AFRICA: Financial Crisis May Increase Pressure for Debt Repayment

October 25, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites – Global Analyst Online / IPS
Saturday, October 25, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Stanley Kwenda*

MANZINI (Swaziland), Oct 25 (IPS) – The collapse of the financial markets may force the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to come down hard on African countries to repay their debts because the huge rescue packages for collapsing banks will need to be recuperated.

This is the view of Munyaradzi Gwisai of the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) of Zimbabwe. He spoke at the recently held seventh Southern Africa Social Forum in Manzini, Swaziland. The ISO is concerned with justice and liberation and working towards a ‘‘future socialist society”.

The demand for repayment ‘‘will result in further cuts on education, health and social services budgets, which will result in severe and savage cuts on the standards of living of the people in Africa and will leave the attainment of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals in danger,” said
Gwisai.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Africa, Commentary, Debt Crisis, Development

ARGENTINA: Caution and Enthusiasm for Fish Farming

October 25, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Saturday, October 25, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Marcela Valente* – Tierramérica

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 25 (IPS) – Fish farming is expanding in Latin America, fuelled by the demands of a global market that is facing the stagnation of commercial fishing. But some people are warning about the limits of industrial production of fish and the environmental and social risks.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 45 percent of the fish consumed in the world comes from fish farms. Today that means 48 million tonnes, but by 2030 that volume would have to be doubled because of the decline in commercial fishing and the increasing demands of a growing population.

In Mexico, aquaculture dates back to the pre-Hispanic era. Historians say that several species were raised in ponds and that the Maya Indians controlled fish reproduction in natural pools known as ”cenotes”.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Agriculture, Development, Environment, Report

SOUTHERN AFRICA: More Debt But Still No Development

October 25, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Saturday, October 25, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Stanley Kwenda*

MANZINI (Swaziland), Oct 25 (IPS) – Shupikai Machinya, a Zimbabwean cross-border trader who attended the recent Southern Africa Social Forum in Manzini, Swaziland, is one of the many delegates who wanted to understand just how a country ends up in debt.

Machinya frequently travels to South Africa where she acquires basic goods for resale in Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwe basic commodities such as salt, sugar, rice, cooking oil, bathing soap and maize-meal are rarities as a result of the devastating economic problems that the country is facing.

Although she belongs to the fledging Cross-Border Traders Association of Zimbabwe, debt and development remain distant issues for her. ‘‘I only know that debt is money borrowed by the government from outside but how it’s used and for what reason nobody knows,” Machinya told IPS.

‘‘We have heard that our government has borrowed lots of money since independence to build roads but no new roads were built after 1980 (the year Zimbabwe achieved independence). They even lied that they wanted to make the road from Harare to Beitbridge dual carriage as nothing has happened.” Beitbridge is a border post between Zimbabwe and South Africa.

The just ended social forum meeting in Manzini discussed debt among Southern African countries and how it can be effectively managed for the benefit of communities.

The three-day meeting, attended by several civil society organisations from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, resolved to initiate debt audits to force governments to account for monies borrowed.

But why the fuss about debt?

‘‘The problem of debt is central, it’s a social problem. The United Nations Development Programme estimates that poor countries pay four times more than they borrow, yet they ought to be spending more on health and education,” argued Dakarayi Matanga, executive director at the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD).

ZIMCODD is a civil society organisation interested in developing Zimbabwean people’s capacity to redress the debt burden and unjust trade practices and building and promoting alternatives to the neoliberal economic and social agenda.

Matanga regards debt audits as necessary to understand how debts are incurred and repaid and whether citizens are involved in the whole process of incurring them. Matanga urged SADC countries to initiate debt audits, saying regional countries have a common history of debt and how it affects citizens.

He gave a comprehensive synopsis of the different kinds of debt that countries accrue. He said debt is a situation where a person, country or organisation owes some money or possessions to another person, country or organisation.

He said there are several kinds of debts. Bilateral debt is owed by one government to another. Commercial debt is to private sector creditors and commercial banks. Domestic debt is owed to creditors resident in the same country and is denominated in local currency. External debt is owed to foreign creditors and denominated in foreign currency.

