Archive
Reuters blog archive
from Global Investing:
Turkey: investment grade, peace and FDI?
Turkey's elevation to investment grade last week may or may not be a game changer for its stock and bond markets, but the country is really hoping for a boost to FDI - bricks-and-mortar foreign direct investment into manufacturing or power generation. Its peace process with Kurdish separatists should help.
Speaking last week at Mitsubishi-UFJ's annual Turkey conference, Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek cited data showing an average 2 percentage-point pick-up in FDI in the two years immediately after a country moves into investment grade.
Sticky, job-creating and not prone to sudden flight, FDI is the kind of investment that Turkey, with a massive balance of payments deficit, desperately needs. Turkey does worse than most other countries on the FDI front. Its combined deficit of the current account and net FDI is around 5 percent, Commerzbank analysts note -- wider than most emerging market peers.
By itself, an investment grade rating may not lead to a surge in FDI. But Turkey has an ace up its sleeve. Having fought a deadly three-decade war against Kurdish separatists, Ankara has managed to negotiate a withdrawal of PKK militants from Turkey to bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. That peace gambit, if successful, has the potential to transform the impoverished Turkish provinces that border the Kurdish areas.
from Edward Hadas:
Rana Plaza and union labels
The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was a turning point in the history of American labour relations. It led directly to a slew of new laws on safety and labour practices in New York State, and indirectly to a less exploitative approach to industrial labourers throughout the country. Last month’s Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, where the collapse of a clothing factory killed more than 700 people, demonstrates that the lessons need to be learned again, this time on a global scale.
It is not a coincidence that both these accidents involved the garment trade. This is an industry of mostly small, poorly capitalised companies, which jostle against each other in a long and rapidly shifting supply chain. Retailers shop around aggressively, suppliers sub-contract freely and the price pressure is relentless. No one takes responsibility, and it can seem like almost everyone involved is irresponsible.
from MacroScope:
Small rays of hope brightened Canada’s economic outlook last week
All data released last week point to a far better first quarter growth in Canada than previously expected, prompting economists to revise up their predictions.
In a Reuters poll conducted early last month, forecasters predicted that Canada's economy expanded by just 1.6 percent on an annualised basis in the first three months of this year.
from Breakingviews:
Ailing South Korea needs monetary remedy
By Andy Mukherjee
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
The Bank of Korea is making a big mistake by not cutting interest rates more aggressively. A weaker Japanese yen and tepid global demand are squeezing the country’s exporters from Hyundai Motor to steelmaker Posco. Though demand from China is still growing, shipments to Europe are falling, while those to the United States have stalled (See graphic).
from MacroScope:
Not again, please! Brazil and India more vulnerable now to another crisis
After bad economic news from Germany, China and the United States over the past few weeks, here are two more. Brazil and India, two of the world's largest emerging economies, are increasingly vulnerable to another crisis or to the eventual end of the ultra-loose monetary policies in developed economies after five years of a severe global slowdown.
Weak demand for Brazil's exports and the voracious appetite of local consumers for imported goods widened the country's current account deficit to 2.93 percent of GDP in the 12 months through March, the widest gap in nearly eleven years. In dollar terms, that amounts to $67 billion.
from Global Investing:
India’s deficit — not just about oil and gold
India's finance minister P Chidambaram can be forgiven for feeling cheerful. After all, prices for oil and gold, the two biggest constituents of his country's import bill, have tumbled sharply this week. If sustained, these developments might significantly ease India's current account deficit headache -- possibly to the tune of $20 billion a year.
Chidambaram said yesterday he expects the deficit to halve in a year or two from last year's 5 percent level. Markets are celebrating too -- the Indian rupee, stocks and bonds have all rallied this week.
from Expert Zone:
India’s current account deficit: solution lies in exports
(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters)
The U.S. dollar is the major currency for international trade. Most countries use it to pay for their imports and also peg the dollar for exporting products and services.
The balance of trade (net import or export) would determine if a country is a net payer or a receiver of dollars. Trade, along with other dollar inflows (portfolio/FII, FDI, inward remittances), determines the overall availability of the international currency for a country to engage itself in the global economy. This also has a bearing on determining the exchange rate of a country’s own currency with that of the dollar.
from Global Investing:
Emerging markets’ export problem
Taiwan's forecast-beating export data today came as a pleasant surprise amid the general emerging markets economic gloom. In a raft of developing countries, from South Korea to Brazil, from Malaysia to the Czech Republic, export data has disappointed. HSBC's monthly PMI index showed this month that recovery remains subdued.
With Europe still in the doldrums, this is not totally unsurprising. But economists are growing increasingly concerned because the lack of export growth coindides with a nascent U.S. recovery. Clearly EM is failing to ride the US coattails.
from Global Investing:
Weekly Radar: Dollar building steam?
FOMC/FRANCO-GERMAN SUMMIT/GERMAN-FRENCH-SPAIN AUCTIONS/GLOBAL FLASH PMIS FOR MARCH/UK BUDGET-JOBS-CPI-BOE MINS/ICC HEARING ON KENYATTA/SAFRICA RATES
The revved-up U.S. dollar - whose trade-weighted index is now up almost 5 percent in just six weeks – could well develop into one of the financial market stories of the year as the cyclical jump the United States has over the rest of G10 combines with growing attention being paid to the country’s potential “re-industrialisation”. As with all things FX, there’s a zillion ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ to the argument. Chief among them is many people’s assumption the Fed will be printing greenbacks well after this expansion takes hold as it targets a much lower jobless rate. Others doubt the much-vaunted return of the US Inc. back down the value chain into metal-bashing and manufacturing, while some feel the cheaper energy from the shale revolution and the lower structural trade deficits that promises will be short-lived as others catch up. However, with the dollar already super competitive (it’s down 30-40 percent on the Fed’s inflation-adjusted index over the past 10 years) the first set of arguments are more tempting. Even if you see the merits in both sides, the bull case clearly has not yet been discounted and may have further to go just to match the balance of risks. With Fed printing presses still on full throttle, this has been a slow burner to date and it may be a while yet before it gets up a head of steam -- many feel it’s still more of a 2nd half of 2013 story and the dollar index needs to get above last year’s highs to get people excited. But if it does keep motoring, it has a potentially dramatic impact on the investment landscape and not necessarily a benign one, even if shifting correlations and the broader macro landscape show this is not the 'stress trade' of the short-lived dollar bounces of the past five years.
from The Great Debate:
The public supports a transatlantic trade pact – for now
The long-discussed free trade agreement between the United States and the European Union was formally endorsed by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address to Congress. Obama asserted that “trade that is fair and free across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs.” A prominent presidential endorsement will not prevent a long and disputatious negotiation, but a trade pact could yield potentially huge economic rewards -- and also provoke serious political opposition on both sides.
A U.S.-EU trade and investment agreement has been talked about for two decades but never actively pursued. On both sides of the Atlantic, there has been fear that any such deal between the world’s two largest economies would disadvantage poorer nations. A U.S.-EU accord was deemed less desirable because greater economic benefits could be gained from a global trade agreement involving more countries. Trade experts worried that it would undermine the legitimacy of the World Trade Organization. Moreover, based on past bitter disputes over frozen chickens, bananas, genetically modified organisms and other food and agricultural products, a U.S.-European Union agreement was deemed too politically fraught and difficult.
