Tag Archives: countries
Property Deals Surge In Peripheral EU Countries
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1066d5e2-1301-11e3-a05e-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz2dv1eMdXb September 1, 2013 Property deals surge in peripheral EU countries By Ed Hammond, Property Correspondent The appetite for commercial real estate in Europe’s most beleaguered countries has soared during the past three months, underlining the growing confidence among global investors that the continent’s property crisis is nearing an end. The value of property transactions in Europe’s peripheral economies – Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain – hit €2.3bn during the quarter to July, an increase of 60 per cent on the previous three months, according to research for Cushman & Wakefield, the property consultancy. The surge in activity is almost entirely the product of a return of international investment into property markets that, for the past six years, have been considered too risky at almost any price. Non-domestic purchases of offices and retail property in Spain, for instance, rose by almost 10-fold from the first three months of the year to €642m. In Italy, the quarter-on-quarter increase was a more modest 190 per cent. “Club Med was out of bounds for most investors just a few months ago,” said David Hutchings, head of research in Europe for Cushman & Wakefield. “But it has taken only a slight improvement in risk tolerances for the bigger markets of Spain and Italy, in particular, to start gaining attention again.” And it is not just the private equity investors – typically the first movers in Europe’s distressed property markets – who have started to sniff out deals in the peripheral economies. Large, traditionally low risk investment groups, such as insurers and pension funds, are on the hunt for fixed assets too. Axa Real Estate, the property arm of the French insurer, has completed deals in both Italy and Spain during the second quarter of the year. “Investors, including us, are starting to move slowly up the risk curve again and are seeing those markets open up,” said Anne Kavanagh, global head of asset management and transactions at Axa Real Estate. “But there will not be a rush into the peripheral countries; it was, after all, only a year ago that we were talking about a possible break up of the single currency.” The burgeoning activity puts the cluster of countries, often unflatteringly referred to as “the PIIGS”, at odds with the wider trend in Europe’s property market, where demand, having risen steadily for two years, ebbed during the past three months. The large cities of the continent, London in particular, have become saturated with competition from US, Asian and Middle Eastern property buyers, driving down yields and forcing many European investors to eek out returns in regional or higher risk submarkets. Continue reading
Top US Republicans back Syria strike
Obama wins key backing for military action in Syria (Reuters) / 4 September 2013 US President Barack Obama won the backing of two top Republicans in Congress in his call for limited US strikes on Syria to punish President Bashar Al Assad for his suspected use of chemical weapons against civilians. Speaking after the United Nations said 2 million Syrians had fled a conflict that posed the greatest threat to world peace since the Vietnam war, Obama said the United States also has a broader plan to help rebels defeat Assad’s forces. In remarks that appeared to question the legality of US plans to strike Syria without UN backing, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the use of force is only legal when it is in self-defence or with UN Security Council authorisation. He said that if UN inspectors confirm the use of chemical weapons in Syria, the Security Council, which has long been deadlocked on the 2-1/2-year Syrian civil war, should overcome its differences and take action. Having startled friends and foes alike in the Middle East by delaying a punitive attack on Assad until Congress reconvenes and agrees, Obama met congressional leaders at the White House on Tuesday to urge a prompt decision and assure them it did not mean another long war like Iraq or Afghanistan. John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor both pledged their support for military action after the meeting. Votes are expected to be held in the US Senate and House next week, with the Republican-led House presenting the tougher challenge for Obama. The Republican House leadership has indicated the votes will be “conscience votes,” meaning they will not seek to influence members’ votes on party lines. All the same, it would have been a big blow to Obama if he had not secured the backing of the top two Republicans. “I believe that my colleagues should support this call for action,” Boehner told reporters. The president said strikes aimed at punishing the use of chemical weapons would hurt Assad’s forces while other US action would bolster his opponents – though the White House has insisted it is not seeking “regime change.” “What we are envisioning is something limited. It is something proportional. It will degrade Assad’s capabilities,” Obama said. “At the same time we have a broader strategy that will allow us to upgrade the capabilities of the opposition.” Assad denies deploying poison gas that killed hundreds of civilians last month. The Syrian opposition, which on Tuesday said a forensic scientist had defected to the rebel side bringing evidence of Assad forces’ use of sarin gas in March, has appealed to Western allies to send them weapons and use their air power to end a war that has killed more than 100,000 and made millions homeless. The presence in rebel ranks of Islamist militants, some of them close to Al Qaeda, has made Western leaders wary, while at the same time the undoubted – and apparently accelerating – human cost of the conflict has brought pressure to intervene. The chairman of the US Senate Armed Services Committee said on Tuesday he was confident after talking with Obama that the United States would step up its support for “vetted” elements of the Syrian opposition. Senator Carl Levin said he urged the president, a fellow Democrat, to arm the Syrian rebels a day after two influential Republican senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, sought similar assurances from Obama. Levin said he told the White House that the United States should provide rebels with arms such as anti-tank weapons “which cannot be turned on us.” Top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi also voiced support for military strikes after meeting Obama on Tuesday, but Obama will still have to persuade some lawmakers, including Democrats, who have said they are concerned the president’s