Image via Wikipedia
Bloomberg.com:
Shree Renuka will import raw sugar from Brazil and Thailand for the refinery as local supplies may not be sufficient, Murkumbi said. The company signed a three-year agreement with Brazil’s Grupo Copersucar in 2006 to buy raw sugar.“We are currently using locally sourced raw sugar,” Murkumbi said. “We are talking to Copersucar about future imports.”
Popularity: 2% [?]
Image via Wikipedia
Areas of improvement for BRIC MNCs on the HR front.
NYTimes.com
Traditional multinationals have an advantage over many challengers because they can offer career routes to the most talented Indians and Chinese that their own countries’ companies do not yet have. The incumbents, as noted by the authors, have extensive programs in place to assess employee performance, to develop global plans for job rotations and, in general, to build their long-term careers. Not all the challengers know how to do that, and relatively few of them have established truly global footprints.Nor are big Western companies always captives of their relatively high cost structures back home. They are capable of stripping down and finding profitable niches at the bottom of the economic pyramid.
The authors note that Whirlpool first introduced a washing machine in Brazil in 1998 that cost $300, at a time when the average Brazilian earned about $200 a month. The product was obviously too expensive and did not sell.
Then Whirlpool decided to create a new lower-cost model and developed the machine in Brazil, where the company has skilled engineers and industrial designers as well as sophisticated factories. The Ideale washer was introduced in 2003 at a cost of $150, creating a new market for low-capacity, low-price, semiautomatic washing machines in Brazil.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Theory Talks:Timothy Shaw
Luckily, Brazil and India are different then China and Russia, in the sense that in those first two, civil societies actually play a role; if these countries show some kind of south-south solidarity (and I think they will), Africa’s future might well be a lot brighter.
Popularity: 1% [?]
The Guardian
The number of dollar millionaires in Indias red-hot economy grew by 22.7%, China followed with growth of 20.3% and Brazil came next with 19.1%.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Image by nimboo via Flickr
via livemint.com
India’s food security is under threat and it could become a net importer by 2020 if the country doesn’t fix stubbornly stagnant production trends, says a new study.
A monograph by agricultural economist H.S. Shergill —Economics of Food Self-Sufficiency—says India’s average per capita availability of cereals declined by 11% to 390.0g in 2005-06 from 442.5g in 1996-97. The study says foodgrain production in India has failed to match the rise in population as well as income rates.
It says that beginning 1996-97, while the Indian population grew by 17%, and per capita real income grew by 55%, cereal production rose by only 10.18%. The mismatch between increase in cereal production and population growth explains the decline in per capita availability of foodgrains.
Popularity: 1% [?]
viaThe Economic Times
Bangalore-based Technology Informatics Design Endeavour (TIDE) was adjudged with ‘Energy Champion’ at a glittering Ashden awards ceremony here last night for its role in transforming small businesses by encouraging them to use safer and cleaner energy-efficient woodstoves and kilns.Another Indian organisation, Uttar Pradesh-based Aryavart Gramin Bank (AGB), was also awarded with 20,000 pounds for the prize, dubbed the “green energy Oscars”
AGB was selected for pioneering a sustainable energy project in the state.
The prize was presented to N K Joshi, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of AGB, by Kenyan Nobel Prize laureate Wangari Maathai.AGB is expanding access to electricity in rural villages by offering small loans to its off-grid customers to help them buy solar home systems (SHS).
Popularity: 3% [?]
via livemint.com
Whatever may be the interpretation and the nuance involved, one cannot deny that food security, as defined by availability of grain, has dropped greatly. In the short run, the problem may be aggravated by high prices due to exports at a time when domestic demand is high. But in the long run, it’s a problem of productivity and government dominance of grain trade. The latter factor is something that can be handled as quickly as the government wants to.
So far, it’s a command-driven system. The Food Corporation of India (FCI) purchases, stores and distributes grain. FCI then supplies it to deficit states. Because of the scale of operations and the costs involved, the wastage is immense. The economic (final) cost of rice in 2007-08, for example, was Rs1,572 per quintal, while the minimum support price (MSP) or the purchase price was Rs745 per quintal. In other words, the final cost was a whopping 111% more than the purchase price.
Popularity: 2% [?]
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via insurancenewsnet.com
AE Biofuels, Inc., (OTCBB: AEBF) a vertically integrated biofuels company, today announced that it has signed a joint development agreement with DS Development, a subsidiary of DS Group, to build, own and operate a 75 million gallon per year production biodiesel plant near Rosario, Argentina. Soy oil will be the primary feedstock as Argentina is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of soy oil. Construction of the biodiesel plant is subject to obtaining necessary project financing.The biodiesel facility will be built by De Smet Engineers & Contractors, a recognized global leader in the construction of biodiesel plants. Technology and engineering will be provided by Desmet Ballestra, which has operated in Argentina for 28 years. Desmet Ballestra is also the technology partner for AE Biofuels’ current palm oil and glycerin refining projects and 50 million gallon biodiesel plant in Kakinada, India.
Popularity: 3% [?]
iCommons.org
Legal scholar and Professor of Law in Development at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, Upendra Baxi argues that the constitutional imagination of Brazil, India and South Africa are all premised on a shared history of violence and sharp inequalities. In the case of India, the birth of the constitution was preceded by the experience of colonialism and the violence of partition, in Brazil the traumatic experience of military dictatorships and in the case of South Africa the experience of apartheid. In other words, in all there countries the constitution emerged as a text of hope against a traumatic past, and the constitution was not merely a liberal document of governance, but a promissory note for a more just and equitable future. Baxi terms these as “transformative constitutions” whose responsibility to history is documented in the kind of promises made in chapters of the rights of individuals, as well as in the recognition of collective rights.
Popularity: 2% [?]
President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, whose public support has plunged during the dispute, has defended the increased export tax. She says it will curtail inflation and let the government redistribute wealth to poorer regions and people.
VS.
President Felipe Calderon announced on Monday that the government will give small monthly cash subsidies to 26 million poor Mexicans — about a quarter of the population — to compensate for rising food prices.
The first one has created shortages and fueled further food price inflation, the second has caused no such disruption.
Popularity: 5% [?]
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