IV. International
(2-16-09)
.
Stimulus packages by
export dependent nations of Southeast Asia may
not do enough to protect their economies from the
fundamental shift in trading pattern that underlies the
current financial crisis, analysts warn.
.
Regional analysts say the present crisis is not just
another cyclical downturn but a structural realignment,
and that SE Asia’s export economies need to act quickly
to adjust to a new reality in which American and
European consumers will no longer be the main market.
.
In SE Asia, pain is likely to be spread unevenly. At one
end of the spectrum is Indonesia, the region’s
largest economy, which has lower dependence on exports,
particularly manufactured products. At the other end is
Singapore, which has seen domestic exports shrink
and is already in recession.
.
In SE Asia, there
has been a variety of approaches. Vietnam has
chosen to support the industry. Thailand is
trying to mitigate the effects on the most vulnerable.
Singapore has gone for a mixture of the two.
.
Deficit-funded stimulus packages are all the rage which
should work for the region’s larger economies, like
India and China, but not for the smaller
ones, like Hong Kong and Singapore, no
matter how much you spend, which is not going to
compensate for the slowdown in Europe and the US. (Tai
Hui, head of economic research for SE Asia at Standard
Chartered Bank in Singapore)
.
Some analysts have said the packages raise two questions:
What effect will they have on domestic demand? And
if they are effective, will they save the region’s
export industries? Even if stimulus packages manage to
reignite domestic demand, that demand is not likely to
be for the narrow range of manufactured products that SE
Asia’s export-dependent economies have long produced in
vast quantities, e.g., Thailand (pick-up trucks
and hard drives), Vietnam (furniture and shoes).
.
Chinese and US
scientists are examining the possibility that a giant
dam may have tripped the earthquake that killed some
80,000 people when it struck Sichuan province 9 months
ago, raising questions about ambitious dam-building
projects across China’s earthquake-prone western
regions.
. Fire
consumed the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Beijing
after being showered with a burst of fireworks. Although
officials allowed fireworks downtown this year, their
use is prohibited in buildings or on rooftops.
.
UN delegates took China to look on its human rights
record, pressing officials about Tibet, labor camps, the
death penalty, torture in custody and treatment of
dissidents in a UN rights panel’s first review of its
progress.
. China’s
monthly vehicles sales surpassed those of the US for the
first time in January, moving the country closer to
becoming the world’s biggest auto market, according to
data released 2/10. China is vital for GM, VW and Toyota
as they count on demand to offset weakness in the US and
elsewhere.
.
.
Two decades of generous
public works spending have showed this city (Hamada,
Japan) of 61,000 mostly graying residents with a
highway, 2-lane bypass, a university, a prison, a
children’s museum, the Sun Village Hamada Sports Center,
a bright red welcome center, a ski resort and an
aquarium featuring ring-blowing Beluga whales.
.
Nor is this remote port in western Japan unusual.
Japan’s rural areas have been passed over and filled in
with roads, dams and other big infrastructure projects,
the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the
economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of
a real estate bubble in the late 1980s.
.
It matters what gets
built. Japan spent too much over increasingly wasteful
roads and bridges, and not enough in areas like
education and social services, which studies show
deliver more bang for the buck than infrastructure
spending. In the end, it was not public works but an
expensive clean-up of the debt-ridden banking system,
combined with growing exports to China and the US that
brought a close to Japan’s Lost Decade.
. Nissan is
slashing 20k jobs, or 8.5% of its global workforce, to
cope with what Japan’s 3rd largest automaker
expect will be its first annual loss in nine years.
.
North Korea would upset
regional security and face greater isolation if it
launched a missile, South Korea’s foreign
minister said (2/12) amid reports the Communist state
was planning a rocket launch to grab the attention of
the new US president (BHO).
.
Consumer price inflation has been decelerating
continually due to downwardly stable international and
oil prices coupled with the impact of the economic
downturn and the trend seems set to last for some time.
In the real estate market, prices and transaction
volumes have continued to decline.
.
In the midst of deepening global financial crisis,
small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and business
owners are facing capital liquidity problems because of
tightening market conditions. Local banks are reluctant
to grant loans to SMEs and business owners with low
credit score.
.
The Senate decided to
summon the representative of the World Bank in the
Philippines to show proof of purported bid-rigging
in road projects, shifting the focus from those
implicated in the corruption controversy, including
Pres. GMA’s husband.
.
