by Lisa Lambert, editing by Jackie Frank
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama called for the creation of a National Infrastructure Bank in his budget released on Thursday, saying it would "expand and enhance existing federal infrastructure investments."
"The mission of this entity will be to not only provide direct federal investment but also to help foster coordination through state, municipal and private co-investment in our nation's most
challenging infrastructure needs," according to budget documents.
The budget, which must be approved by Congress, requests $5 billion (3.5 billion pounds) for the bank in fiscal year 2010 which starts October 1, and anticipates that it will receive $25.2 billion from then through 2019.
For more than a year Congress has mulled creating what many have called a "Federal Reserve of Infrastructure," which would use seed money from the federal government to establish an independent board for giving capital project grants to state and local governments.
When meeting with U.S. governors in December before he took office, Obama said the bank would be a top priority. During his campaign, he said an independent bank should receive $60 billion over 10 years from the federal government.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Obama Budget has $5 Billion for Infrastructure Bank
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
EX-IM BANK RENEWS FINANCING FOR PENNSYLVANIA GREEN TECHNOLOGY COMPANY TO PURSUE WATER TREATMENT PROJECTS AROUND THE WORLD
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The $37 million renewal of an Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) loan facility for a green technology company will support jobs at the 200-plus-employee Canonsburg, Penn. firm and enable it to complete existing export contracts in Oman and Italy and pursue new business around the world.
Ex-Im Bank's board of directors today approved the Bank's guarantee of a revolving working capital loan from PNC Bank, Pittsburgh, Penn., to support Aquatech International Corporation's export of cutting-edge water purification solutions, involving zero liquid discharge treatment, water reuse and desalination.
"This financing will help sustain and potentially grow U.S. jobs at Aquatech and its extended supply network at this critical economic time," said Aquatech President and CEO Venkee Sharma. "Aquatech's near-20-year relationship with Ex-Im Bank clearly demonstrates the Bank's commitment to support small and mid-size businesses like ours, to preserve and grow U.S. employment, and to facilitate U.S. environmental technology exports."
"In today's tight credit market, Ex-Im Bank is able to step in and assist small and medium-sized businesses like Aquatech in financing important export sales that otherwise might have been lost," said Ex-Im Bank First Vice President and Vice Chair Linda Conlin. "In this way, we are able to help Aquatech retain valuable jobs in Canonsburg and introduce innovative environmentally beneficial technology in promising global markets."
The new loan facility will consolidate two earlier Ex-Im Bank facilities covering ongoing Aquatech business, including sales to Italy's largest power company and a major oil field project in Oman, and also will support new Aquatech projects around the world, including the Western Hemisphere and the Middle East.
Ex-Im Bank's Office of Renewable Energy & Environmental Exports works with companies across a wide range of environmental sectors, including renewable energy, wastewater treatment, air pollution technologies and waste management services. The Bank offers enhanced financing, including special extended repayment terms, for certain categories of U.S. goods and services including environmentally beneficial exports.
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Export-import bank's focus could help cleantech clean upExport-Import bank revamps Environmental Exports
Monday, February 23, 2009
Contractors Don’t Expect Quick Impact on Work
Renewable energy is the big energy industry winner in the stimulus bill signed into law on Feb. 17. By ENR’s estimate, the new law provides $30.6 billion in energy-related spending and tax incentives. But a provision for $50 billion in federal loan guarantees to build new nuclear power plants was dropped from the bill that emerged from the conference reconciling the House and Senate versions.
While welcome, cash, tax credits and loan guarantees may not be what’s most needed. “The renewable-energy industry is doing fairly well, but they’re having trouble getting credit,” says John Colson, CEO of Quanta Services, Houston. “The credit issue affects our wind customers,” he says. “The solar side is primarily by utilities. They’re able to raise money pretty well, certainly for transmission projects.” In any event, “permitting is where the problems are [for transmission], not the financing of projects,” he says.
The Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups applauded conferees for retaining an array of programs aimed at boosting wind, solar and other clean energy and for jettisoning the nuclear loan guarantee program. Contractors serving those sectors say the law’s effects will be seen over time, rather than as a wave surging through the economy.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Smart ways to prepare for a world beyond recession
By Samuel Palmisano
Last updated: February 19 2009
Governments around the world are grappling with some of the toughest decisions faced in generations. In severe recession, they are collectively considering as much as $4,500bn (€3,600bn, £3,200bn) in stimulus investments.