Multilateral debt is owed to a consortium of lenders, like the World Bank or regional development banks such as the African Development Bank. Official debt, he said, is owed to public sector lenders. Publically guaranteed debt originates from loans made to state-owned enterprises
or private companies where the payment is guaranteed by the government of the debtor country.

‘‘We should be concerned about the issue of a country’s indebtedness because debt is an obstacle to human development. Debt results in the use of scarce resources for servicing debt instead of investing in people’s wellbeing,” said Matanga.

According to ZIMCODD, Zimbabwe is one of the countries with a high and unsustainable level of indebtedness. Zimbabwe’s total external debt stood at 4,9 billion dollars in 2007, an amount as big as the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Matanga further stressed that for ordinary citizens like Machinya to benefit from debt, a host of things have to be put in place. He recommended that SADC civil society organisations keep an eye on government borrowing; institute legal reforms through advocacy to parliaments to force governments to be accountable to citizens; and launch mass public education on debt issues.

*This is the first of two articles. Follow the link below to read the second.

Filed Under: Africa, Commentary, Debt Crisis, Development

KENYA: Biofuels Boom and Bust

October 24, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Friday, October 24, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

John David Bwakali

NAIROBI, Oct 24 (IPS) – The Kenyan government has hailed bio-diesel as an innovation that combines green politics with poverty reduction. But recent drops in biofuel prices have caused concern about the sustainability of alternative fuel production.

Rural farmers who have invested all their savings into growing oil seeds now fear they have opted for the wrong venture.

Over the last few years, the Kenyan government, NGOs and industry have pushed the production of bio-diesel — which is environmentally sustainable because it emits fewer toxic air pollutants and greenhouse gasses than petroleum-based fuels — and many small-scale farmers have placed their hopes into oil seeds as a new avenue to earn money. Initially, biofuel projects seemed to be a success, with farmers more than doubling their usual income.

In Ngurumani, a small town in Kenya’s Rift Valley, for example, farmers started to sell the seeds of the jatropha tree for bio-diesel production, which had an immediate, positive impact on reducing poverty and hunger in the region. Farmers who previously used to plant food crops for household consumption only, started selling seeds for as much as $10 per kilo.

Esther Siteyia, a 28-year-old Maasai from Ngurumani, told IPS she bought and sold over five tonnes of the seeds during the last twelve months. ”For the first ten months that I sold Jatropha seeds, my income tripled. I would buy seeds from farmers and sell them to the highest bidder at a handsome profit,” she says. Small-scale farmers who sold the seeds to her also made good profits, increasing their income to more than $1 a day.

Originally from Central America, the drought-resistant jatropha tree has been growing in Ngurumani for decades. Yet, until recently, the Maasai, who traditionally use jatropha trees for fencing of homesteads, marking graves or treating cuts, were unaware that the black seeds of the trees were in fact valuable sources of biofuel.

In another town in Central Kenya, Naromoru, a collaboration between NGO Help Self Help, the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Nairobi and Dutch bio-diesel manufacturer Solarix launched Kenya Eco-Energy, a project that encourages rural farmers to use two other types of seeds, castor and croton, for environmentally friendly bio-diesel production.

Small-scale farmers earned $0.15 per kilogramme of castor or croton seeds. ”Every day, I now make about 200 shillings ($2.5) from the seeds,’ says Ann Njeri, a housewife and mother of three who lives on a small farm outside Naromoru.

Prices dropped

However, the farmers’ luck ran out in April when biofuel prices suddenly plummeted from an average of $10 per kilo to less than $0.5 per kilo. Biofuel research companies, producers and NGOs supporting the production of environmentally friendly diesel had created an artificially high demand for the seeds, which resulted a high pricing structure that could not be maintained in an open market in the long-term.

In addition, the development of regulatory policy frameworks and local infrastructure needed to manufacture bio-diesel took longer than expected. As a result, Kenya has only few biofuel processing plants that struggle to keep up production with seed supply, and many rural farmers cannot afford the costs of transporting their seeds to the nearest factory.

Siteyia’s storeroom in Ngurumani, for example, is now filled to the brim with Jatropha, but she has no buyers for her seeds. The Kenya Eco-Energy project, to which she initially sold the seeds, has run out of capacity, and the nearest oil seed processing plant in Central Kenya is more than 200 kilometres from her village, too far for her to transport the seeds herself.

