By John Richardson IF you are convinced of the accuracy of Indian government air-quality readings, then air pollution in Delhi is nowhere near as bad as that in Beijing – despite a New York Times report to the contrary. Government measurements, published in response to the NYT article, show that the concentration of harmful particulates […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China’s About Turn: The Seven Global Implications
By John Richardson HISTORIANS will end up concluding that falling emerging market currencies and stock markets – the prelude to what could be a full-blown crisis – is really about China and not about the US Federal Reserve. The Fed is just a sideshow to the main event of what is going to drive not […]
“Fragile Five” Now “The Exposed Eight”
By John Richardson IT used to be just the “Fragile Five” – Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Turkey. But last week, the Financial Times, drawing on data and analysis from Schroders, added three more countries to the list of those most-exposed to Fed tapering: Hungary, Poland and Chile. Thus we needed a new handy […]
India Risks Squandering Demographic Dividend
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. […]
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 […]
ExxonMobil Highlights US Growth Challenge
By John Richardson WHEN somebody very senior in the petrochemicals industry makes a bold statement – one that pulls no punches – it is worth taking note. And so it is worth reading in full what Stephen Pryor, ExxonMobil Chemical president, said at the opening ceremony for ExxonMobil’s latest Singapore petchems complex on 8 January. […]
China Slows Down
By John Richardson CHINA’S economy appears to have slowed down. Evidence of the lost momentum was provided by manufacturing purchasing manufacturers’ indexes (PMIs) released last week and the release on Monday of service sector PMIs, which all showed lower growth in December. The HSBC service sector PMI was at its lowest level since August 2011. […]
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 […]
China’s Overshadowing Economic Importance
By John Richardson AS we head into this weekend’s crucial November plenum , it is worth remembering that there is no chemicals and polymers market to compare with China’s in volume terms anywhere else in Asia. Take polyproplyene (PP) as just one example. Industry estimates are that China’s consumption totalled around 16m tonnes in 2012. Its […]
No Ethylene Margins Peak In 2016
By John Richardson FORECASTS of European capacity closures and project delays and cancellations have led some financial analysts to the conclusion that there will be a peak in ethylene margins from 2016 onwards. This will provide a few years of very strong returns for the global industry before the big wave of US capacity […]
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