draft resolution could be too open-ended and allow possible use of ground troops or eventual attacks on other countries. US Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel took the administration’s message to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday. Kerry said the world was watching to see what the United States would do. “They want to know if America will rise to this moment and make a difference,” he told senators at the hearing. After two and a half years of war, nearly one Syrian in three has been driven from home by violence and fear. The UN refugee agency UNHCR said there had been a near tenfold increase over the past 12 months in the rate of refugees crossing Syria’s borders into Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon – to a daily average of nearly 5,000 men, women and children. This has pushed the total living abroad above 2 million. That represents some 10 per cent of Syria’s population, the UNHCR said. With a further 4.25 million estimated to have been displaced but still resident inside the country, close to a third of all Syrians are living away from their original homes. Comparing the figures to the peak of Afghanistan’s refugee crisis two decades ago, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, said: “Syria has become the great tragedy of this century – a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history.” Speaking of the acceleration in the crisis, he said: “What is appalling is that the first million fled Syria in two years. “The second million fled Syria in six months,” Guterres said. “The risks for global peace and security that the present Syria crisis represents, I’m sure, are not smaller than what we have witnessed in any other crisis that we have had since the Vietnam war,” said Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister. Russia, backed by China, has used its veto power in the UN Security Council three times to block resolutions condemning Assad’s government and threatening it with sanctions. Assad, like Russia, blames the rebels for the August 21 gas attack. Obama has said he is “comfortable going forward without the approval of a United Nations Security Council that so far has been completely paralysed and unwilling to hold Assad accountable.” Ban questioned whether the use of force to deter Syria or other countries from deploying chemical arms in the future could do more harm than good. In an interview in Tuesday’s Le Figaro , Assad told the Paris newspaper: “Everybody will lose control of the situation when the powder keg blows. There is a risk of a regional war.” The rebels have been struggling to hold ground in recent months, let alone advance. According to one opposition report, government forces took the strategic northwestern town of Ariha on Tuesday, though others said the battle was not over. Continue reading
Agar The First Potential Premium Product
Published : Saturday, 03 August 2013 Md Joynal Abdin Sujanagar union of Baralekha upazila under Moulvibazar district is the birthplace of Bangladeshi Agar-Agar wood and Agar oil. The Agar entrepreneurs of Sujanagar claim to be the first producers of the product in this subcontinent. Their relatives migrated to Assam (eastern province of India) and started Agar business there. The Mumbai Agar is a product of the migrant Bangladeshi people. According to what they claim, the Agar business in Bangladesh started its journey from Sujanagar about 400 years ago. About 150 factories are producing the fully export-oriented Agar wood and Agar oil at Sujanagar. They are producing premium (high-priced) products by using all local raw materials and machinery. Currently, they earn about Tk 500-750 million a year by exporting Agar products. It is now mentioned as an industry in any government document. Though the history of Agar industry in Bangladesh dates about 400 years back, Indian literature denotes the existence of Agar wood 2,000 years ago. It is an integral part of religious rituals of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, Taos, Sufis etc. In addition, it is widely used in Ayurveda, Unani, Arabic, Tibetan, Sufi and Chinese medicinal practices. The followers of Buddha believe that by burning Agar-wood and taking in its aroma one can reach the ultimate stage of meditation. It has found a mention in the 8th century tombs of Shahin Muslims. Agar trees grow in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, and Thailand. The leading Agar exporting countries are China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, India, the UK, Laos and Myanmar. There are few reserves of Agar trees in government-owned forests in Bangladesh. However, some dishonest officials of the Bangladesh Forest Department (BFD) often sell these trees on auction to middlemen. They do not have any Agar factories. They do not produce any Agar-wood or Agar oil. The middlemen then again sell the Agar trees to the local or foreign Agar producers. And thus the Agar-oil producers have to pay higher prices. If the government ensures transparency of the auction, the real entrepreneurs will be benefited and the industry will grow further. According to a study of the Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM), the world needs 4.5 million kilograms of Agar-wood per year and that is only the official figure. Unofficially, the world demands around six million kilograms per year. However, the producing countries could meet only 35 per cent of the demand led by India, the main producer, contributing only 12 per cent, Indonesia in the second place with seven per cent and Malaysia third with only six per cent. Thailand, Laos and Cambodia come after Malaysia. According to the study, 80 countries use gaharu or Agar products with the Middle East being the biggest importer. Only 35 per cent of the world’s demand is met by all Agar product producing countries. So there is a gap of 65 per cent between the demand and the supply of Agar products. So it is one of the overpriced products in the world. Bangladesh has a favourable climate for large-scale Agar plantation. We have skilled manpower and indigenous technology to produce the finest Agar wood and Agar oil. A big potential market is there. So the government should facilitate large-scale Agar production in Bangladesh. It can be the first Bangladeshi premium products to earn the highest amount of foreign currencies, if the necessary policy support is available from the government. Any public-private joint initiative help tap the enormous export potential of it. If Bangladesh does not take any initiative right now, other countries like Brunei, Malaysia etc may seize the opportunity to capture such a big market. ………………………………….. The writer is Programme Officer (Research & SME Journal) of the SME Foundation Continue reading