By Malini Hariharan After years of making money in basic petrochemicals the Middle East focus has firmly shifted to downstream chemicals, a topic that is being discussed in great detail at this year’s GPCA forum being held in Dubai on 13-15 December. As highlighted by the blog in previous posts a combination of factors including […]
Asian Chemical Connections
The Murkiest Of Outlooks
By John Richardson LACK OF visibility over what the New Year will bring for the global chemicals industry is a key feature of just about every conversation held with industry executives at the moment. Perfect forecasting is, of course, always impossible, but with the Eurozone in deep crisis and even China potentially facing its own bad-debt crisis, […]
China And The WTO Ten Years On
By John Richardson TEN years ago this weekend China officially joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and so no doubt numerous speeches have been given about all the benefits to the global economy. Here is a somewhat more negative perspective: *As the diagram above seeks to illustrate, China hugely built-up its manufacturing industry to take advantage of Western […]
The Planning Process Gets Harder
By John Richardson EARLIER this week we talked about the possibility that China might devalue the Yuan rather than allow it to further appreciate. We have since been told by a senior chemicals industry source that this is exactly what the Chinese government is evaluating in case the worst of possible outcomes occurs – the […]
Relief Rallies Will Not Be Sustained
By John Richardson FURTHER relief rallies in petrochemical markets that occur over the next few weeks and months will not change the overall direction. Buyers will inevitably run short of stocks down all the value chains and we thus will see some more brief flurries of price rises. Another driver of inventory rebuilding will be recoveries […]
Yuan Devaluation Needs To Be Considered
By John Richardson The “beggar my neighbour” trade wars that many economists feared would erupt after the global financial crisis were delayed thanks to fiscal stimulus. But now politicians will be under increasing pressure to erect trade barriers. “We are seeing a rise in antidumping cases involving chemicals,” a trade lawyer who specialises in the […]
India Needs A New Political Direction
Manmohan Singh compromises to the point where “policy has no direction” Source of picture: Wikipedia By John Richardson IN A week during which the Eurozone could quite easily break-up, the influence that individual political leaders will have on shaping our economic future has been thrown in to further stark relief. And in some countries it […]
Innovating Down The Value Chain
By John Richardson THE lack of depth and thought behind “analysis” of the economic challenges facing developing economies has worried the blog for some time. It is undoubtedly the case that as hundreds of millions more people in countries such as India and China emerge from poverty, the opportunities for the chemicals industry are enormous. […]
China’s Leaders Are Boxed In
By John Richardson IT seems inevitable that petrochemical markets will respond positively to the Chinese government’s decision to reduce bank-reserve requirements by 50 basis points. There will quite likely be a relief rally in the Dalian Commodity Exchange’s futures contract in linear-low density polyethylene (LLDPE) and a recovery in physical prices. But lost demand is […]
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