Although the production of biofuels creates environmental sustainability, farmers will not be able to continue investing in them if they don’t have a market to sell their produce. Numerous Kenyan farmers who have put their little savings into the planting of oil seed producing trees have now lost their initial investments.

Linet Kanini, a small-scale farmer from Tala in eastern Kenya, has found herself to be financially worse off now than before investing into oil seeds. More than a year after planting Jatropha on her five-acre farm, she harvested a few kilos of seeds — far less than she expected — and has no customers. She says she regrets deciding to plant the oil crop: ”Although I have harvested a few kilos, I have nowhere to sell them.”
Lack of infrastructure

Yet, energy experts remain optimistic, predicting the demand for biofuels to increase in the near future. According to the International Energy Outlook of 2007, global oil consumption is projected to increase by about 36% by 2030. In Africa, oil consumption is projected to double in that time.

Already, global bio-diesel production is on the increase, growing from one billion litres in 2000 to six billion litres in 2006. If this trend continues, oil seed farmers may reap substantial profits within the next few years.

Farmers now set their hopes into the Kenyan energy ministry that promised to support bio-diesel production as a poverty reduction strategy. It recently passed policies to encourage the building of bio-diesel refineries in rural areas and said it expects the country’s bio-diesel industry to increase household income levels by 30% by 2012.

John Kioli, director of Nairobi-based NGO Green Africa Foundation, agrees that more money needs to be invested into small-scale biofuel production to turn around the downward trend in pricing. ”For profitable and sustainable markets to be realised, local communities need their own processing plants that absorb locally available seeds. The guiding principle should be to use local raw material for local production and for local consumption,” he explained.

Biodiesel is not only supported by governments for poverty alleviation and environmental reasons, it is also cheaper than regular diesel.

At a filling station in Naromoru, a long line of motorists cue to fill their vehicles with bio-diesel. At $1.1 per litre, bio-diesel is ten cents cheaper than ordinary petrol, a price difference that accumulates to substantial savings for drivers.

”Every day, I cover 300 kilometres with my public minibus. I am now saving about $90 every month because of using bio-diesel,” minibus driver Maina Kamau told IPS.

Filed Under: Africa, Development, Energy, Environment, Report

DEVELOPMENT: Harmonious Cities – a Social and Environmental Solution

October 23, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Thursday, October 23, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 23 (IPS) – Sao Paulo emits only a tenth of the greenhouse gases that San Diego produces, even though this Brazilian metropolis is four times larger than that city in California, according to a report released today by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat).

Based on such comparisons, the State of the World’s Cities 2008/2009 — a report published every two years by the UN agency, which in this new edition focuses on ”Harmonious Cities” — concludes that the contribution of cities to global warming has more to do with consumption patterns and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita than it does with the level of urbanisation.

The most urbanised region in the developing world is Latin America and the Caribbean, with 77 percent of its population living in cities — a proportion expected to increase to 85 percent within the next two decades, Cecilia Martínez, UN-Habitat’s Latin America regional director, highlighted at a press conference.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Development, Report

DEVELOPMENT: Now Sit Up and Listen – to 117 Million People

October 23, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Thursday, October 23, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Analysis by Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Oct 23 (IPS) – For every one in 50 people around the world to make a point of standing up somewhere on the planet to say the same kind of thing adds up to a lot of people. More than any mass mobilisation on any issue ever before.

And now that they have, it should follow for leaders, if only for their own sake, to sit up and listen.

The official figure for the campaign to ‘Stand Up and Take Action against Poverty and for the Millennium Development Goals’ Oct. 17-19 has been declared at 116,993,629. The call came from the Global Call for Action Against Poverty (GCAP), an alliance of about 100 social movements, non-government organisations and community and faith groups.

This was considerably more than the 43 million recorded last year.

But the actual number is almost certainly higher than this official figure, says Salil Shetty, director of the U.N. Millennium Campaign. The official total was announced while results, after due verification, were still coming in, he said, adding that the number that actually stood up would be about twice the 67 million estimated before the weekend event. Organisers say two percent of the world population physically stood up to make a point against poverty.

Actions ranged from standing up to deliver petitions to presidents or at local events where city mayors and other officials were invited to listen, to protest marches and meetings where everyone stood up to make a point. The protest gave quite vivid truth to the old cliché about local actions, carried out globally — this time about similar matters, simultaneously.