Understandably there is a sense of urgency, sometimes verging on desperation. But while the need for immediate economic stimulus is clear, we should not and need not panic.
Let us not revert to old-world thinking about new-world challenges. Launching “public works” projects – putting people to work with shovels and jackhammers to put money into their pockets – is not the way to jump-start a 21st-century economy – or to build competitive advantage in the different world that is taking shape.
President Barack Obama and his administration understand that the US economy needs more than a relief package for troubled banks, asphalt for pot-holed streets and patches for schoolhouse roofs. They are proposing a higher-impact stimulus package that addresses future needs and national competitiveness.
We are seeing other examples of this kind of forward-looking thinking around the world. Many government and business leaders are not simply undertaking activity for activity’s sake but are seizing the opportunity to transform and innovate, in ways that create exportable skills, resources and technology. Such investments not only yield a greater long-term return, they are also more cost-effective.
For example, consider our power grids. They are the largest remaining artefact of the industrial age and they are due for an upgrade. Using broadband data streams, digital sensors and advanced analytics, utility companies can understand demand in real time and thus source and manage power more intelligently. In Europe, some utilities are working on smarter ways to integrate renewable sources of energy into the grid. Others are taking it further, building smart grid networks to enable consumers to plug in electric cars at a variety of locations. In this way, the digital grid provides incentives for growth in related industries. In many cases this growth primarily benefits smaller enterprises.
Getting smarter is possible across all our systems. The island of Malta, for example, is not only creating one of the world’s most advanced smart grids, it is also building smarter water and waste management systems. The same principles apply to all of these systems, including instrumentation with advanced sensor technology. As a result they are gaining a better understanding of demand, supply, routing and sourcing. They are able to manage the entire public services infrastructure more dynamically.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Why A Commerce Job Goes Unfilled
"But Congress paid little heed to that in its $787 billion stimulus bill passed Friday. Sure, it paid lip service to not letting "Buy American" violate existing international treaties. But it still left the measures in, leaving the potential loss of gigantic markets where there are no relevant treaties, real. Among these are China, which needs $200 billion a year in infrastructure spending through 2030, according to a CG/LA Infrastructure study."
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Politics: Judd Gregg surprised the Obama administration by withdrawing from his Commerce job offer. But it shouldn't have been a surprise. Commerce itself is being devalued in this administration. That needs to change.
It's likely that the Republican senator from New Hampshire intended to be a brave, if lonely, voice for private business inside the Obama administration at a time when stimulus dominates the news and little focus was put on how to help business.
That's a shame, because a stimulus promises to create 3 million jobs at best, and currently 11.6 million people don't have work. Only the private sector can pick up the slack.
At least a dozen candidates turned the prestigious commerce secretary's post down before President Obama came up with Gregg, after assuring him that the Democratic governor in his home state would appoint a Republican to take his seat. Obama even joked about the difficulty of "finding a commerce secretary" to the media.
But the real reason why Gregg pulled out is probably that he found there isn't any real place for commerce in the new administration. With President Obama saying things like "only government" can save the economy, Gregg learned quickly he was unlikely to have any power or influence on behalf of the private sector.
The decision to remove the 2010 Census from the Commerce Department and give it to White House political operatives was a strong vote of no confidence in Gregg.
It wasn't the only signal. On the day Gregg quit, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs declared the Colombia free-trade agreement was dead, too. "I think the concerns that (President Obama) and others have are still valid around that trade agreement," Semana, a Colombian publication, quoted Gibbs as saying.
With the Census gone before he'd even started, and no new export markets to bring to U.S. firms as commerce chief, it's a fair bet that anything Gregg did was likely to be ignored in Obama's administration.
That's why the Obama administration needs to rethink its exclusive focus on government spending as the basis for its administration, and start making the private sector a focus instead.
The current approach has been to use business and bipartisan Republicans like Gregg as window dressing. But no one's fooled.
The chief executive officer of Caterpillar, for one, wasn't.
On the day Gregg made his surprise exit, President Obama made a showy appearance at Caterpillar's big plant in East Peoria, Ill., telling embattled workers who'd just endured 22,000 layoffs a week earlier that the chief executive would hire back some with the passage of Congress' $787 billion stimulus package.
Asked about it later by ABC News, Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens denied Obama's claim. "The truth is we're going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again," Owens said. "It is going to take some time before that stimulus bill" means rehiring.
