By John Richardson INDIA is at risk of squandering its demographic dividend, warned investment bank Espirito Santo when it wrote in a September 2013 note: If India continues its current path it will face a catastrophic shortage of jobs, creating a young and angry population, and with it conditions for social unrest and economic disaster. […]
Asian Chemical Connections
India Gas Price Breakthrough
By John Richardson DEMOGRAPHICS can drive chemicals demand in the right direction, provided the correct government policies are in place. India’s demographics are much better than China’s, as this data from the CIA Factbook indicate. For instance, as of 2013 India’s median age was 26.7 years compared with 36.3 years in China. India’s birth rate […]
China and India: When Over-Investment Is A Good Thing
By John Richardson WHEN is over-investment a good thing? This was another question the blog was left pondering after a good conversation with a Beijing-based training delegate during ICIS Training’s recent China Seminar in Bangkok. She made the point that China builds roads, bridges and railways, which ends up “seeding” or developing demand in less-developed […]
Thailand: Build A Contingency Plan
Source: Petroleum Institute of Thailand By John Richardson IT can be argued that Thailand is in a better state than fellow ASEAN members Indonesia and Malaysia. Government spending in Thailand relative to GDP is said to be lower than in both Indonesia and Malaysia. Compared with Malaysia, Thailand also has a larger working-age population, […]
Malaysia: Taking The Long View
Source: Malaysia Petrochemicals Association By John Richardson THE problems in Malaysia have been evident for a long time. But thanks to the irresponsible and failed actions of the US Fed, the flow of funds into the Southeast country had led to a papering-over of the cracks in its economic growth model. The same, as […]
Indonesia: Sweat It Out!
Jakarta at night (source of picture: Wikimedia) By John Richardson THE blog first visited Indonesia in October 1997, shortly after the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis, and was amazed to think that only a few months earlier, the media was talking of the inevitable rise of Indonesia’s middle class, which was said to […]
New Business Mindset Needed
By John Richardson THE global chemicals industry became used to healthy and steady rates of demand growth during the “Great Moderation” in the West, before the 2008 crisis. As fellow blogger Paul Hodges wrote in January of this year: “Executives could usefully spend time debating whether ethylene growth rates might be 4.2%, or perhaps 4.5%, […]
India’s “Booming” Middle Class
In the second of our series of posts on Asian demographics, we look at India. Yesterday, we summarised the overall challenges. By John Richardson INDIA is the home of a booming middle class that voraciously consumes I-Phones, I-Pads, BMWs, foreign travel etc – all the trappings of a Western lifestyle. All that the chemicals industry […]
Asia Top Ten Chem Companies
By John Richardson SINOPEC’s remarkable rise in the petrochemicals business continued in 2011 as it jumped two places in the ICIS Top 100 ranking, compared with 2010, to finish second overall, behind BASF. This was the result of a 28.9% rise in chemicals sales in local currency and a 34.9% increase when sales were measured […]
Reliance Goes Boldly
Source: ICIS By John Richardson Reliance Industries is going boldly (no split infinitives here) where nobody has gone before: It is to build a cracker, which could eventually produce 1.6m tonne/year of ethylene, based entirely on off-gas feedstock supplied by its 1.24m tonne/year of refinery capacity at Jamnagar, Gujarat, India. Nobody has attempted anything […]
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