The added support for the campaign against poverty might just have been provoked by the global financial crisis, that has seen thousands of billions of dollars go into financial institutions brought down by dubious dabblers, after the leaders who sanctioned this money denied a fraction of that to feed the world’s hungry.

”If the rich countries kept their promise of 0.7 percent of their GNP for aid, that would generate more than 200 billion dollars, more than enough to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and is still much, much less than we’ve seen available for the banking bailout,” Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and former U.N. high commissioner for human rights declared as the results came in Wednesday.

”The money is there. But it’s the political will. Leaders must listen to more than 116 million people,” she said. ”We have shattered all previous records for mass mobilisation. People really want to stand up against poverty, and say we need change.”

The highest number of people who stood up, 73 million, was recorded in Asia, with 13 million reported in Bangladesh alone. Africa recorded about 24.5 million, and less expectedly, what was declared the ‘Arab region’ recorded close to 18 million.

Europe recorded close to a million, but Latin America only about 211,000. North America seems not to have drawn a significant response at all — though the movement was led and coordinated from New York.

The initiative is not just about numbers, but a way to make protest possible. ”We’ve created an opportunity for ordinary people to have a voice and to participate and to feel that they are not just objects of change but really the drivers of change,” said Kumi Naidoo, co-chair of GCAP and honorary president of CIVICUS, a leading global NGO campaigning for rights and development.

”We’ve created a global event which is fundamentally local in nature,” he said at a press conference after the attendance count. ”My sense of why there was such an overwhelming turnout is that there is deep concern that the global economic crisis must not detract from meeting the MDGs, and exceeding them.”

The attention to the money market crisis rather than to the MDGs clearly spurred a good deal of the protest action.

For the food crisis the leaders struggled to pledge eight billion dollars, for the financial crisis they found 3,000 billion dollars, said Sylvia Borren, executive director of Oxfam Novib in the Netherlands. ”There is an ethical question here. If we had used that money at the bottom of the pyramid we would have achieved the MDGs by now.” In this protest, ”the urgency is the message.”

The participation in the protest, she said, is ”a democratic challenge for local governments, for national governments, but particularly also for the global governance we have, that says we the people do not understand that this kind of money can be spent on the Wall Street problem when children are dying every three seconds and women are dying at childbirth unnecessarily every minute.”

The message coming across, Borren said, was that money was being spent ”on financial institutions, on wars, it’s being spent on all sorts of things we don’t want; we want it spent on education, on water, on health, on food.”

But between the delivery of a message and its receipt there still lies a wide gap. World leaders are meeting soon, not to end poverty or to find ways of providing everyone affordable food, but to make sure that the rich continue to buy, and that their market continues to flourish.

Filed Under: Development, News, Poverty, United Nations

DEVELOPMENT-CAMEROON: Sweet Deal For Bee-Keepers

October 23, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Thursday, October 23, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Tamfu Hanson

GAROUA, Oct 23 (IPS) – Paul Mboui’s family will soon move into the attractive new bungalow he is building. Then he will rent out his present compound as a warehouse to Guiding Hope, the honey trading company that has made him prosperous.

”I have come to realise that one can make it even in the village depending on hard work, honesty and dedication,” says Mboui, 42. Mboui is the epitome of success in Ngaoundal, home to one of Cameroon’s oldest military training camps, about 560 kilometres from the capital, Yaoundé. Mboui is field operations manager for Guiding Hope, a company formed to improve income for bee-keepers in the area around Ngaoundal.

Guiding Hope’s shareholders include Mboui, who coordinates purchasing and processing of honey and wax, Managing Director Michael Njikeu and Production Manager Herman Tcamba, responsible for processing honey for the national market. Verina Ingram oversees environmental policy and international relations, while Yves Soukontua is in charge of research and development. Coordinating client relations is the sixth and final shareholder, Rebecca Howard, indisputably the driving force behind Guiding Hope.

Five years ago, Howard was an undergraduate student of anthropology interning with a network of community-based NGOs, one of which took her along to meet the bee-keepers in the Adamawa area of northwestern Cameroon. ”I developed an interest in traditional methods of bee-keeping and the role it plays in the local economy and immediately realised the need for a more reliable market,” recounts Howard.