That's because the stimulus isn't what the administration and Congress say it is. A look at what Caterpillar and others like it really want is precisely what is being run roughshod over by special interests in the White House right now.
Caterpillar is vocal about wanting Colombia free trade which would give it another market to sell in during a downturn. It also wants the "Buy American" provisions in the stimulus bill gone, because they could destroy Caterpillar's years of market-building overseas as foreign retaliatory measures kick in.
Caterpillar, like many American companies, exports much of its giant machinery overseas, 63% in Cat's case. The U.S. in 2008 exported $1.84 trillion in goods and services, more than any other country, so any trade war shutting overseas markets will hit us hard.
But Congress paid little heed to that in its $787 billion stimulus bill passed Friday. Sure, it paid lip service to not letting "Buy American" violate existing international treaties. But it still left the measures in, leaving the potential loss of gigantic markets where there are no relevant treaties, real. Among these are China, which needs $200 billion a year in infrastructure spending through 2030, according to a CG/LA Infrastructure study.
If it retaliates, "Buy American" may turn into "Bye, American."
And that's just one market. In reality, access to the $996 billion global infrastructure market will disappear in a trade war, all in exchange for access to $43 billion in federal stimulus spending on infrastructure — not a good swap. No wonder Caterpillar's chief couldn't tell reporters he'd be back to hiring with the passage of the stimulus.
Gregg made a principled move in leaving because he couldn't be effective. In reality, no one can. Private businesses are critical to economic recovery, but Congress and the administration are focused on government solutions.
Tax cuts, open markets and favorable investment conditions are getting the short shrift. Obama should realize now that a friendlier business climate is as badly needed as a new commerce secretary.
Read complete article
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Ecopetrol y KNOC adquieren Petro-Tech
La empresa produce cerca de 12 mil barriles de crudo por día y tiene una posición estratégica en la costa del Perú.
Ecopetrol S.A. informa que, en asocio con la compañía nacional de petróleo de Corea (Korea National Oil Corporation - Knoc), cerró hoy la transacción para adquirir la compañía Offshore International Group Inc., con sede en Estados Unidos.
El valor total de la transacción es de US$900 millones. La inversión se hará en partes iguales por parte de las dos empresas (50% Ecopetrol y 50% Knoc).
El principal activo de Offshore International Group es Petro-Tech Peruana S.A., empresa dedicada a la exploración, desarrollo, producción y procesamiento de hidrocarburos en Perú. Inició sus operaciones en enero de 1994 en la costa norte del Perú, en el bloque (lote) Z2B. Actualmente tiene una producción promedio de crudo cercana a los 12.000 barriles por día y cuenta con más de 100 millones de barriles en reservas 2P.
En los últimos años esta empresa se ha posicionado en la producción y exploración de hidrocarburos costa afuera en el Perú. La empresa tiene 11 bloques en ese país (1 en producción y 10 en exploración), que en conjunto suman una de las superficies en offshore más grande de América del Sur (9,5 millones de hectáreas). Al 30 de noviembre de 2008, los ingresos y las utilidades netas de esta compañía fueron de US$359 millones y US$134 millones, respectivamente.
Offshore International Group, Inc, también posee activos en otras compañías que prestan servicios para el desarrollo de las actividades de Petro-Tech Peruana S.A., especialmente en lo relacionado con las operaciones marinas tales como servicios de perforación, buceo y transporte marítimo, entre otros.
La adquisición demuestra la confianza de Ecopetrol y KNOC en la economía del Perú, en sus instituciones y en su potencial petrolífero. Las dos empresas pretenden incrementar sus inversiones en los próximos años con el fin de aumentar la producción y las reservas de hidrocarburos. Uno de los objetivos del plan es al menos duplicar la producción de Petro-Tech durante los próximos tres años.
La adquisición del 50% de Offshore International Group es un paso más en la proceso de internacionalización de Ecopetrol y hace parte de la estrategia para alcanzar una producción de un millón de barriles de petróleo equivalente por día en 2015.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Stimulus Packages: How Much Can the Region Afford?
By Claudio Loser
Latin America Advisor, January 29, 2009
Originally published in Claudio Loser’s monthly “By the Numbers” column for the Dialogue's daily Latin American AdvisorWASHINGTON—John Maynard Keynes, long relegated to history books describing his fundamental contributions to macroeconomics, has returned with a vengeance. Everybody has become a Keynesian, even some of us recalcitrant Friedmaniacs. Fortunately, we now know that in times of crisis, large countries can stick both to government spending stimuli (as Keynes proposed) and an adequately ample supply of money in times of financial implosion (as Friedman discovered).
