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ezhomelive · 4 years

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SFMTA Budget: Policy Objectives and Funding Priorities

SFMTA Budget: Policy Objectives and Funding Priorities By

The Coronavirus pandemic and current shelter-in-place order have changed our daily routines. The timeline for the SFMTA budget approval has been extended to August 1st. However, we are moving forward with the budget because we need a reference point for where the Agency intends to go. As such, we are taking steps to ensure we continue to engage in a thoughtful and comprehensive community process in light of the current circumstances. If you would like to comment on the budget, please email [email protected], call (415) 646-2222, or post on our Facebook page or Twitter using #sfmtabudget. You can also visit our budget webpage. The SFMTA Board of Directors will be voting on the budget during their regularly scheduled hearing on Tuesday, April 21st.

This is the third in a series of blogs exploring the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA’s) budget process and proposal for Fiscal Years 2021-2022. The first blog provided a high-level overview of the budget process, while the second discussed the state of our projected revenue and expenditures and how they inform budget development. This post will discuss our policy objectives and funding priorities for Fiscal Years 2021-2022 based on the latest proposals that SFMTA staff have put forward. Future blog posts will include content on:

Overview of our outreach

The adopted Consolidated budget and what it includes

Introduction

The previous blog post described the foundation of the Operating and Capital Budgets; the funding necessary for daily operations, equipment, and infrastructure maintenance. This post will discuss the policy proposals & funding priorities above and beyond current service levels. Funding the current service levels comprise most (98%) of the budget. These generally include: employee salaries and benefits, professional service contracts for services, like the maintenance of our bus shelters, that aren’t directly provided by SFMTA staff, and materials and supplies like bus tires or fuel. It is imperative that we continue providing these services to meet the Agency’s Strategic Plan Goals:

Create a safer transportation experience for everyone

Make transit and other sustainable modes of transportation the most attractive and preferred means of travel.

Improve the quality of life and environment in San Francisco and the region.

Create a workplace that delivers outstanding service

As noted in the previous blog post, the Agency faces a structural deficit, meaning that our projected revenue will not keep up with the projected expenditures necessary to provide daily service. So, while the suite of policy proposals discussed in this blog will help us improve and expand services, they will also help us address this deficit. These proposals are rooted in our values of creating a safe transportation system, advancing equity, decarbonizing, and creating a workplace culture that delivers excellent customer service.

Fare Policy

Our budget process began in January and, over the past three months, we have worked hard to ensure an open discussion with the public about San Francisco’s needs, priorities, and the trade-offs that would be required; and to gather feedback through multiple channels so they could be involved in and inform the outcome.

We launched a comprehensive, multilingual public outreach campaign at the beginning of the budget process to gather and consider public input on the budget and the proposed fare changes. As part of that outreach campaign, we received over 300 questions, comments, and concerns, many of which were focused on fares.

We began with our Automatic Indexing Policy, increasing all of our fares as a result of increases in both Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Labor Costs. The implementation of a fare indexing policy allows Muni to raise fares incrementally, rather than holding constant in good times, and increasing above cost of living to help cover budget deficits in economic downturns. Allowing fare revenue to rise in relationship to increased operating costs also allows the SFMTA to invest in the system and increase service.

Some people have questioned whether the SFMTA should raise fares at all, especially given the fact that fares have doubled in the last 10 years.

While this is true, it is important to note that for the previous 10 years, Muni fares were held constant while the economy was strong. Moreover, fares represent a significant percentage of our budget (almost 20 percent). Although the current public health emergency creates uncertainty about our future revenues, we project that not raising fares would mean a loss of $15 million dollars annually. While this seems like a relatively small amount in the context of our overall budget, it does mean that the agency would need to cut programs and services by that amount. For example, because our transit operating expenses are about 60% of the total budget, a revenue loss of $25 million, proportionally reducing all programs and services at the SFMTA, would mean a 3 to 5% transit service reduction and would remove up to 140 operators from service.

Cutting transit service and/or other programs is a bad idea at a time when: we’re seeing significant population growth in the region and one of the Mayor’s top priorities is to build more housing; the need to support sustainable modes of transportation is undeniable given the climate change we’re experiencing; and the need to maintain our infrastructure in a state of good repair is the long-term fiscally responsible thing to do.

So, not increasing fares is NOT a strategic option that considers the trade-offs between short-term gains and long-term consequences.

In order to create a more equitable system, we must prioritize better service and more accessible service through our low- or no-fare programs. Our goal is to create a budget that recognizes the trade-offs that we face and best advances our values. This is why we are proposing free Muni for all youth and for individuals experiencing homelessness.

