Search Results for: South Africa

GOVERNMENTS can play a huge role in determining how, when and whether an airport is built – and freed from the market constraints that limit most businesses, these decisions can have big consequences – for good and for ill. When dealing with mega-projects costing billions of dollars, government airport constructions decisions can also have a lot of unintended consequences.…

INDIAN Prime Minister Narendra Modi has laid the foundation stone of a newly approved greenfield airport at Hollongi, south of Itanagar, the state capital of Arunachal Pradesh, north-east India. The ministry of civil aviation cleared the proposal in December (2018), which will see Indian Rupees 9.5 billion (USD133 million) being spent to build an airport with a terminal of 4,100 square metres and a peak handling capacity of 200 passengers per hour.…

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) has published a civil aviation deal with the Philippines, which commits the south-east Asian country to facilitating applications for airport access by EU airlines. The agreement, which will operate provisionally until formal approval procedures have been completed, incorporates bilateral aviation deals struck between the Philippines and 10 EU member states, extending such rights to all EU airlines.…

IN a world increasingly hungry for natural gas, recent foreign investment in liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects has raised the likelihood that the substantial gas reserves of some sub-Saharan African nations will make it into global markets in the decade ahead.…

The coatings market of South Korea looks on track to achieve modest growth this year, with gains in architectural coating sales and a mild revival of marine coatings projected to offset a deteriorating outlook for automotive coatings. The overall South Korea paint and coatings market in 2018 has been estimated by market researchers Frost & Sullivan at USD4.5 billion in sales and 1 million tonnes in 2018, making it the fourth largest coatings market in Asia, in both value and volume terms – behind China, Japan and India.…

FROM exorbitant spending on private jets and personal stylists at taxpayers’ expense – to pocketing millions of dollars acquired from flipping vast swathes of Crown land. These are just some of the allegations levelled at former politicians in Turks & Caicos Islands mega-corruption trials.…

BAHRAIN’S first oil find since 1932 is of major economic significance to the small Gulf state, which has been less reliant on hydrocarbons than its oil and gas rich Gulf neighbours. But it is also of global significance, being a unique, conventional-unconventional offshore shale find in shallow waters.…

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are political and economic heavy-weights in the Middle East, but while they have much in common, their anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regimes and the risks they face significantly differ, primarily due to the UAE’s greater exposure to the international financial system.…

INCREASES in minimum wage rates are likely to be of significant concern to brands sourcing from south-east Asia in 2019, with pay on an upward trajectory – although governments’ approaches vary.

For some governments in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region, raising minimum wage serves as a populist measure (for instance by Thailand’s military government, whose supporters will face an election this year), while for others, an annual review is a statutory requirement, for example, in the Philippines.…

MYANMAR is counting on investors from Taiwan to support the country with capacity building and technical assistance, including in textile and garment production, even as its trade access privileges to the European Union (EU) are under review.

Reflecting this, the Union of Myanmar Federation of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI) and Taiwan’s Chinese National Federation of Industries have signed two memorandums of understanding facilitating technology transfers and training programmes for workers, supervisors and technical staff at factories across the country – the agreements were signed in mid-2018 and are now being implemented. …