Latin America has been a fertile ground for Keynesian demand-enhancing measures, Chicago Boys notwithstanding, even if it frequently misunderstood the master. Now at a time of widespread economic crisis, and with large countries seeking to avoid falling into a depression, authorities in the region have been announcing fiscal and credit packages aimed at softening the impact of lower commodity prices and reduced external demand. These measures are being taken on top of significant currency devaluations in many larger countries, with the exception of Ecuador, Venezuela, and to a lesser extent, Argentina.
Several questions arise in this regard: Are the packages large enough to shore up demand? How do they compare to the efforts of other countries? Can Latin Americans afford to do it? The attached table may help elucidate these questions. It lists the recently announced stimulus packages for some Latin American countries, as well as for China, India, the US, Germany and the UK. The numbers are adjusted to reflect what can be expected to be the annual spending in 2009. For example, in the case of China the program will extend for two years, and in the US, the numbers include the unspent portion of the package of October. The table includes numbers for public debt, both total and net of international reserves, to reflect the ability of the countries to finance the increased spending. It does not include, however, the requirements arising from reduced government revenues on account of lower export earnings, which will decline by more than 2 percent of GDP in virtually all of Latin America.
Read complete article
Infrastructure Investment Best Way to Create Jobs
18,000 Jobs Produced for Every $1 Billion in New Spending, Study Finds;
Can help revitalize domestic manufacturing base
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STUDY
January 16, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC – As President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress consider how to craft an effective economic stimulus package, a new study released today by the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) outlines how investment in the nation’s infrastructure is the most effective approach to creating new jobs that could be included in such a stimulus. Roughly 18,000 new jobs would be created for every $1 billion in new infrastructure spending on the nation’s transportation, energy, water systems, and public schools.
The report, undertaken for AAM by a team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), found that at least 2.6 million new jobs could be created by increased spending in a “high-end” scenario of $148 billion per year (including $93 billion in public investment). While the construction and service industries will see the vast majority of job creation, manufacturing, which has been devastated by the current economic crisis would also benefit from such an infrastructure stimulus, seeing an increase of 252,000 jobs nationally.
The benefits for manufacturing would be felt throughout the economy, with new jobs created in such industries as fabricated metals (38,000), concrete and cement (21,000), glass-rubber-plastics (15,000), steel (9,000), and wood products (8,200).
The report further notes that manufacturing employment gains from such an infrastructure program could be improved significantly if the percentage of U.S.-made material inputs were increased. Simply put, a higher share of domestically produced supplies would have a significant impact in terms of generating new manufacturing jobs. Utilizing 100% domestically produced inputs for infrastructure projects would yield a total of 77,000 additional jobs nationally. Manufacturing would account for a significant 69,000 of that increase, a 33% jump in total manufacturing jobs generated.
“The nation is confronted today by the worst economic downturn in decades and a deteriorating infrastructure,” said Leo W. Gerard, President of the United Steelworkers (USW). “We need to immediately address both problems. By making major investments to repair and upgrade our infrastructure, we will create much needed, good-paying jobs that will help to get the economy back on track. America too must have its own capacity to produce the infrastructure materials we need.”
The report’s authors, James Heintz, Robert Pollin, and Heidi Garrett-Peltier of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), noted, “Public investment makes substantial contributions in terms of employment, economic growth, trade competitiveness, and essential services to the U.S. population. Such investments can also become a key driver in building a clean-energy economy.” Pollin added, “The public infrastructure portion of this program would also increase private sector growth by about $80 billion per year, which amounts to a productivity dividend of about $260 per year for every U.S. resident.”
Under such a scenario, the nation would simultaneously be addressing its tremendous infrastructure needs while creating new jobs across various industries. As the report notes, public investment in infrastructure has fallen sharply since 1980, resulting in the recent deterioration of various parts of the nation’s public infrastructure. Crumbling roads and bridges, antiquated and unsafe schools– all are part of a vast “infrastructure deficit” that the nation now faces.
“The focus of any stimulus program must be on creating jobs here at home,” said Scott Paul, executive director of AAM. “American taxpayers want to see their hard-earned money used to put fellow citizens back to work. “This report documents how greater infrastructure spending is the most effective way to generate employment in the U.S. It will attack the gross deficiencies in our nation’s infrastructure and contribute to longer-term economic growth, particularly for our manufacturing base.”