Back in Britain, she linked up with Tropical Forest Products, a company dealing in tropical products and buying honey from Zambia, and proposed the idea of importing good quality honey from Cameroon.

As a volunteer development coordinator for the company, Howard gained a wealth of experience about honey quality, and the challenges of exporting it to the European market. She traveled to Uganda and Rwanda to learn more about honey production in the African context while maintaining her Cameroon connections.

Fair trade for traditional bee-keepers

Three years ago, Howard returned to Cameroon create Guiding Hope whose objective is to develop profitable, environmentally and socially responsible trade of high quality, fair-trade organic honey and other bee products for the African and European markets. Working closely with about 10,000 bee keepers, Guiding Hope is promoting and helping to refine traditional apiculture methods; introducing new, high-value wax products such as soap and candles; and promoting export.

Products include the naturally smoky flavoured liquid from beehives in the rich flowering Adamawa forest savanna. There is also a creamy, naturally granulated white honey from the Kilum-Ijum forest — one of the last remnants of cloud forest rich in biodiversity. Guiding Hope also produces hand-made soaps, candles and other beeswax-derived products.

Last year Guiding Hope sold two million litres of honey worth an estimated at $400,000 to Chad, Nigeria and Gabon as well as within Cameroon. Wax brought in approximately $240,000.

If all goes well, five containers of honey and five more of wax will be exported to the European market by June 2009. ”But if we don’t make a quick breakthrough in Europe, we may be turning to South Africa and other places,” says Howard.

The export of honey to the European Union is hanging in the balance as Guiding Hope is still working with the government and partners on setting up a honey monitoring residue system.

”We are working towards organic certification with a strict system of control and traceability from bee farmers to the bottle to ensure purity, quality and consumer confidence,” says Guiding Hope director Njikeu.

”With the assistance and guidance of Guiding Hope, we are adding more value to our products. I learned bee keeping from my dad, but I am doing better than he was in his days. I pay school fees for my three junior brothers and my own daughter,” declares Aminatou Hamoa, a 25 year old single mother who is in the honey business.

A local administrative official of the ministry of agriculture, Joseph Samaki, is quick to add that the project will tremendously improve the welfare of the population. ”It will wipe the sweat of bee keepers who hitherto received very little for their efforts,” he stresses.

Guiding Hope was one of winners of the 2008 awards for innovative projects for sustainable development awarded by the SEED Initiative. SEED — ”Supporting Entrepreneurs for Sustainable Development” — is a global network that supports progress on Millennium Development Goals in line with the principles outlined at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002.

Filed Under: Africa, Agriculture, Development, Report

INDIA: Reaching for the Moon on a Shoestring Budget

October 23, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Thursday, October 23, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

T V Padma

SRIHARIKOTA, Oct 23 (IPS) – With the successful launch of its maiden, unmanned mission to the moon, India has signalled growing confidence as an emerging Asian space power, ready to rub shoulders with Japan and China.

Asia itself is following the lunar footsteps of western countries and analysts see the Chinese and Indian space missions as the Asian equivalent of the rivalry between the United States and the former Soviet Union for space glory four decades ago.

Japan launched its first lunar orbiter Hiten in 1990 and China sent up its Change-1 orbiter is September 2007.

India’s Chandrayaan — meaning moon vehicle in Sanskrit — launched Wednesday from this spaceport, a small island in the Bay of Bengal, aims for the first total comprehensive mapping of the moon, says project director Mylswami Annadurai. Previous lunar missions by other countries have provided patchy data.

Using a combination of 11 instruments — five Indian and six from the U.S. and Europe, the spacecraft will map the moon in various wavelengths of light and bands of energy, for two years, positioning itself at 100 kms off the surface of the moon by November.

This will not only help Indian scientists study the moon’s rock and air composition, but also deduce how water could have flowed on it once and identify the best potential sites for setting up bases on the earth’s ‘companion’.

”This is a unique mission and one which will undertake a total mapping of the lunar surface, its hills and valley and craters,” ISRO chairman Gopalan Madhavan Nair said soon after the launch.

With the launch of Chandrayaan, India space scientists sent several key messages.