Communist rebels in Negros Occidental said that the raid
on a farm owned by Eduardo Cojuangco, Jr. in Himamaylan
was part of their efforts to fight fiefdom in the
countryside. They criticized his comprehensive agrarian
reform program as a ploy to his control of landholdings,
capital and income, while farm workers remain enslaved
by his system of contracting with the former.
.
The MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front) wants the
government peace-keeping force to just watch passively
while their lawless elements (who cannot be reined in by
their leaders) commit atrocities, slaughter civilians,
torch houses and cart away farmers’ harvests. This
doesn’t augur well for the peace process.
. Thailand’s
Energy Policy
Committee
decided to raise the retail prices of diesel and ethanol
blended gasohol by THBO.60 per liter effective February
16, the Energy Minister told reporters. This is the
second price hike since the Cabinet in late January
ended a regime of reducing excessive taxes on retail oil
products.
.
The PM made a frank
admission that there were “some instances” in which Thai
authorities pushed Myanmar’s Rohingye boat people (a
Muslim minority group) out to sea last month garnering
worldwide condemnation for their action. He said he was
working on rectifying the problem.
. The
Chinese Ministry of Commerce said it would start
anti-dumping investigation against terephthalic
acid (organic compound used by polyester coatings and
resins) from Thailand and South Korea. It
will examine the scale and the alleged dumping and its
damage to the domestic industry.
. Indonesia’s
most powerful
Islamic scholars weren’t looking for a debate when they
handed down their latest fatwas on how to be a
good Muslim. The response they got was “Who cares?”
after decreeing that it is forbidden to smoke in public,
or for children and pregnant women to have a puff of
tobacco anywhere.
.
Unlike some fundamental
Islamic cultures, such as Iran, where fatwas can
be a life-or-death matter, most people in this
overwhelmingly Muslim country of 237 million pay little
attention because edicts usually have little to do with
what matters to them. Fatwas here do not have the
force of law which is officially a secular society that
protects the rights of non-Muslim minorities, e.g.,
Christians, Hindus and Buddhists.
.
As the country’s emerging democracy gains strength, so
have the Council’s detractors who wish the Islamic
scholars should just butt out. Jakarta’s air is pungent
with the sweet scent of Indonesia’s favorite clove smoke
cigarettes called KRETEKS because of the soft-cracking
sound of 19th century originals made as
flecks of spice burned.
.
The Indian
Consortium of Pub-Going, Loose & Forward Women is
fighting back against the right-wing extremist group,
Sri Ram Sena, often called Hindu Talibans.
. The
consortium was started on Face-book and sent the
extremist group hundreds of pairs of pink underwear on
Valentine’s Day in response to the group’s violent
attacks on women last month.
.
NDTV.com, the Web site of an Indian TV station,
explains that Sri Ram Sena attempts to be the moral
police of Indians by looking at activities it views as
unacceptable, such as women drinking in pubs or couple
celebrating Valentine’s Day.
.
India has for the first
time directly accused Pakistan’s powerful
military intelligence agency—ISI (Inter-Services
Intelligence)—of involvement in last year’s Mumbai
attacks. In January, India handed Pakistan what
it said was evidence linking “elements” in Pakistan to
the November attacks in India.
.
PM Yousuf Raza Gilani assured India that his government
would hand over the results of its own investigation
into the attacks soon. Pakistan has also confirmed that
the lone surviving Muslim gunman in Indian custody was
Pakistani, but insisted the attackers were “non-State
actors.”
.
Indian foreign minister Shivshankar Menon blasted
foreign arms sales to Pakistan in the name of fighting
terrorism, saying it was like “selling whiskey to an
alcoholic.” The US is one of Pakistan’s military
backers, providing F-16 fighter jets in return for
political support for its operations in Afghanistan.
. It
admitted for the first time (2/12) that part of the
planning for November’s bloody assault on India’s
financial capital, Mumbai, occurred on Pakistani soil,
and it announced criminal charges against nine men
involved. Pakistan was under intense international
pressure to act against the planners of the attack.
.
A female Tamil Tiger
suicide bomber blew herself up when being frisked by
soldiers processing civilians fleeing from Sri
Lanka’s northern war zone, killing at least 20
soldiers, 8 civilians and wounding 60, the military
said.
.
The Tamil Tigers have waged war since 1983 for a
separate land for the nation’s ethnic Hindu and
Christian minorities who claim decades of economic and
racial discrimination at the hands of the governments
controlled by the Buddhist Sinhalese majority.
.
A military victory by the government would just be the
first step in what will likely be an arduous process of
healing a deeply split nation where many Tamils say they
were treated as second-class citizens and with
increasing suspicion.