In contrast to an infrastructure spending program, the report notes that competing stimulus proposals, such as tax cuts, would create, at best, only 14,000 jobs per $1 billion in spending. This means 22 percent less jobs would result from a tax-based stimulus than from infrastructure spending. This is primarily because households spend a greater share of their income on imports.
The researchers outlined two scenarios for increased infrastructure spending. A “baseline scenario,” which would simply meet basic needs, would require $87 billion in additional spending per year and create 1.6 million new jobs. A “high-end scenario,” which would accelerate rebuilding and address serious unmet needs, would require about $148 billion in new spending from the public and private sectors and create about 2.6 million new jobs.
The “high-end scenario” the report outlines would help fill the gap left by years of inadequate investment. Today, for example, only 44 percent of the nation’s roads are in “good condition,” and 26.7 percent of bridges are “structurally deficient,” while 13.6 percent are “functionally obsolete,” according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Mass transit investments would need to increase by $3.2 billion a year just to maintain current operating systems. By 2020, 80 percent of the locks on the nation’s waterways will be functionally obsolete. And the Corps of Engineers has identified 122 levees that need additional maintenance and repair.
The accelerated approach would create about one million new jobs in construction, 252,000 in manufacturing, and most of the rest in service industries. The 2.6 million new jobs created this year would reduce December 2008’s unemployment rate from 7.2 percent to 5.5 percent.
Expanded infrastructure investments would have significant benefits for the private sector, beyond improving productivity and overall economic growth. Sustained over time, for example, it would raise the annual growth rate of manufacturing by nearly one percentage point and would contribute to the nation’s gross domestic product.
WHO GETS WHAT: Infrastructure plan just a start
Those are some of the improvements Americans might see under the economic stimulus package moving through Congress. The proposal, which outlines spending and tax cuts of more than $800 billion, includes funding that would revamp long-neglected roads, power grids and levees across the United States.
In Pittsburgh, authorities want some of that money for an $11 million rehabilitation of the 85-year-old Liberty Tunnel, which is used by more than 63,000 vehicles daily. The tunnel's walls were last refurbished in the 1970s. "It's in dire need," said Jim Struzzi, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
Nationwide, the estimated $90 billion to $100 billion in proposed infrastructure spending amounts to a mere down payment on what's needed to repair and improve the country's physical backbone. And not all economists agree it's an effective way to add jobs in the long term, or stimulate the economy. Some of the bill's tax cuts and government benefits may prove better at reviving demand for goods and services.
There is little debate about the state of the country's infrastructure, which has deteriorated over time or from a lack of maintenance, or been rendered inadequate by population growth. Potholed roads, weakening dams and bridges and leaky pipes affect public safety, not to mention commerce.
The American Society of Civil Engineers says fixing the nation's roads, dumps, dams, bridges, schools and rail systems will cost some $2.2 trillion over the next five years. Even with current spending and the proposed stimulus money, that means a funding shortfall of about $1.1 trillion, said Patrick Natale, the group's executive director.
All told, the infrastructure portion of the bill includes about $39 billion for roads and transit, $32 billion for energy, $9 billion for clean water and $20 billion for public schools, according to James Heintz, associate research professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, who co-authored a report for the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a partnership of manufacturing companies and the United Steelworkers union.
Some of the money would go toward so-called "shovel-ready" projects, which require only funding to move forward.
Companies that stand to gain include steel makers, cement companies, and glass, rubber and plastics manufacturers. But analysts warn the stimulus money could take months to reach the marketplace and boost product demand.
Heintz, whose report was based on the House version of the bill, estimates 18,000 new jobs would be created for every $1 billion spent.
Though the spending may create jobs in construction - a sector hard hit by the economic meltdown - those jobs merely would be diverted from other parts of the economy in the long run, said Alan Viard, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
Others say it's a worthy long-term investment, though an unusual way of stimulating short-term economic growth as large construction projects may take years to build.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Japan’s Big-Works Stimulus Is Lesson for the US
HAMADA, Japan — The Hamada Marine Bridge soars majestically over this small fishing harbor, so much larger than the squid boats anchored below that it seems out of place.And it is not just the bridge. Two decades of generous public works spending have showered this city of 61,000 mostly graying residents with a highway, a two-lane bypass, a university, a prison, a children’s art museum, the Sun Village Hamada sports center, a bright red welcome center, a ski resort and an aquarium featuring three ring-blowing Beluga whales.