For one, compared to other space-faring nations, the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO’s) missions are cost-effective. Chandrayaan cost ISRO 80 million US dollars, compared to Japan’s Selene mission’s 480 million dollars, or China’s Change-E1 mission that cost 187 million dollars. The European Space Agency (ESA’s Small Mission for Advanced Research in Technology (SMART-1) in 2003 cost 140 million dollars.

The Chandrayan mission symbolises a growing trend for western nations to collaborate with Indian space endeavours, instead of clamping sanctions on ‘dual-use’ technologies and isolating the country. Both space and nuclear technology have military applications.

Chandrayaan carries on board two U.S. instruments; a ‘miniature small aperture radar’ or mini-SAR to image the permanently shadowed regions of the moon, and a ‘moon mineralogy mapper’ for detailed mapping of minerals on the moon’s surface.

Ironically, it was the U.S. that once led the technology embargoes against ISRO, many of which are expected to be lifted, following the passing of the Indo-U.S. nuclear cooperation deal by the U.S. Senate this month.

The spaceraft also carries upgraded versions of two spectrometers carried on ESA’s SMART-1 mission, one made by Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Solar System Science and the other by Britain’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

Also on board is an instrument to measure radioactivity on the moon’s surface, made by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

Chandrayaan has ”set an example of international cooperation for space exploration,” notes Nair. It signifies a ”new chapter” not only for ISRO but also the global community, he says.

ISRO scientists are also countering the long-standing argument of critics that India can ill-afford to spend money on expensive space projects, when this country is still mired in poverty.

Nair asserts three points. First is the meagre ISRO annual budget of one billion dollars, compared to the 20 billion dollars of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Secondly, with this small budget, India is the only country to use hi-tech space research for development, with a combination of satellites for telecommunications, weather forecasting, crops and education. ”Even western nations have recognised this,” he says. ”We are sharply focused on our objectives and work in mission mode,” he says.

The third is that ISRO uses 80 percent of its budget for development-related missions and the remaining 15 percent for advanced research and missions such as Chandrayaan, Nair said.

At an international astronauts’ congress in September 2007 in Hyderabad, Nair had described ISRO’s new focus on the moon and Mars missions as a ”second vision” for ISRO.

As part of this second vision, ISRO has on its agenda three more missions to the moon, and one to the Mars. ISRO is aiming for a second lunar mission by the end of 2010 or early 2011, carrying a Russian-made rover that will collect rock and soil samples from the moon’s surface for further analysis.

By 2015 India hopes to send up two astronauts to study the moon; and even land astronauts on the moon by 2020. Nair also says that Mars is the ”next natural destination for ISRO”, though this is still at a conceptual stage.

Renewed international interest in the moon is spurred by possible commercial exploitation of the moon’s resources, especially helium-3 which is considered one of the cleanest sources of energy.

”We do not want to lag behind in the international quest for the moon’s resources,” said Annadurai.

Such ambitious plans call for a huge jacking up of rocket technology for ISRO, with changes needed to be made to its Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), a home-made rocket that sends two-ton INSAT satellites into orbit for telecommunication, broadcasting and weather services.

”There is a huge complex challenge,” notes ISRO scientist N Narayanamurthy. ‘’The spacecraft to be used will differ from Chandrayaan-1, and ISRO is still new to technologies involving soft-landing of the moon rover, or building spacecraft for human stay.”

Indeed, even in the Chandrayaan mission, ISRO faces several first-time technology tests, such as the deep sea tracking network using a 32-metre diameter antennae (at Bylalu village near Bangalore), injecting the spacecraft into a lunar trajectory, or understanding how the solar wind and other planetary movements will affect the spacecraft’s path in a moon’s orbit.

”There are many uncertainties and unknowns associated with the present mission,” admitted Nair.

Filed Under: Development, Politics, Report

CHINESE ECONOMY MONITOR— NOTE 1

October 22, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites – Global News Blog
Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – Chennai Center for China Studies
www.c3sindia.org

B.RAMAN

( What will be the impact of the global financial and economic melt-down on the Chinese economy? This question should be of interest to the other countries of the South and the South-East Asian region. If the Chinese economy is badly affected, they too are likely to feel the negative consequences of the down-turn in the Chinese economy. Keeping this in view, we intend brInging out a periodic “Chinese Economy Monitor” based on open information. Here goes the first Monitor in the series—B.Raman)