In response to calls to pause fare increases or to eliminate fares altogether, and with an eye on our funding gap and keeping proposals revenue neutral, we developed two equity-driven proposals that asks San Franciscans who are able to pay, to pay a little more to help our more vulnerable populations who are reliant on transit for employment and other essential needs like healthcare and getting kids to school.

Both fare proposals provide free Muni for all youth under the age of 19 and for individuals experiencing homelessness, and do not raise fares for Cash Fare Single Rides or Reduced Fare Single Rides.

The Equity Monthly Option places the cost burden largely on monthly pass holders to avoid increases in the cash fare and adjusts our Lifeline Pass to be increased by Social Security Income (SSI), rather than inflation (CPI).

The Equity Clipper Option places the cost burden on the monthly pass holders and on riders paying the full single ride fare electronically by reducing—but not eliminating—the discount between the electronic fare and the cash fare.

We are recommending the Equity Clipper Option to our Board, as it distributes the cost burden between a number of fare mediums and supports a more overall equitable fare policy. If this option is approved by our Board:

About 72% of all riders would be impacted by fare increases, based on the 2017 on-board survey, but not all fares would be increased equally.

All proposed fare increases would impact 55% of minority riders and 34% of low-income riders.

All proposed fare decreases would benefit 63% of minority riders and 57% of low-income riders.

Low-income riders use cash fares at higher rates than they use electronic fares. Cash fares for Adults, Seniors, and Disabled single rides will remain the same.

Low-income riders make up only 28% of our Monthly Adult Passes, compared to 53% of our overall ridership.

Free Muni will also continue to be available for Seniors and People with Disabilities, for which we have set a much higher threshold to align with MOHCD at 100% of Bay Area Median Income ($123,150 for a family of four).

Lifeline monthly passes are available for those riders who are at 200% of the federal poverty level. Fares are discounted at half off regular fares and will be increased at the lower SSI rate: $1 for monthly passes and $0.10 for single rides per fiscal year, a smaller increase.

In addition, beginning this year, the SFMTA will be offering a 50% discount on single ride fares to meet the needs of those who can’t afford, or may not need, a monthly Lifeline pass as part of the SMART regional pilot program.

We will also be studying the option of moving from monthly passes to fare capping to enable those who cannot afford the up-front cost of a monthly pass to pay as they go.

Fare Proposals: April 2020 Selected

Accessible text for Table #1

Transit Service

Based on the recommendations of the Muni Reliability Working Group, the Agency is proposing to hire 88 full time employees for system management, maintenance, and planning. Primarily, this includes 30 Transit Operators to support the opening of Central Subway. Other critical staff will:

Support transit operations,

Increase training functions that increase reliability and support trainers and supervisors,

Provide strategic vehicle maintenance,

Support subway reliability, continue regular extended maintenance shutdowns, and

Support Central Subway testing and opening

These proposals represent only an initial investment in the Muni Working Group’s entire set of recommendations. Due to the previously discussed structural deficit, we have scaled back proposals for transit supervision and near-term maintenance improvements and are not recommending a 6% service expansion by FY 2022.

Curb and Congestion Management

In addition to fares, SFMTA is also recommending policy changes to parking pricing. These proposals arose from community feedback, supported by data on parking space availability, that the Agency needs to increase efforts to manage the curb and congestion. Our parking policy proposals have several main components:

1. Modernize Parking Meter Hours: Evening Option and Sunday Option.

Parking pricing is used to manage demand and ensure space availability, not maximize revenue. Any revenue collected goes back into the transportation system, specifically to fund transit.

Since 2011, the SFMTA has operated a demand-responsive parking pricing system: if demand is high, we raise prices to ensure a space or two is available when you go to your favorite restaurant (which hopefully will be soon when the Shelter in Place Order is lifted). When demand is low, we lower prices.

We recognize that increased parking prices could mean less demand from more price-sensitive drivers, many of whom are low income. As part of any proposal we will need to address equity concerns, including maintaining access by continuing to provide quality alternatives, like transit.

We’ve recently looked at our parking polices and realized that they are outdated when it comes to evening metering and Sunday metering. We know that the demand for parking in commercial corridors during the evenings is high. That’s why we are proposing extending the time that meters are enforced beyond the standard 6 pm end time.

We won’t be doing this city-wide immediately; we’ll partner with local merchant associations to determine where extended meter hours make the most sense and see how it works, particularly given the current economic challenges related to the pandemic.

We’re also considering enforcing meters on Sundays, where we’d follow a similar community- and data-driven process to make sure it works for our residents, businesses, and visitors. In 2014, San Francisco's meters charged on Sundays--as a result, parking availability increased significantly, which allowed folks visiting our commercial neighborhood to find parking.

