In December 2013, despite an ongoing official review of its existing agreements, the Indian government signed a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) with the United Arab Emirates. Information on the deal was recently made public by the Ministry of Finance after persistent efforts by civil society groups.
The ECB has not announced any new initiative. It stands ready to do more next year, but there was no specific mention of sovereign bond purchases. There was no tweaking of the second TLTRO which will launched next week. The staff did cut the forecasts for growth and inflation, but Draghi acknowledged that the forecasts do not incorporate recent drop in energy prices.
Europe’s economic crisis is slowly but steadily eroding the political systems of many countries on the Continent. New actors are emerging and threatening the supremacy of the traditional players. Alliances and events that seemed impossible only a few years ago are now being openly discussed across Europe. On Dec. 3, for example, Sweden announced it would hold early elections, partially because of political moves from the far right.
The forthcoming ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) could help drive economic reform in the Philippines. But policymakers will have to embrace what could be difficult reforms and realise that ignoring them would raise the threat of being bypassed (again) by investment and foreign capital seeking opportunities in the Philippines. In particular, there are restrictions on the logistics chain and trade facilitation that stand in the way of efficient trade in goods and services. These should be lifted or removed.
The meeting between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Xi Jinping at the 2014 APEC summit was a temporary relief for both amid rising bilateral tensions over the last two years. This talk was the result of both governments’ efforts to repair the bilateral relationship, temporarily parking both the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute and the history issue. Both leaders agreed to resume their strategic relationship, starting talks over the creation of a maritime crisis management mechanism and the expansion of economic cooperation.
The UK’s massive export industry is seeing dicey times, with minor periods of apparent revivals quickly dampened by a pessimistic outlook from foreign and domestic economic bodies. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) dragged the skeleton out of the cupboard and asserted that the weak global economic outlook is pulling down UK exports, and the situation is likely to persist.
A Wall Street report may have included insider information from a leaker in the Federal Reserve, while cyber criminals may have hacked into investment banks’ confidential databases to get an edge on the market.
New reports about two separate cases of illicit data leaking from inside the Federal Reserve and investment banks is prompting concerns that both Wall Street and its regulators are not doing enough to protect data and punish illegal market manipulation.
The relationship between the state and economic enterprise is a central choice that governments have to make in all economies. The role of the state and state-backed or state-owned enterprise in Asia’s economic modernisation is a question of special interest.
With the broader dollar appreciation trend losing steam in last several weeks, the fall in oil prices has become the main external variable determining EM performance. Russia, of course, is the weakest link amongst the major EM countries, but Malaysia and Colombia are also coming under pressure. Even Mexico, which has hedged much of its near-term exposure to oil prices, is looking materially more fragile as investors consider that cheaper energy is here to stay.
Germany’s Bundesbank has again publicly resisted the European Central Bank’s call to expand its monetary stimulus program, as the German bank president dismisses monetary moves as ineffective.
“Calls for a public fiscal stimulus plan in Germany to boost the Eurozone economy are amiss,” Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann said in an economic summit in Germany.