CITIC PACIFIC FACES ENQUIRY

The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) of Hong Kong announced on October 22,2008, that it has undertaken an enquiry into the affairs of the Citic Pacific, the Hong Kong listed branch of the China International Trust and Investment Corporation, following a report submitted by the Citic Pacific to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on October 20, allegedly admitting that two of its senior executives had entered into unauthorised foreign exchange forward contracts in Euros and Australian dollars, which have already resulted in a loss of US $ 104 million, with a possibility of further losses, which could run up to another US $ 200 million. Among those reportedly facing enquiry are a Finance Director of the Company and the daughter of the Chairman of the company, who occupied a senior position in the company. It has been reported that pending the enquiry she has already been demoted. Albert Ho, a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Assembly, has accused the company of concealing this information from the investors. The Citic Pacific has reportedly admitted that it became aware of this unauthorised transaction on September 7. According to Ho, the company did not mention this in a circular issued by it to the investors on September 12. The prices of the shares of the company fell by 55 per cent on October 21 and by another 10 per cent on October 22.—- Source Agence France Presse (AFP).

TOY INDUSTRY IN A CRISIS

2.Another toy factory in China catering to the US market went bankrupt on October 22 and closed down its production, rendering 900 workers jobless. The toy factory is called the Chong Yik Toy company. It is owned by a Hong Kong businessman and is based in Shenzhen in the Guangdong province. Some of the workers have alleged that they were not paid their salaries for the last four months. Some payments were made to them by the company as well as the local Chinese authorities at the time of the termination of their services. Last week, the Hong Kong listed Smart Union Toys factory in Dongguan in the Guangdong province closed down after terminating the services of 7000 workers. According to the Xinhua news agency, in the first seven months of this year, 3631 small scale enterprises producing toys mainly for the US market have closed down due to a decline in the demand for China-made toys from the US. These enterprises, which have closed down, constituted 52.7 per cent of all toy-making companies in China— Source “South China Morning Post” and AFP.

SHIPPING COMPANIES FACE DIFFICULTIES

3.After the aviation industry, the shipping industry is facing a crisis due to a decrease in demand for cargo space.Share prices of some major shipping companies, which haul bulk freight such as iron ore, coal and grains, have fallen by 50-70 per cent in the past few months.”The global economic slowdown will push some shipping lines into bankruptcy,” Marc Faber, a famed investor and editor of the “Gloom Boom & Doom” report, told AFP. Standard & Poor’s also said this week that the Asian shipping market has suffered double-digit declines on the US-Asia route in June and July, as well as being hit with higher operating costs. There are reports of idle vessels being put to anchor, and question marks over the many orders for new ships that were placed in brighter times, years ahead of expected completion dates. “Pain levels could be high for companies that agreed to pay 2007 top-dollar prices for dry bulk ships, or who agreed to pay high long-term charters,” said an article in the Far Eastern Economic Review this month. Container shipping was hit first earlier this year as demand for Asian-made goods in the US and Europe dropped off.In a chain reaction, Asian factories manufacturing electronics and consumer items for the US and European markets began lowering output, and the need for raw materials has declined.
Container shippers, bulk operators and port authorities across the region are reporting slowdowns. Malaysia’s Port Klang said it had been hit by a decline in cargo handling since the start of October, due to a retail downturn and lower vehicle sales in the US and Europe. The
Shanghai International Port has said that growth in cargo traffic dropped sharply to 9.9 per cent in the first half of 2008 on the “increasingly grave global economy and trade situation”. “Faced with the severe economic situation at home and abroad, the port industry has met with the most complicated operation environment in recent years,” it said. Hong Kong, which is sensitive to any drop in demand for toys, gadgets and clothes made in the factory-belt of China’s southern Guangdong province, said that after an increase of 6.7 per cent in container traffic in August, growth dropped suddenly in September to just 1.2 per cent. “Given the global gloomy economic outlook, Hong Kong is expected to face a much tougher export trade environment,” said Hong Kong Container Terminal Operators Association chairman Alan Lee.
In Taiwan’s seven harbours, volumes fell 2.23 per cent in the nine months to September, and in southern Kaohsiung city, business was down 1.76 per cent. “We are seeing a rapid decline in the volume of exports,” an official with the Japanese Shipowners’ Association said of the decline in demand. Shipping rates have been falling to levels s not seen since the Asian financial crisis in 1997-1998.A so-called capesize vessel, most commonly used to carry coal and iron ore, now costs under US$11,000 a day to hire, about half the charge in May.
Container shipping lines have said they expect cargo demand on the US-Asia route to fall by as much as eight per cent in 2008.
“It’s a safe statement that no carrier is operating profitably in the eastbound transpacific market today,” said Ron Widdows, chairman of the Transpacific Stabilisation Agreement – a forum of major shipping lines. However, the group said vessels are still running at 90 per cent capacity as firms cut costs by consolidating routes and returning chartered vessels, and take advantage of the downturn to lay up ships for repairs.Widdows said the industry was confident that government efforts to unclog global finance would be effective, restoring confidence and paving the way for a shipping recovery in late 2009.—- Source AFP

