September 26, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
Jim Rogers has been an agriculture bull for quite a long time, and he has combined that favorite investment sector of his in a new commodities index fund, which also includes China, along with agriculture. Rogers has partnered with with Australia’s Macquarie Funds group to create the new Macquarie and Rogers China Agriculture Index.
Rogers’ assertion for some time has been that no matter what happens in the global economy, and what may be the demand for general products or services in the near or far future, agriculture is going to play an increasingly big role in the world, and those investing in the sector will do well in the years ahead.
Put the expanding Chinese middle class together with the growing population and economy, and you see the potential the Macquarie and Rogers China Agriculture Index fund represents.
so even with the continuing challenges facing the global economy, agricultural commodities will continue to be in high demand, especially those targeting the Asian market.
Commodity investors will be glad to know the difference between the Macquarie and Rogers China Agriculture Index and other Indices. In this case, the agriculture index fund will focus on the actual consumption of food and the price fluctuations connected to that, rather than simply tracking production, which doesn’t guarantee anything will be consumed or sold.
With the price of food being undoubtedly tied to the Chinese people, anything targeting that market should enjoy bellwhether status in relationship to global food prices, and so an index fund in relationship to Jim Rogers should do well in tracking the price fluctuations of food in the densely populated country. It should rank among one of the top hedge funds in the near and far future.
Another benefit to those marketing and managing financial products to invest in, is the ability to create innovative products linked to the overall focus of the commodity index fund. How that happens is the exchange-traded futures contracts or commodity ETF future contracts it uses on physical commodities.
This is a great opportunity for those who believe in the overall competence of Jim Rogers to get involved in something he’s studied and watched closely, as well as believes in passionately. In that sense, connecting to a hot commodity market like China with a agricultural raw materials fund will be a great way to profit for those interested in investing in a commodity or commodity index fund or ETF.
As Jim Rogers has said over the last several years, we can count on the current commodity bull market to continue for years, and the existing economic crisis will only extend it longer, even if there is some short term pain and slowdown.
As Rogers continues to hammer home, food will be eaten and in demand no matter what else happens. And with that demand to be no larger than in China, it positions Rogers, commodity investors, and the Macquarie and Rogers China Agriculture Index for long term investing success.
We must keep watching commodity hedge funds and commodity etfs which specifically target agriculture. With agriculture prices plunging in 2008, they will turn around sooner or later, and investing in a commodity index fund like Macquarie and Rogers China Agriculture Index should provide a solid return when those prices start to climb again.
Demand for food isn’t just going to climb linearily, it will climb exponentially, as even with population-control efforts, it continues to climb in the Asian region had significant pace. Food demand and prices will follow that continuing trend.
The primary strategy of the Macquarie and Rogers China Agriculture Index is to track consumer consumption patterns in China, and how food prices respond to them. That’s the underlying foundation of the fund. This is what gives the fund an excellent chance of bringing a high level of return for those looking at the agricultural commodity sector.
As mentioned earlier, more than any other people in the world in the years ahead, the Chinese will more than anybody determine the food priorities and prices globally, and the new agriculture commodity fund from Jim Rogers should move up with that reality.
While we know that past success doesn’t in any way guarantee future results, the past performance of Jim Rogers, especially when working with George Soros and the amazingly successful Quantum Fund, which gained about 4,200 percent over a ten-year-period, does give an indication that he knows what he’s doing, and does his homework when it comes to supply and demand of raw materials.
And Rogers now sees agriculture as the major point of demand for probably decades, and so the fund was created.
The new Macquarie and Rogers China Agriculture Index fund should be an strong investment vehicle in the hot commodities hedge fund sector for some time to come.
August 28, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
According to the latest predictions from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) price volatility, climate change and crop diseases combined with poor harvests in 2010 could herald another food crisis in 2011, particularly in parts of Africa and Asia.
Floods in Pakistan and China and the summer drought in Russia, which led to a ban on all wheat exports this year, mean that stocks of wheat, maize and some other foods were not as high as in previous years.
It has already been seen that this has led to to commodity price speculation that pushed up the prices of these grains and food by 40% in a few months and food price inflation is currently running at 15% per year.
Almost certainly consumers and shoppers in most of the world will be facing higher food bills in 2011. The FAO’s November monthly report forecasts that these factors will lead to a running down of global food reserves, which are currently at around 74 days, and an increase in prices of between 10% and 20% in 2011.
The prediction is its most pessimistic since 2008, when more than 25 countries experienced food riots after price rises precipitated a food crisis that hit the poorest in many parts of the world.
Several other factors add to the problem. Current forecasts for world grain production next year are at 2% below 2009, lower than was anticipated last June, when production for 2011 was being forecast to expand.
