By Malini Hariharan Eight years after agreeing to the Asean-China FTA (ACFTA) and a few days after its implementation the Indonesian government has succumbed to industry pressure to ask the Asean Council to renegotiate tariff reductions on 228 categories of goods across eight industrial sectors. In return, it has offered to accelerate implementation of tariff […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Cash Will Remain King in 2010
Still too crowded… Source of picture:www.tripadvisor.com By John Richardson Dear Readers – Welcome Back. Having spent the last two weeks lying on Western Australian beaches, drinking beer and reading books on European history – while also building sand castles etc with my three-year-old son – I have given little thought to chemicals. But […]
Concerned about the Asean FTA? There’s not much you can do about it.
The implementation of a zero-tariff regime in Asean from 1 Jauary 2010 has raised concerns among polymer producers in Indonesia and the Philippines about intense competition from Singapore and Thailand leading to a erosion in market shares. Producers from these two countries are lobbying to defer or block implementation of zero tariffs. But a trade […]
China Export Gains Raise Sustainability Fears
Source of picture: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23512037/ CHINA is making export gains at the expense of other higher-cost competitors that might not be sustainable because of reasons including rising trade protectionism and economic rebalancing. Chemical companies need to factor in this risk – and take into account how overall demand might merely be shifting location […]
Should Indonesia Add Capacity?
Source of picture: wartakota.co.id WESTERNERS can often by unbelievably patronising about Asia’s efforts to climb up the economic self-sufficiency ladder. “South Korea has no business being in petrochemicals,” said a very annoying US industry executive many years ago – one of those situations where your correspondent wanted to punch someone’s lights […]
Micro-management gone too far?
micro-management, human resources, APIC, commodity chemicals, CEOs, credit control, financial meltdown
How to make money in a downturn Part 1
John Cusack, Kate Beckinsale, antidumping petitions, trade protection, living in cloud cuckoo land
A drowning man will clutch onto anything
Peak Oil, Deutsche Bank, gas pricing, coal-o-chemicals, coal gasification, PetroRabigh, Saudi Aramco, Sumitomo Chemical
What’s it like to be a millionaire?
food poverty, Peak Oil, Asian Development Bank, World Bank, MMSA
I’ve got ten of these
Fischer Tropsch, BASF, Dow Chemical, The Hay Group, renumeration
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