Economics & Business Archive

Zimbabwe recently announced it was moving ahead with plans to require foreign-owned banks to give 51 percent ownership to locals. In an email interview, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, a professor in the department of development studies at the University of South Africa, discussed Zimbabwe’s indigenization program. WPR: What is the political and economic strategy behind Zimbabwe’s move to indigenize ownership in various sectors over the past few years? Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni: Over the past 10 years, Zimbabwe has consolidated itself into a typical nationalist state as opposed to a neo-colonial state. The leitmotif of this nationalist state has been the ideology […]

Earlier this month, Abu Dhabi officially green-lighted construction of its first nuclear power plant, under the stewardship of the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), at the Braka site located just west of the Emirati capital. The historic construction marks the first nuclear power plant on the Arabian Peninsula and highlights how the oil-flush region has been forced to recalibrate its energy strategy in light of soaring demand for electricity. The move also acts as a soft hedge against the potential weaponization of Iran’s nuclear program, which is a primary security concern for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and its neighbors […]

The downgrade warning issued to Germany by the credit rating agency Moody’s last week has shaken German public opinion and raised the question of whether Berlin can bear the costs of extricating the eurozone from its ongoing sovereign debt crisis. The question of what Germany can bear has two components: One involves the financial costs, while the other has to do with what German public opinion can support. Of the two, the answer to the latter question is easier to determine: According to recent polls, 70 percent of Germans are fed up with the euro crisis and increasingly convinced that […]

Among countries that exemplify poorly managed economies, Afghanistan figures prominently. Many factors currently weigh down the Afghan economy, including negative current account balances, unrestrained government spending, low productivity, negligible income taxes, years of cheap and fraudulent lending and widespread graft. The prospects for the future are no more optimistic. The impending international troop drawdown combined with inadequate security and looming uncertainty beyond 2014 have made the country a financial no-go zone for foreign investors. Afghanistan is beginning to suffer from the departure of the large sums of foreign capital and investment it has largely depended on for years. Reportedly, every […]

Greece has scraped together a plan to save nearly 12 billion euros over the next two years in an increasingly desperate effort to convince visiting EU and IMF inspectors it deserves to be saved rather than pushed out of the euro zone. Finance News Videos by NewsLook

A remarkable transformation is underway in a country where most people were nomadic herders a generation ago. Mongolia has the fastest-growing economy in the world, with GDP increasing by more than 17 percent last year. It sits on vast precious metal and mineral resources: The 10 biggest deposits alone are estimated to be worth almost $1.5 trillion. Given all this wealth in a country of only 3 million people, Mongolia has the potential to become an Asian version of Norway. However, popular anger is growing as fast as the economy. Despite the “gold rush,” the poverty rate increased between 2008 […]

John Minnich, an East Asia analyst with Stratfor, examines China’s expansion of maritime territorial claims in the South China Sea and the security and energy implications for countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines. World News Videos by NewsLook

On Nov. 3, 2002, America began its campaign of targeted killings in nonbattlefield settings. After a year-long manhunt, a fusion of human intelligence assets and signals intercepts pinpointed Abu Ali al-Harithi, an operational planner in the al-Qaida cell that had bombed the USS Cole in 2002, driving in a Toyota SUV in Yemen, near the border with Saudi Arabia. A CIA-controlled Predator drone climbed into position, maneuvered its nose downward and fired a single Hellfire missile, which destroyed the SUV and killed al-Harithi, along with four other Yemenis and Ahmed Hijazi, a naturalized U.S. citizen and ringleader of an alleged […]

A plurality of Britons would like to leave the European Union if they could, with 48 percent supporting an EU exit against just 31 percent who would prefer to stay. However, most of them — 63 percent — don’t think this will happen. That’s perhaps the only optimistic figure of a recently released Chatham House and YouGov poll, showing that Britons understand and are resigned to the key consequence of globalization: Cooperation and multilateralism trump bilateralism or “going it alone.” Thus, the U.K. is not yet completely a lost cause for continental Europe. But it is close, as the rest […]

In a significant foreign policy breakthrough, the Russian Duma voted last week to ratify the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization, resolving an issue that had been a point of contention between Russia and the West since the 1990s. Russia’s accession negotiations, which opened in 1995 and were completed in November 2011, were the longest and arguably the thorniest in WTO history. Economic and political disputes, not to mention the Russia-Georgia War of 2008, repeatedly delayed Russian accession. With Russia now set to formally enter the WTO in August, it is worth examining what the move will mean for […]

During the Soviet era, Russian trade unions were state run and had nothing to do with helping workers fight for their rights against employers. That changed following the Soviet Union’s collapse. This report by Euronews takes an in-depth look at the evolution of Russian trade unions and the battles they face today.

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto ran on an agenda alien to many in his once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party: change. More specifically, Peña Nieto emphasized the need for structural reforms that many in the PRI have showed little enthusiasm for approving in recent years. But Peña Nieto says times have changed, and he has promised that an ambitious agenda of structural reforms will mark his presidency. He also insists there’s no going back to the past, when the PRI earned a checkered reputation for corruption and crony capitalism prior to losing power in 2000 after 71 straight years […]

In late-June, Turkey and Azerbaijan signed accords green-lighting the much-anticipated $7 billion Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), which will ferry 16 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz II field through neighboring Georgia to Turkey and from there to European markets. While the deal has been described as a deathblow to the once highly touted European Union-backed Nabucco pipeline consortium, TANAP’s emergence alongside a host of other alternative and unconventional energy options is also endangering Russia’s near-monopoly in the European natural gas market. In its original form, Nabucco, named for Verdi’s famous opera, was billed as a means […]

One evening last week, the Chinese government threw a dinner party for a visiting international delegation. If the menu that night in Beijing was strictly kosher, it was because the guests of honor for the event came from Israel. And the day had featured a remarkable event. Just hours earlier, China’s Minister of Transportation Li Shenglin and his Israeli counterpart, Yisrael Katz, had signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on a multibillion dollar project inside Israel that some say could constitute an alternative trade route to the Suez Canal. While it is doubtful the Suez Canal’s importance will be […]

SHANGHAI — Following a period of relatively aggressive behavior from 2009 to 2011, recent events suggest that Beijing is pursuing a new strategy on the region’s high seas, perhaps in response to Washington’s Asia pivot. China’s new approach involves asserting sovereignty through civilian actors on a day-to-day basis while adopting a less explicitly abrasive military posture. Going into this week’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, where hopes for agreement on a maritime code of conduct are rising, it seems China would need to radically alter this strategy to participate fully in any such arrangement. For manifest geostrategic reasons, […]

Across the developing world, the revolution in mobile telecommunications technology is driving massive changes in access to financial services. Currently, there are 2.7 billion “unbanked” people in developing countries (.pdf). They have few effective ways to save money; accessing credit and transferring money is difficult and expensive; insurance is a dream. Yet, to break cycles of poverty, the poor need access to affordable and versatile financial services. The rapid uptake of mobile phones, even in remote areas and among the poorest of the poor, has the potential to significantly increase financial inclusion. The Grameen Foundation estimates that nearly 40 percent […]

The first official foreign visit of any newly elected president represents a significant symbolic statement. Knowing this, new leaders choose their first visit very carefully, often selecting a country that is either a major strategic ally or an important trade partner. Nonetheless, the Egyptian government’s announcement that President Mohammed Morsi’s first foreign visit will take him to Saudi Arabia came as something of a surprise. Morsi is no doubt aware, based on media reports, that during the bloody protests that led to the end of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s rule, Saudi King Abdullah was urging U.S. President Barack Obama […]