In addition, the FAO says, climate change and the competition between food and biofuel production means that grain crops particularly command higher prices as biofuel rather than as food.
Increasingly unpredictable weather patterns attributed to climate change are adding to the situation’s volatility and the potential for further price speculation as well as the ongoing problem of some increasingly intractable diseases such as wheat rust, a fungus that can seriously affect the level of the harvest.
The report says: “The most feared disease of wheat’stem rust has re-emerged in a new virulent form, and new aggressive stripe rust strains are devastating wheat crops in several countries.” Since was first identified the pathogen, which is wind-borne and can travel up to several thousand kilometres, has continued to mutate and spread.
While reaching global agreement on tackling such issues as climate change and combating the temptation towards price speculation, protecting national economies by using import tariffs and restrictions in a global economic crisis may be moving far too slowly to have any major impact on food production and scarcity in the short term there are other strategies that could be used.
One is taking urgent action to restore degraded land around the world. There is an estimated 1bn hectares-plus of land with the potential to be restored. Another is to increase the fertility of existing land. In the context of improving fertility the use of disease resistant seeds, integrated pest management and conservation agriculture can all play a part.
The work of biopesticides developers in devising low-chem agricultural yield enhancers, biopesticides and biofungicides, all of which are kinder to the environment, soil and ecosystems could be particularly helpful to poorer small farmers in the developing world as long as there is wider agreement on speedy regulation and licensing as well as proper training and financial support for farmers to be able to access them.
Copyright (c) 2010 Alison Withers
August 25, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
ADDIS ABABA – When global drinks giant Diageo bought a brewery in Ethiopia, it paid a premium for a stake in a barely tapped African market that in the 1980s had spectacularly failed to feed its own population.
Diageo paid $225 million for state-owned Meta Abo, joining a list of firms seeking a foothold in Africa’s second most populous nation that was once run by communists and now has an emerging middle class after a decade of double-digit growth.
We paid a premium of course and that was a deliberate decision … We knew the value of what we were buying, Francis Agbonlahor, Diageo’s managing director at Meta Abo, told Reuters in a capital that boasts smart highways and new office blocks.
Ethiopia is now sub-Saharan Africa’s fifth biggest economy, leap-frogging next door Kenya and wooing investors from Sweden, Britain and China, as other emerging markets lose some of their shine.
Few nations can better tell the story of Africa Rising, the narrative of a hopelessly mismanaged and violent continent now prized for strong growth and, in many cases, the kind of political stability scarcely imaginable a decade or two ago.
Yet like other African nations, Ethiopia must now work out how to maintain economic momentum as the U.S. Federal Reserve starts to turn off the taps of easy money that drove investors to more adventurous markets, and when China’s economy and those of other emerging powers start to shift down a gear.
That means another tricky transition for Ethiopia, which has until now relied on the state to run its economy, but which has seen growth rates slip to 7-8 percent, short of the level needed for its goal of middle income status by 2025.
When you are starting from a very low base with a lot of donor support, it is easy enough to grow in a strong, robust way, said Razia Khan, head of Africa research for Standard Chartered bank. As the economy matures … it is going to become a lot more difficult.
Dilemma
Opening up the economy, as many businesses at home and abroad want, could draw in new investment but may also loosen the controls that can be exerted by a government made up of ethnic and regional parties that has carefully managed development and kept a lid on rivalries.
That is the dilemma for Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and his cabinet, who still work in the shadow of Meles Zenawi, the rebel-turned-statesman who ruled with an iron grip for two decades until he died last year. Caution remains the watchword.
We are not ready now, Foreign Affairs Minister Tedros Adhanom told Reuters when asked if Ethiopia could open up its mobile network or banks, prime targets for foreign investors.
Concerns about a deepening rich-poor divide and worries about changing the tried and tested policies of a charismatic leader, all weigh in to deter officials from a big shift.
But moving too slowly risks squandering investor enthusiasm and damaging the prospects of a nation once best known for Red Terror purges under communist rule in the 1970s and its 1980s famine. For now, at least, it has not deterred investors.
I was in India recently and the thing that caught me by surprise [when talking] to foreign investors [was] the country that kept being mentioned was Ethiopia, said Khan.
Diageo is not alone in seeing the potential. Heineken of Holland and France’s BGI Castel have snapped up breweries, which were among first state firms to be sold off.
The Ethiopian Investment Agency says Unilever and Nestle are sniffing around, and South Korea’s Samsung told Reuters it was exploring Ethiopia as a place to assemble its electronic goods. The two European companies did not comment.
