Ocean. In the summary infographic, a bigger picture is painted of the canal’s expansion, with colour coded numbers that detail construction points at various points of the waterway.
The new locks will have more efficient rolling gates in comparison to the old locks, which will help to facilitate maintenance and ship movements. A Panama Canal gate-change Another key feature of the new locks is the water re-utilisation basins that have been built to reduce water usage by around 60%. The proposed re-expansion would see a fourth set of locks created at an anticipated US$17 billion, with sources of funding currently unknown.
Maersk expects Egyptian action on Suez project. In a bid to enhance the Suez Canal Container Terminal’s (SCCT) capacity to facilitate mega-ships, Maersk has called on the Egyptian government to adhere to its previous commitment to finance and execute deepening works at the Suez Canal’s main entrance to the SCCT. SCCT needs public infrastructure enhancements to expand, however, the Egyptian government is no longer enthusiastic to proceed. According to Maersk, the enhanced infrastructure is required in order to maximise use of the terminal’s current capacity, but also to expand its capacity to receive larger container vessels. The original agreement between SCCT and the Egyptian government in 1998 stated that the latter would invest and execute any deepening needed for the SCCT by 2004, according to Ahram Online.
With the investment, the terminal would be able to handle 1,000-1,500 more containers than its current capacity. Koch-Soelyst said: “Right now, we are discussing this issue with the Egyptian authorities. Can the World Bank’s Doing Business Be Rescued? In an interesting post about the World Bank, Nancy Birdsall of the Center for Global Development expresses two concerns about the future of the organization. First, she fears the effects of the seemingly endless process of internal restructuring – covered here, for example. Second, she fears that the World Bank may lose its ability to be an effective supplier of ‘global public goods’ in the 21st century. One does not have to agree with her framing of the issue to see that one of the least controversial, most cost-efficient, and public goods-like functions of the World Bank is to produce internationally comparable data that can serve both as input into research and into policy discussions.
The Doing Business project is a case in point, as my colleague Marian L. Tupy and I wrote last year: In publication since 2003, Doing Business was inspired by academic research into the importance of sound legal environments for economic growth. Emerging Asia to see healthy medium-term growth but institutional reforms will be critical for future, says the OECD Development Centre. Observatorio Virtual del Asia Pacífico » Blog Archive » Dos caras de la ineficiencia de Apec. Last week I spoke with an official Forum of Asia-Pacific economic cooperation about when it was expected that Colombia, country that is observant, to link to the club of economies totaling 54 percent of world GDP and more than 40% of the trade.
His answer gave to understand that it would not be in the short term. "We have 21 countries. We need more efficiency. If we have more members it is harder to find consensus. "There was a moratorium on the admission of new members who won in 2010, and although it would make sense that a country like Colombia to enter the group, this would affect that would reach the benefits of having a group of this kind, by difficulties in decision-making". The Apec bloc also has the dilemma of meeting interests so various and divergent as those existing between the members of the G20, or perhaps more, as many Apec countries have the aggravation of being neighbors with territorial disputes. But there is an easy or obvious solution to this situation. Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor. Consumerisation-of-the-Container-Industry-Feature-final.pdf.
FidelityVoice: Automation Is On The Rise: Will Robots Soon Be Commonplace? If you call room service at the Starwood Hotel in Palo Alto, California, a robot butler may arrive to bring you a fresh towel. At the Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville, nurses rely on a robotic system to prepare IV solutions and shots for patients. How about a robot who keeps your kids company while they go to sleep? Reminiscent of the Jetsons, a new family robot named Jibo promises to do just that. Even the AP news service is going robotic. It plans to publish thousands of earnings articles this year, produced entirely by an automated service.
These are just a few examples of how declining costs and technological advances are bringing robotics and automation technology to smaller businesses, local shops, and perhaps most captivatingly, our homes. “I think autonomous robots are going to be very common in households in the next 20 years,” says Gavin Baker, manager of Fidelity® OTC Fund. Innovations creating flexibility Potential investment opportunities Learn more. The World Is Still Not Flat. Globalization marches on. But the pace isn’t all that fast, and the overall level of global connectedness still hasn’t gotten back to its all-time peak of 2007. The overwhelming majority of commerce, investment, and other interactions still occur within — not between — nations. That’s the message from the just-released DHL Global Connectedness Index 2014, which combines measures of trade, capital, people, and information flows to give a picture of how entwined we citizens of the world are with each other.
Here’s the headline chart, with the subindexes for “depth” (the volume of flows) and breadth (how widely distributed the flows are among different countries): The index is compiled by Pankaj Ghemawat, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and the IESE Business School in Barcelona, and Steven Altman, a lecturer at IESE. The financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent global recession demonstrated that fragility, as trade flows shrank dramatically. A New Force in International Development: Why did China propose to establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank? | IGEL @ Wharton. By HU Tao, LU Xuege, ZHU Li In November this year, China will likely launch the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) when leaders in the Asia Pacific region meet at this year’s APEC summit in Beijing.
Chinese President Xi Jinping first unveiled the AIIB plan during his visit to Indonesia in October last year. Since then, China has held five rounds of consultations with countries in the region and successfully recruited 21 founding members. Mr. Jin Liqun, the Former Finance Minister of China and Vice President of ADB, is to be appointed as first President of AIIB, according to the proposal of Chinese Government. With AIIB, China, now almost the worlds’ largest economy by purchasing power, aims to “promote interconnectivity and economic integration in the region”. It is also seen by some as an effort by China to harness its vast financial resources and infrastructural expertise to expand its regional influence. Why? There are many reasons of course. Other considerations? Why Asia? The Battle for Automotive Brand Loyalty in China. For the better part of two decades, China has been the global automobile industry’s greatest growth market.
Since 2000, sales of passenger and light commercial vehicles have increased about tenfold—to more than 20 million units a year—surpassing sales even in the U.S. and representing compound annual growth of about 20 percent. Now that this golden era of super-fast growth is winding down, the vast Chinese car market is entering a new pivotal stage. Instead of only racing to win over first-time buyers, domestic and foreign automakers alike must secure the loyalty of existing customers. Based on research by The Boston Consulting Group’s Center for Consumer and Customer Insight in China, at least three-quarters of Chinese car owners—representing a massive installed base of more than 90 million vehicles—are planning to switch brands when they purchase their next vehicle.
We call this impending shift the “great brand migration.” The reasons for this customer disloyalty vary.