CONTAINER TRAFFIC DOWN

4. Shanghai’s port, one of the world’s busiest, has cut its container traffic target for the year by five per cent, blaming the global financial crisis and an economic slowdown.The Shanghai International Port Group’s handling volume is expected to reach 28.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), less than its earlier target of 30 million TEU.Lower trade volume due to the weakening global economy, slowing domestic growth and natural disasters in China this year have affected the port’s container operations.China’s economy expanded by nine per cent in the third quarter, the lowest level in about five years as the global credit crisis put a dent in its booming economy.The port operator’s container throughput rose 10.4 per cent from a year earlier to 13.82 million TEU in the first half, sharply slower than the growth in 2007, when throughput jumped 20.4 per cent to 26.2 million TEU.In the first nine months of 2008, container processing in Chinese ports rose 14.9 per cent to 94.5 million TEU, 2.2 per cent lower than the first half, according to Ministry of Transport figures.— Source “Shanghai Securities News” and AFP.

MOVE FOR FINANCIAL WATCHDOG

5.Japan, China and South Korea will set up an Asian watchdog body to monitor the health of financial institutions in a bid to counter global economic chaos.They hope to have the first meeting in Tokyo next month and also invite other Asian nations including the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).It would serve as a regional version of the Financial Stability Forum, a panel that advises the Group of Seven major economies and exchanges information among them.Japan also hopes the meeting would discuss enhancing controls on the financial system.The move came as US and European leaders called for an emergency summit in November to discuss ways to restore the battered global financial sector. Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso is also sounding out whether the South Korean and Chinese leaders can travel to Japan by the end of the year for an inaugural three-way economic summit. Japanese Government officials declined to comment on the reports. —Source “Yomiuri Shimbun” and the Kyodo news agency.

REAL ESTATE

6.China will exempt property transactions from stamp tax and value-added tax from November 1 to boost the ailing real estate market, state media reported on October 22, citing the Finance Ministry.

IMPACT ON SINO-INDIAN TRADE

My comment: The down-turn in the Chinese economy is likely to affect Sino-Indian bilateral trade which has galloped to a record US $ 30 billion and could affect Indian iron ore producers. Iron ore constitutes about 55 per cent of Indian exports to China. With the Olympics over and with the sluggish real estate market and a suspension of the construction of new factories, the demand for steel in China could come down.(22-10-08)\\

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

Filed Under: Development, Economy, Exclusive

ECONOMY: Rich-Poor Divide Worst Among Rich Countries

October 22, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Wednesday, October 22, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (IPS) – The ”American Dream” of upward social mobility appears to have emigrated from its birthplace in the United States to northern Europe, according to a major new report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on the growth of economic equality over the past 20 years.

Of its 30 member states, most of which are also members of the European Union, the United States has the largest gap between its wealthiest and poorest households after Mexico and Turkey, according to the report, ”Growing Unequal?”, which was released at OECD headquarters in Paris Tuesday.

That gap has grown particularly large in the U.S. since 2000 — that is, under the administration of President George W. Bush — according to the report, which found that the gap between the U.S. middle class and the wealthiest 10 percent has also increased.

The growth in the divide has major implications for social mobility, according to OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria, who said the report’s data had demonstrated that the notion that inequality encourages the poor to do better is false.

”Social mobility is low in countries with high inequality like Italy, the UK (United Kingdom), and the United States. And it is much higher in the Nordic countries, where income is distributed more evenly,” he told reporters.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Development, IPS
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