Hennes & Mauritz (H&M), the world’s second biggest fashion retailer, has put in test orders as the nation seeks to boost textile exports to $1 billion a year by 2016 from $100 million last year.
H&M spokeswoman Marie Rosenlind said that, if the tests were successful, production could start this autumn.
Lending support
With manufacturing accounting for just 4 percent of gross domestic product, Ethiopia needs such investors to help reduce its reliance on exports of coffee, horticultural products and livestock that have driven growth until now. It also remains one of the world’s biggest recipients of aid.
No other country that I’m aware of, aside from these resource-rich countries … can go to middle-income status with still 50 percent of GDP on agriculture, Guang Z. Chen, the World Bank’s country director, told Reuters in a June interview.
China could lend support, though this time not in the usual form of donations that have helped African growth till now.
Chinese shoe exporter Huajian has announced plans to co-invest $2 billion in an industrial zone outside Addis Ababa to bolster its Ethiopian exports and create up to 100,000 jobs.
The African Development Bank says a switch by Beijing towards domestic consumption may boost manufacturing in African economies like Ethiopia, where labor is cheap and power is a third of the price in China.
Ethiopia is building a huge dam on the upper reaches of the Blue Nile, part of plans to export electricity in a few years.
Until now, the most visible signs of growth are in the capital, where building sites clad in wooden scaffolding have mushroomed. In the upmarket Bole Medhane Alem suburb, an emerging middle class is enjoying new luxuries.
A fast-food outlet sells burgers and fries for a just over $4, more than many Ethiopians earn for several days’ work. We’re not coping with demand, said one employee.
At a nearby coffee house, whose logo mimics Starbucks, hip youths in low-cut jeans sip Frappuccinos and caramel macchiatos.
The middle class is growing and is really increasing its purchasing power, said 18-year-old Yohannes, sitting near a billboard advertising two new residential tower blocks carrying the slogan: From shabby to chic. Witness the transformation.
‘I won’t be one of them’
Yet for some, change is not being felt, including those in the capital’s tin-roofed slums.
You can see it all around you, there are rich people. But I am not going to be one of them, said Elias Zelalem, a teenager who earns $1.60 a day shining shoes if business is brisk.
Ethiopia’s ambition is to achieve middle income status in 12 years time, defined by the World Bank as a per capita income of $1,430. In 2012, Ethiopia’s per capita income was $410.
Yet to do this, Ethiopia’s $43 billion economy needs to repeat the 10.7 percent average annual growth achieved in 2004 to 2011. Some question whether the state’s determination to meet this target is coming at the cost of private business.
We have to overcome poverty. How fast we should do this, therein lies the difference [of opinion], said Zafu Eyessus Zafu, whose United Insurance Company is a shareholder in a commercial bank. He wants financial services open to foreigners.
Two thirds of Ethiopia’s 8.5 percent growth in 2011/12 was due to public spending, the World Bank said. Half of spending needs are raised domestically, leaving little for private firms.
If we need 50 million birr ($2.7 million) from the bank we may get 20-25 million, said a truck importer who identified himself as Taye, wary of using his full name in a nation where the state has long kept a tight lid on dissent and criticism.
For foreign currency it is impossible. We can apply to the bank and wait a month or more, he added.
Proven policy
The credit crunch is deepened by a state-imposed requirement that each time a bank lends cash it must loan an additional 27 percent of the loan’s value to the government in the form of a low-interest Treasury bond to help fund development projects.
But the government shows no change of tack. Reining in the state would challenge the vision of Meles, whose portrait still hangs in government offices.
There is no need to look for policy changes at this time, deputy premier Muktar Kedir told Reuters earlier this year.
We are of the mind that we have to fully implement the policy that has already proven itself successful, he said.
A policy shift could open rifts along ethnic lines in the coalition made up of four main regional parties. There is little room for anyone who might challenge the status quo.
Without the force of personality or reputation of his predecessor, Hailemariam has shown no sign he has the political will or clout to veer from Meles’ path.
That may mean Ethiopia has to be content with slower growth and investors will need patience.
Ethiopia is missing out in several respects, said Standard Chartered’s Khan. But there is this very cautious policy.
