Rice losses at ‘Bt200 bn a year’

Rice losses at ‘Bt200 bn a year’

The Nation October 22, 2013 1:00 am

The Finance Ministry yesterday put the annual losses from the government’s controversial rice-pledging scheme in the vicinity of Bt200 billion after wrapping up its audit.
Supa Piyajitti, deputy permanent secretary and chairwoman of the audit team, did not disclose the exact figure from the audit report signed by her former boss Areepong Bhoocha-oom. Areepong was transferred from permanent secretary of the ministry to the post of secretary-general of the Public Sector Development Commission, reportedly for his inability to control Finance Ministry officials who repeatedly expressed concerns over the scheme’s impact on the national fiscal position. Read more of this post

With psy and currency swaps S. Korea grabs global influence

Updated: Tuesday October 22, 2013 MYT 7:12:59 AM

With psy and currency swaps S. Korea grabs global influence

SEOUL: From rapper Psy to overseas financial aid, an economically and culturally confidentSouth Korea appears to be taking on bigger neighbours Japan and China for the hearts and minds of the rest of Asia and beyond.Its most recent effort to leverage brand “Korea” – three currency swap deals worth more than $20 billion that were announced this month. South Korea had the seventh largest currency reserves in the world at the end of August, worth $331.1 billion, according to the Bank of Korea. It can easily afford to match cultural diplomacy with economic muscle as it competes with Japan and China for influence. Read more of this post

Market attention has been focused on Dongbu Group in recent weeks, based on fears that the group is dogged with an impending liquidity shortage like the ailing Tongyang Group

2013-10-21 17:22

Dongbu’s health still in question

By Kim Rahn

Market attention has been focused on Dongbu Group in recent weeks, based on fears that the group is dogged with an impending liquidity shortage like the ailing Tongyang Group. Despite the face saving denial by its chief, analysts remain skeptical of the group’s financial strength. This recent speculation has been influenced by the failure of some of Tongyang’s affiliates to pay maturing debts and filing for court receivership at the end of last month. Read more of this post

How should we promote Korea to the outside world? Going beyond K-pop and tradition

Going beyond K-pop and tradition

Oct 22,2013

by Daniel Tudor

How should we promote Korea to the outside world?
This is a question that comes up again and again in the media and in public life. It reared its head again recently with a rather bizarre “romantic mushrooms” campaign for Korean food in the United States. So much time and money is spent on promoting Korea and Korean culture that it constantly amazes me how counter-productive such campaigns are.
Since I am a foreigner (yawn), I expect some readers will consider this an “attack” on Korea, or at least, a “critical” article. Please do not take it that way. I am simply a person who fell in love with Korea as a tourist, and decided to stay. I want to promote Korea, so others can experience the same thing. This is why I want to openly offer my own suggestions on how Korea should and should not promote itself.  Read more of this post

Abenomics might eat itself, a Pettis production

Abenomics might eat itself, a Pettis production

David Keohane

| Oct 21 12:28 | 9 comments | Share

It may seem like an odd time to stress out about Japan running an overly aggressive current account surplus, which might in turn push Abenomics off the tracks, but since the fears over a deficit have been so well covered… This is from Michael Pettis, who argues that one of the automatic, if not always intended consequences of Abenomics is to really force up Japan’s current account surplus, and it’s not clear the world will be ready or able to absorb it. In his defense he’s looking a few years, rather than quarters, out: What matters, I think, is that in order to generate growth Tokyo is planning to implement polices aimed at raising both inflation and real GDP, and these policies are likely to force up the national savings rate relative to investment. Read more of this post

Indonesia’s anti-corruption website is now getting 1,000 crowdsourced reports every day

Indonesia’s anti-corruption website is now getting 1,000 crowdsourced reports every day

October 21, 2013

by Enricko Lukman

While a lot of people are skeptical that the Indonesian government has what it takes to build a good tech product, this is one of those cases where the government proves its skeptics wrong. It’s been six months since we discussed Indonesia’s anti-corruption weapon Lapor. The team behind Lapor, the President’s Delivery Unit of Development Monitoring and Oversight (UKP4), tells Tech in Asia that the site is proving popular. Lapor allows citizens to report on the wrongdoings of Indonesia’s government via a website, mobile app, or SMS. It could range from bribery by traffic officers to massive corruption by politicians. Read more of this post

Stiletto Networks Grow as Women Rise on Boards: Corporate India

Stiletto Networks Grow as Women Rise on Boards: Corporate India

Egon Zehnder International, an executive search firm, is getting three times as many calls as last year at its Mumbai office from Indian companies seeking women for board positions, spurred by a new law. Enacted in August by India’s parliament, the Companies Act requires every listed company to have at least one female director within a year, while others reporting minimum revenue of 3 billion rupees ($49 million) have three years to comply. The legislation and a scramble for qualified candidates are spawning girls-only networking forums through which they mentor and recommend each other, much like their Wall Street peers. Read more of this post

A legal dispute in Myanmar Brewery JV between F&N Singapore and its military-linked local partner is emerging as a crucial test for investment in the country as it opens up after decades of dictatorship

