Monday, July 7, 2014

Doing Business, Still Too Sluggish

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Since the collapse of the world economy during The Great Recession in 2008, a new word has slipped into the lexicon of strategic business thinkers. It is de-globalisation.

How did this come about? The IMF has already predicted a decline in growth in 2014 for the world economy. But the contributing factors are the emergence of the US as a net exporter of energy with shale energy.

With the resulting cost of fuel dropping, the unit cost of production is falling as never before. Factories are returning to produce there with significant reshoring and insourcing of production.

The loss of IP or intellectual property to the Chinese is giving some companies pause. Quality of higher-end products is another issue.

Next is the auto industry. Here the labour unions have bargained more for job retention and less for benefits and wage increases. The USA is looking more like global growth locomotive.

Health care is a mixed bag in terms of company benefits provision. But its impact on cost and on company bottom-line appears to be in check.

The newly emerging economies do have "one-stop shopping" regarding the setting up of new businesses in their respective locale. The ASEAN group is a noteworthy example.

If follows therefore, that this "one-stop" provision all by itself with the country rankings, is "necessary but not sufficient".

Obviously, officialdom in Saint Lucia by merely reciting this fiction shows that it scarcely understands the critical success factors, and the criteria and the business environment that would create for Saint Lucia, sustainable FDI. Today, it is nothing but a pipe dream.

July 7, 2014 at 8:03 PM
Anonymous said...

The whole world is stuck with the financial system and chasing never ending 'growth.' GDP is a crude way of measuring output.

You can also saddle an economy with debt and it will still show a GDP increase.

It's time to instil some old fashioned values, namely living within your means, don't take on too much debt, educate yourself, live within the environment and DONT BE GREEDY. If you do that you can't go wrong. The problem with lucians is that you have no culture of learning, and you have a taste for US shit, yet you can't afford it.

Also I don't know why Kenny is pinning his hopes on those 'business ambassadors' in UK. If you saw the type of person who was at that gala, you wouldn't be holding your breath. Most Lucians in London live hand to mouth and are insular. They just stick to themselves rather than integrate with the locals.

July 8, 2014 at 1:07 AM
Anonymous said...

With so many safer places to invest; why would an investor risk lossing his investment in the land of Kenny Anthony; good friend of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and ALBA?

Let's pray investments will flow, once more, when the UWP returns to power.

Remember, the Marina, the Pigeon Island Causeway, the Castries/Gros islet Highway, the Bexon/Vieux Fort Highway and Hess; all came under UWP administrations.

July 8, 2014 at 4:03 AM
Anonymous said...

Debt is just not another one of those four-letter words. If properly managed it can create a platform for sustainable meaningful economic and less nominal GDP growth. That is growth in name only.

In all of the debates that I have listened to regarding our guestimates of expenditure and our budget, no budgetary advisory group, no PS Finance, no Director of Finance and even far less any Minister of Finance has had the perspicacity to articulate the focused goals of expenditure items as being either consumption and real investment in terms of years of government borrowings and their impact.

The last budget for instance was a quilted patchwork of uncoordinated ideas, some of ideas still searching for consensus. This shows the level of groping, bumbling and muddling through characteristic of government finances. No clarity of vision or any vision at all. It is all short-termism.

As long as they budgetary items are classified as Current or Capital Expenditure items, our budget framers are in economic heaven. The Ministers of Finance are no wiser for it. They are clueless about which questions to ask.

It takes deep knowledge of the variables involved to come to grips with the true picture.

Right now, we are governed on all sides by blathering incompetents.

No side in the debt debates shew the technical competences necessary to follow a logical path to its solution.

Granted all the frothing of those talkers on board Team SLP, from head to toe, they continue to betray that they are unable to see the forest for the trees.

July 8, 2014 at 9:04 AM

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