June 25, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
Construction of new countryside
2009, the region invested a total of “three rural” funds 2.53 billion yuan, an increase of 35.3%. Improve the “flowers and three fruits,” and other special industries support policies, the implementation of the localization of lily bulbs, astringent persimmon processing a new batch of people rich industrial projects. Active in organizing the Seventh World Conference of strawberry, strawberry industry base in the east start construction quality, “a two-center for a park” project preparatory work for an orderly way. 3050 acres of orchards in the development of standardization of the new facilities a total area of ??3.2 acres of agriculture. Mountain Ditch area economic development of developing guidance, some of the projects start construction. Mountain farmers reached 8,212 yuan per capita labor income, an increase of 9.8%. Invested 6.7 billion yuan in 110 villages to promote the “five + three” project, realization of farmers to put labor into 1.02 million passengers, increasing labor income of 80.99 million yuan. 95 km rural road repair. Completion of the comprehensive development of agriculture infrastructure and 2.5 million mu. A number of new rural science and technology, culture, sports and other public facilities, cultural resources sharing project to achieve full coverage of the village. Complete reform of the system of collective village ownership economy to reach a total of 80. Reform of collective forest right system was officially launched. Been identified as the city’s modern agriculture pilot service system. Agricultural Investment Guarantee Co., Ltd. was set up throughout the year 77.29 million yuan for agriculture-related special loans, policy agricultural insurance coverage to 137 villages, 5472. Rural land open platform enabled. Joint sales of agricultural products formed the city’s first professional cooperatives. Full implementation of the rural collective decision-making process on major issues, “five-step method”, “148” management system to further improve the rural democracy.
Agriculture
In 2009, the region achieved total output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery 1,535,300,000 yuan, an increase of 4.5%. Of which: agricultural output value of 586.47 million yuan, an increase of 7.5%; of forestry output value of 151.13 million yuan, an increase of 3.8%; to achieve animal husbandry output value of 707.08 million yuan, an increase of 1.4%; to achieve fishery output value 34.89 million yuan, an increase of 23.9% . Agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery industry output value of four for the first time in five years to achieve an overall growth. Sown area of ??124,627 acres of crops throughout the year, down 10,805 acres, down 8.0%; production was 33,516 tons, down 9,925 tons, down 22.8%. In 2009, efforts to increase agricultural facilities, facility covers an area of ??9313 mu, an increase of 17%; facilities revenue of 179.366 million yuan, an increase of 19.1%. Meanwhile, the development of tourism and leisure folk have been expanding, operating results improved significantly. Number of sightseeing park development to the region 207, an increase of 3%, driven employees tour the park during the peak production year on year growth of 38.2%, 19.8% received an increase of visitors. Actual folk tourism business operators 465, an increase of 14.3%, driven up by the end of 13% employees, received visitors increased by 31.7%. Tourism and leisure and tourism revenue for the folk 230,529,000 yuan, up 23.6%; one garden on income 182,918,000 yuan, up 22.8%; folk tourism revenue 47,611,000 yuan, an increase of 27%.
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April 28, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
Brazilians are well aware of how human actions can affect the climate and environment not only in personal proximity also but worldwide, according to a 2010 study by the National Confederation of Industries (CNI).
The survey revealed that nearly 80 percent of Brazilians think global warming is caused by human activities. In comparison, similar surveys said 70 percent of Britons and less than 50 percent of Americans believe similarly. Additionally, the study said that roughly 90 percent of the 2,000 Brazilians interviewed believe climate change is real and is a serious issue. Approximately the same percentage of Europeans think this as well, while only 54 percent of American believe climate change is a major problem.
If action follows belief in Brazil, this could be a step in the right direction for climate change mitigation.
Brazil is the eighth largest greenhouse gas emitterthe third largest among developing countries, lagging behind China and India. Yet its causes differ from most countries: in Brazil the number one cause of greenhouse gas emissions is deforestation. Brazil is home to about one-third of the worlds rainforest. Most of this is located in the Amazon Basin. Since 1970, over 15 percent of this regions total surface area has been destroyed by deforestation. Main causes of deforestation in Brazil continue to be: clearing land for cattle grazing, slash and burn agriculture, construction projects, commercial agriculture, and logging.
In a dangerous cycle, higher amounts of deforestation lead to more emissions that lead to accelerated climate change, which will return to hit the rainforest in a double whammy. The Amazons delicate biodiversity balance supports more than 56,000 species of plants, 1,700 species of birds, 578 mammals, and over 12,000 types of amphibians and reptiles, making Brazil the most biodiverse country on the planet.
But the future is not necessarily bleak. Brazil is a leader in renewable energy sources and has put programs in place to protect its valuable environment. Half of Brazilians in the CNI survey said they have a positive outlook for the future, saying that environmental conservation and market development are not mutually exclusive and can improve together.
The preservation of the Amazon rainforest is vital for keeping our planets climate in check; and the knowledge of the areas global importance only makes a trip to the Amazon even more awing and inspiring. A Brazil tour is one way to fully understand the great biodiversity this region has to offer, and a Brazil trip is a great way to learn about Brazilian people and culture.