Chile battens down the hatches
The Chilean government is not sitting idly by watching the storm brew in Europe.
Finance minister, Felipe Larraín, has announced the injection of US$1.7bn into an off-shore economic and social stabilisation fund (known in Spanish by the acronym FEES) as well as into a pension reserve fund (FRP). This pushes the total available in these two contingency funds to US$20bn, a significant safety net when added to the Central Bank’s US$36bn in international reserves. Continue reading »
Turkey: “unstoppable” for long?
Whatever criticisms you can make of what one analyst labels Turkey’s “unstoppable” economy, there’s one thing the country’s economic boom is thankfully free of. It’s not an American style jobless recovery.
Quite the contrary. In the last year Turkey has created some 1.8m new jobs. Figures released on Thursday showed unemployment fell to 8.8 per cent to September, the lowest level since 2005 and down from a 2009 peak of more than 16 per cent.. On a seasonally adjusted basis, unemployment fell to 9.2 per cent, also the lowest level of recent times. But analysts are almost universal in predicting that things won’t stay quite this sweet for long. Continue reading »
Hungary and its banks shake hands
After months of wrangling, the Hungarian government and the country’s banks have finally reached agreement in a dispute over foreign-currency mortgage loans.
The deal should bring relief to close to a million Magyar home owners who have been increasingly burdened over the past three years, during which their monthly mortgage repayments have soared as the forint plunged against the Swiss franc – the original currency of most loan agreements. Continue reading »
Ghana: almost a star
By all measures – Ghana, with its gold and oil wealth, stable government, and double digit growth, can be considered an African success story.
However, as an FT Special Report on Thursday pointed out, the country also faces its share of challenges. Heavily potholed roads and containers stacked high in tightly-packed Tema port attest to Ghana’s difficulties in handling break-neck growth. And in spite of the boom, that growth has not translated into job creation nor development such as education. Continue reading »
Romania’s swingeing budget
Romania joined a growing pool of countries on Thursday when its parliament passed a swingeing budget which aims to more than halve its budget deficit, from 4.4 per cent of GDP in 2011 to 1.9 per cent in 2012. But those figures depend on a growth rate of over 2 per cent next year – an optimistic assumption for an economy with such close ties to the stumbling eurozone. Continue reading »
S. Africa: do the right thing
South Africa’s High Court delivered an emphatic message to the country’s foreign investors on Thursday – and it’s a good one.
In overturning the award of a prospecting right at Sishen – the country’s biggest iron-or mine – to Imperial Crown Trading, a company with no mining experience but deep political connections, the High Court has gone some way towards soothing rattled investor confidence in the country. Continue reading »
MSCI to UAE and Qatar: keep trying
It’s late, the doors are closed, and poor Qatar and the United Arab Emirates aren’t getting in.
Perhaps they didn’t have the right shoes, their hair was not quite right or they just simply didn’t look the part, either way the message from the bouncer on Thursday was clear, just like the last time: try again in six months time.
Well, it wasn’t a nightclub. It was the MSCI emerging market index that Qatar the UAE were trying to enter. Continue reading »
Saudi reshuffle boosts economy team
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia appointed two heavyweights to head up the ministry of economy and planning, and the ministry of commerce and industry at a time when consolidating economic planning is crucial to maximizing the benefits of the huge spending earmarked for the coming years. Continue reading »
East Capital looks further east
East Capital is an old hand when it comes to investing in emerging markets. The Stockholm-based group was a pioneer in eastern Europe, having set up its flagship Russia Fund in 1998. Now it has about 500,000 investors with €4.6bn under management.
Now East Capital is seeking to replicate its success further east – in China. Continue reading »
New York headlines
* India and China voice growth fears
* China set to tax US-made car imports
* Chow Tai Fook fails to sparkle on HK debut
* Brazil sues over oil spill Continue reading »
Indonesia: back to investment grade
In a move that will get Nouriel Roubini’s blessing, Fitch Ratings has upgraded Indonesia’s long-term, foreign and local, currency issuer default ratings to investment grade (to ‘BBB-’ from ‘BB+’).
It is the first of the three big ratings agencies to move Indonesia back to investment grade, a distinction it lost 14 years ago during the Asian financial crisis. Continue reading »
Putin on Kudrin: he’s still one of us
Vladimir Putin’s marathon annual televised phone-in on Thursday saw the Russian prime minister in his usually confident form, apparently unfazed by the recent opposition protests.
His most intriguing remarks concerned Alexei Kudrin, the long-serving finance minister, who quit in September over a budget row. Kudrin, said Putin, “never left my team”.
If that’s true, it suggests Kudrin has his old boss’s blessing for the support he’s given to billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, who this week announced he was running against Putin in the presidential election. That, in turn, reinforces suspicions that Prokhorov is less than independent of the Kremlin. Continue reading »
[video] Bahrain’s opposition calls for political change
Sheikh Ali Salman, head of al-Wefaq, the main Shia opposition party in Bahrain, says that the Arab spring has created an expectation of democracy across the region. He tells Roula Khalaf, middle east editor, that western allies should back calls for change in his country.
Further reading: energy infrastructure
Thursday’s top picks from the beyondbrics team: Lex on the squeeze in global shipping and Kazakhstan’s contentious new oil & gas deal; David Pilling on how Indonesia’s economy is overshadowed by a lack of infrastructure; why scepticism about Russia’s WTO bid should be shelved; and the last-minute climate change deal. Continue reading »
Banking jobs: the next steppe
Made redundant in the City? Down-sized in New York? Fed up in Frankfurt? The Golomt Bank of Mongolia has just the job for you.
According to an advertisement in Thursday’s FT , the bank is seeking “to further develop its corporate finance, retail banking and internal audit divisions and wishes to appoint experienced professionals”. Candidates need to be fluent in English, but not, it seems, in Mongolian, which should widen the pool somewhat. Continue reading »
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