October 22, 2013 5:19 am

Trouble brewing in Myanmar

By Michael Peel in Yangon

A legal dispute in Myanmar between one of southeast Asia’s leading conglomerates and its military-linked local partner is emerging as a crucial test for investment in the country as it opens up after decades of dictatorship. Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings is battling Singapore-based Fraser & Neave, now owned by Thailand’s richest man, over the future of their Myanmar Brewery joint venture, in a case whose impact will felt by other multinationals looking to go into business with local partners. Read more of this post

Nokia’s diaspora starts again; The group’s decline has generated a new wave of entrepreneurship in its native Finland

October 21, 2013 3:38 pm

Nokia’s diaspora starts again

By Richard Milne in Helsinki

Harri Wallenius pulls out a meticulous dossier of newspaper clippings from a local Finnish newspaper. All document the €5.4bn sale of Nokia’s mobile phone business toMicrosoft. “My first reaction was shock,” he says. But the 53-year-old no longer works at Nokia. After “26 years and eight months”, in his precise engineer’s formulation, he stopped at the end of 2011 and took a redundancy package. Read more of this post

Rough ride in store for EM currencies; Pace of forex reserve drawdowns to rise for vulnerable economies

October 21, 2013 6:04 am

Rough ride in store for EM currencies

By Mark Haefele

Pace of forex reserve drawdowns to rise for vulnerable economies

Recent pressure on emerging market currencies has rightfully made headlines. But the broader issue for emerging markets is that such episodes could easily reoccur, or even get worse, over the next few years. This is because, over the past decade, these economies have increasingly pinned their economic hopes to foreign capital flows. The numbers speak for themselves; portfolio flows to the emerging markets have grown 400 per cent over the past 10 years, compared with nominal GDP growth of 200 per cent. And the same is true of the broader private capital measure, which also includes bank lending and direct investment. This has increased 5.5 times over the same period. Read more of this post

Emerging markets: While the sun shone; Only a few developing nations used their boom years to enact crucial structural reforms. This failure to pursue change has worried investors

October 21, 2013 7:32 pm

Emerging markets: While the sun shone

By Jonathan Wheatley and FT reporters

Only a few developing nations used their boom years to enact crucial structural reforms. This failure to pursue change has worried investors

In December 1994 Fernando Henrique Cardoso, president-elect of Brazil, made a speech before the country’s Senate. He held up a paper on which he had listed his priorities. It was a blueprint for profound reform of Brazil’s fiscal system and of its “economic order”, cutting across public spending, labour law, the judiciary and politics. Two decades later, despite a commodities boom and the rise of a new consumer class in the developing world, it is striking how little of Mr Cardoso’s work has been done. Read more of this post

Bundesbank warns of property bubble

Last updated: October 21, 2013 7:05 pm

German city apartments overvalued, warns Bundesbank

By Michael Steen in Frankfurt and Alice Ross in Baden-Baden

The Bundesbank has warned that apartment prices in Germany’s biggest cities could be overvalued by as much as 20 per cent, stepping up its concern about a real estate boom in the powerhouse of the European economy. The warning will feed into German concern that the European Central Bank’s monetary policy is far too loose for the country. The bank’s main refinancing rate is 0.5 per cent, a record low. Read more of this post

Are Stocks Ahead of Themselves? In his latest quarterly commentary, Wally Weitz writes that his fund shop holds “substantial cash reserves” because stocks aren’t cheap

MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2013

Are Stocks Ahead of Themselves?

By WALLY WEITZ AND BRAD HINTON | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

In his latest quarterly commentary, Wally Weitz writes that his fund shop holds “substantial cash reserves” because stocks aren’t cheap.

(Editor’s Note: Weitz is president and founder of Weitz Funds and Hinton is the firm’s director of research. A longer version of this commentary, which includes the latest quarterly performance figures for Weitz Funds, is available on the company Website.)

Bonds, as we have discussed in recent letters, have probably come to the end of their 30-year bull market. Their yields are artificially depressed (and prices artificially inflated) by Federal Reserve actions. This leaves bond investors in an awkward position. We do not know when interest rates will rise, but absent a serious recession, they will. When this happens, holders of long-term bonds will be “locked into” current low interest rates and will experience poor returns. Read more of this post

Europe Breakup Forces Mount as Union Relevance Fades

Europe Breakup Forces Mount as Union Relevance Fades

Thomas Bellinck, a Belgian theater director, has put a date on the European Union’s collapse: 2018.

The doomsday timeline of his Brussels exhibition called “Life in the Former EU: Final Years of the Long Peace,” presented the bloc’s six-decade run as a peaceful interregnum before the continent’s relapse into nationalism, an interlude where technocrats were too focused on regulating the diameter of tomatoes as their experiment in multinational democracy withered. Read more of this post

Survivor of 150 Years of Turmoil Faces Being Buried by Abenomics; “The cost of wages will go up while Abenomics will raise the price of everything, adding to our costs. We will be buried without a new source of revenue.”

Survivor of 150 Years of Turmoil Faces Being Buried by Abenomics

When Shigeo Aiba is worried about the survival of his company, it’s time to pay attention. Aiba is president of Togo Seisakusyo Corp., a Japanese maker of industrial springs that traces its roots back more than 150 years to when Jyouuemon Aiba began repairing farm equipment among the rice fields of Chita peninsula 270 kilometers (170 miles) southwest of Tokyo. The business, which survived the effects of the Great Kanto Earthquake, defeat in World War II, destruction by a typhoon and the collapse of the asset bubble in the 1980s, is now struggling to survive Abenomics. Read more of this post