By John Richardson THE COMPLEXITY of the economic outlook is such that nobody can say with even the smallest degree of genuine confidence what will happen to global petrochemicals and polymers demand over the next five years. It is hard to know where to start in suggesting scenarios of how the interconnections between today’s four […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Coronavirus: Global polypropylene demand in 2020 could fall by 2.6m tonnes over last year
By John Richardson SOME GOOD news might be that official Chinese state media announced that the number of coronavirus cases outside Hubei province had up until Saturday fallen for 12 days in a row. But given the difficulty of diagnosing the disease, and last week’s sharp upward revision in Chinese estimates of the total number […]
Australia: This Is No Way To Run A Country
By John Richardson TONY Abbott has survived an attempt to remove him as Australia’s Prime Minister. Do you really think this will bring to an end the political instability that has resulted in four changes in PM since 2007? This really is a rhetorical question because anybody who lives and works in Australia, as I do, […]
Global Economy: “When Elephants Fight, The Grass Suffers”
HERE are some very disturbing statistics: Over the last five years, US oil and gas companies have issued bonds and taken out loans that are together worth $1.2 trillion, according to data from Dealogic. This has created at least 200,000 jobs in oil and gas companies in the States, according to the US Bureau of […]
Australia At An Economic Crossroads
By John Richardson THERE is no such thing as level playing field when it comes to the chemicals industry and, for that matter, probably any other industry. China has long-subsidised many of its industries through soft loans for new projects, cheap land, cheap electricity and tax breaks in special economic zones. Some projects in Southeast […]
Australia: Nice Work If You Were Able To Get It
By John Richardson BACK in the late 1990s, the blog held a discussion with an Australian petrochemicals industry executive. He described his country’s approach to free trade, or rather the lack of it, as “to put it politely, naïve, and to put is less politely, plain stupid.” He was referring to how Australia had aggressively […]
Asia Ex-China: The Outlook For 2014 And Beyond
By John Richardson IN a special series of blog posts over the next few weeks we will re-examine the outlook for the major Asian petrochemical producing countries, ex-China. The posts won’t necessarily appear every day, as important news events may require immediate analysis, but our aim is to finish the series by mid-October. Last month, […]
Come On Mr Abbott, Please
By John Richardson TONY Abbott, in his victory speech on Saturday following the Coalition victory in the Australian Federal Election, renewed his pledge to scrap the carbon tax, stop the boat people and bring the budget back into surplus. Come on Mr Abbott, please. The blog has to admit, in this time of nonsensical sound-bite politics, […]
China’s Credit Growth Versus the West
By John Richardson THE BIG gap in credit growth between China and the developed world has been thrown into further relief by recently released data – raising inflationary concerns in the world’s most important economy, while emphasising how rich-world countries remain on government life-support systems. Broad money supply growth was a huge 30% in China […]
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