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Asian Chemical Connections

How To Measure Modi’s Success

By John Richardson WINNING an election is one thing and governing is entirely different – as the hopeless Tony Abbott is discovering in Australia (more in a later blog post). We sincerely hope that Narendra Modi proves to be a great deal more competent than Abbott, who has confirmed our fears. Modi’s first budget, which […]

US Jobs Revival A Mirage

By John Richardson THE US is well and truly back economically was once again one of the themes at this year’s Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference (APIC) in Pattaya, Thailand. It was argued that shale gas has led to a manufacturing revival. Billions of dollars of investment in oil, gas, chemicals and fertilisers projects was cited […]

China Reconsiders Petchems Targets

By John Richardson CHINA has long set targets for petrochemicals self-sufficiency in each of its  five-year economic plans – and those targets have been pretty aggressive as the chart above, showing the recent rise in ethylene production, indicates. These have involved often-realised plans to raise independence from exports in a particular product to a specified […]

Xi Jinping Further Underlines China’s “New Normal”

CHINA’S president Xi Jinping, in a landmark speech at the weekend, talked about the “New Normal” of lower economic growth and a different type of growth altogether. He qualified this different type of growth as follows: “Through innovation and technological development, the country should push for the transformation from ‘Made in China’  to ‘Created in […]

China’s Evolving Autos Market: What It Means For PP

By John Richardson THE tide of credit that lifted all boats in China meant that chemicals company CEOs could get away with clichés such as “the rise of the middle classes” and “increasing urbanisation” and later point to strong sales figures as support for their arguments. But now the CEOs are going to have to […]

China Autos: The Race To The Bottom

  By John Richardson CHINA’S autos market is not behaving in the way that it did in 2008-2013, when, as the chart above further illustrates, demand growth was nothing short of staggering. In Q1 of this year, sales growth moderated to 10% – and we think it will go much lower. This 10% compares with […]

Modi’s Biggest Challenge: Tackling Poverty

  By John Richardson Narendra Modi, as we discussed last week, faces a big job in unlocking the stalled infrastructure investment that is holding back India’s economic growth. Optimists, however, point to his success as chief minister of Gujarat, which he might repeat at a nationwide level if, as expected, he becomes Prime Minister. They […]

China Yuan-Backed Export Flood Begins

By John Richardson CHINA exported 45,000 tonnes of purified terephthalic acid (PTA), which underlines how a weaker Yuan is being used as a way of compensating for weaker local demand up and down the polyester chain. The same applies to many other industrial chains. PTA imports also halved in the first quarter of this year […]

The “Why” Behind Sinopec’s Investment Freeze

By John Richardson SINOPEC has announced that it will halt some of its new petrochemicals investments. This could involve the postponement of up to three cracker projects with a combined ethylene capacity of 2.8m tonnes/year, according to this excellent story from my ICIS colleague, Fanny Zhang. The company confirmed that the 1m tonnes/year Qingdao Petrochemical […]

Poverty Alleviation Matters More Than GDP

By John Richardson RICH people, relatively speaking, don’t buy that many chemicals and polymers – hence, poverty reduction matters from a dollars and cents as well as a moral perspective. Thus, a report released this week by the Asian Development Bank, Support for Inclusive Growth, makes for very disturbing reading. David Pilling from the FT, […]

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