Nor is this remote port in western Japan unusual. Japan’s rural areas have been paved 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. During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world — totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy — while failing to generate a convincing recovery.
Read complete articleWednesday, February 4, 2009
Senate Plans to Improve National Infrastructure with...?
Democrats Lose Senate Vote to Add $25 Billion to Stimulus
February 3, 2009
by David Lightman
WASHINGTON - The Senate refused on Tuesday to pump an additional $25 billion into road, transit and water projects in its economic stimulus package, but it approved a tax break for car buyers, as lawmakers struggled for ways to craft a bipartisan plan.
Members also soundly rejected a tax proposal to encourage companies to bring their foreign earnings back to the U.S. as they looked for ways either to pare the nearly $900 billion bill or at least get the money out more quickly.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that about 78 percent of the Senate plan would flow into the economy by October 2010, up from 64 percent for the $819 billion package that the House of Representatives passed last week. Many senators thought that was still too slow, however.
Read Complete Article
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Petrobras looks abroad to refine finance options
By Carola Hoyos/ Financial Times
February 3, 2009
Petrobras, Brazil's national oil company, is in direct talks with governments including Washington and Beijing to help finance the $174bn development of its huge reserves. The partially traded group recently discovered the biggest oil fields in Latin America in the past 30 years and industry leaders, such as Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive, believe the waters off Brazil's south-eastern coast hold oil reserves as big and important as those discovered in the North Sea in the 1970s. José Sergio Gabrielli de Azevedo, Petrobras's president and chief executive, told the Financial Times that Petrobras had secured almost all of its financing for this year and over the five-year period could finance $120bn from its own cash flow.
Read Complete Article
Monday, February 2, 2009
Infrastructure Spending Jumping in 2009
Infrastructure Spending to Surge in 2009, Opening Doors in Infrastructure Finance
Infrastructure Spending to Surge in 2009, Opening Doors in Infrastructure Finance
This year governments around the world will spend 2.9% of world GDP on infrastructure, up from 2.2% in 20087according to Infrastructure Investor, citing projections for 2009 compiled by consultancy CG/LA. Norman Anderson. The report adds the firm’s CEO, Norman Anderson, also predicts that the U.S. will move toward a more Spanish-style model of infrastructure financing in which large engineering and construction firms originate, build, operate and take equity stakes in national infrastructure projects. Moreover, CG/LA also believes that President-Elect Obama’s proposed Infrastructure Bank will become a reality.
Executive search firm, A.E. Feldman, contends that Obama’s administration promises to create huge job opportunities in project and infrastructure finance. The firm says infrastructure finance jobs are likely to open up for candidates with backgrounds in investment banking as well as experience in analyzing and executing structured financings. The most sought after candidates have been those with experience in infrastructure transactions and civic engineering. A.E. Feldman also reports the jobs opening up include CEOs and CFOs with proven records of running infrastructure companies.
Infrastructure Spending to Jump
Washington D.C. based consulting firm, CG/LA. Norman Anderson, predicts global infrastructure spending will jump 0.7% this year (or increase by an additional $280 billion),according to Infrastructure Investor. The firm says the push for renewed infrastructure will be led by developed countries, although China (which unveiled plans in November 2008 to spend $586 billion on infrastructure investment over the next two years) will be a notable exception to this trend.
Read Complete ArticleAsian Exports Continue to Fall
South Korean Exports Fall by Record, China Manufacturing Slumps By Kevin Hamlin and William Sim
Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- South Korean exports tumbled by a record in January and Chinese manufacturing contracted as the global recession sent growth sliding in export-driven economies across Asia.
South Korea’s shipments fell 32.8 percent from a year earlier, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy said. Manufacturing in China shrank for a sixth month, the CLSA China Purchasing Managers' Index showed.
Plunging export demand is dragging down economies across Asia and the Pacific, where Japan and Hong Kong are already in recessions and Taiwan, South Korea and Australia are getting closer. South Korean steelmaker Posco will extend production cuts and Rio Tinto Group, the biggest iron-ore miner in Australia, may sell shares to raise cash after commodity prices plummeted.
“Things are getting worse as the global recession spills over to China and other emerging economies,” said Lee Sang Jae, an economist at Hyundai Securities Co. in Seoul.