2. Raise the maximum variable parking meter rate by $1 per year to a maximum of $9 per hour in FY 2021 and a maximum of $10 per hour in FY 2022.

The current maximum rate for demand responsive pricing is $8 per hour[1]. This policy is a response to the demand for parking and ensures that parking spaces are regularly accessible to commercial corridor patrons and disabled placard users during business hours. A relatively small percentage of meters in the City operate at the maximum hourly cap.

In addition to updating parking pricing policies, the Agency also recommends the hiring of 66 more Parking Control Officers (PCOs) to manage congestion. This will be a 20% increase of our current staff of 300 PCOs who are responsible for enforcing several safety and quality of life violations like double parking, school zones, bike lanes, and blocked driveways. They are also responsible for traffic control, known technically as a ‘fixed post’. Fixed post is when a PCO stands at an intersection and directs traffic. This is a critical job for reducing congestion and increasing safety by, for example, making sure cars don’t block the box. Just as importantly, many fixed-post PCOs facilitate movement of transit. So, adding more PCOs will increase our ability to:

Support multi-modal safety and neighborhood/commercial corridor needs;

Keep the city moving by managing traffic congestion and supporting transit operations; and

Respond to increased demand for services.

Transit Safety

Driven by overwhelmingly positive public feedback, the Agency is proposing to hire 20 more employees for the Muni Transit Assistance Program (MTAP). MTAP staff are community members who are trained in conflict resolution, and ride on specific transit lines with high incidences of graffiti and youth conflict. They focus on supporting our schools and young people, by working to diffuse and deter any conflicts or acts of vandalism and assist transit operators as needed. MTAP staff do not enforce fare payments, their purpose is to further the safety of youth and other Muni riders.

Vision Zero

The City and County of San Francisco adopted Vision Zero in 2014, committing city agencies to build better and safer streets, educate the public on traffic safety, enforce traffic laws, and adopt policy changes that save lives. The goal of this collaborative, citywide effort is to create safer, more livable streets as we work to eliminate traffic fatalities.

Supporting the Capital Budget, voters approved the use of Prop D Ride-Share Business Tax as a revenue source, with $15 million estimated annually for street safety projects. Staff are proposing expanding existing programs by using the funds evenly for:

the new Quick-Build Program, especially protected bicycle facilities or projects on the High Injury Network; and

signal hardware upgrades, especially signal modifications (new mast arms, poles, visibility) in Communities of Concern[2] and/or on the High Injury Network[3]

Additionally, staff are recommending that the Agency ensures ongoing funding and support of the Vision Zero Education and Outreach Program and Safe Routes to School in the Operating Budget. These programs focus on encouraging behavior change through education, complementing engineering programs and enforcement efforts. They also support the City’s children and families by building a coordinated framework to provide safe and effective options for school transportation. Creating a consistent funding source will increase outreach and education campaigns on safe driving behaviors and maintain the importance of realizing our Vision Zero goal of eliminating traffic fatalities.

Internal Capacity

While SFMTA has grown and added staff in recent years, we have not hired enough Human Resources (HR) employees to keep up with hiring needs. Not including Operators (who have a different recruitment pipeline), the Agency currently has 824 vacant positions out of 4,270, with one analyst for every 118 vacant positions. This has contributed to a number of issues, including that it takes 165 days on average to fill a typical position. To begin addressing this and other HR concerns, the Agency is proposing to add 13 positions to our Human Resources Division to support increased administrative needs, talent acquisition, examinations, leave management, and merit and comparability analyses.

In addition to meeting HR needs, SFMTA staff are also focused on strengthening morale and wellness through enhanced employee engagement and support, and a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable workforce.

To achieve these goals, the Agency is proposing to create an Office of Race, Equity and Inclusion to address inequities in our workplace and services, prioritize those who have the most need in every decision, and ensure just outcomes for all people.

Over the past month, COVID-19 has significantly impacted our community and dramatically altered the SFMTA’s financial outlook. Although this sudden change had an impact on our budget proposal, we maintained as many of the policies and proposals developed with help from public input as we could. However, we will be monitoring both our revenue and our expenditures closely, and we are committed to staying within our means. We can expect that the financial outlook will change over time and we will be making adjustments to the budget accordingly. We will report regularly to the public and the SFMTA Board during the course of the budget period on measures that we are taking to manage our finances.

We at the SFMTA want to thank you all for your invaluable input. You truly helped to shape the budget we will bring to our Board of Directors on April 21st. We encourage you all to tune in to SFGovTV to watch the meeting. You can also call in during the public comment portion of the meeting to share your opinions directly with the Board.

Coming up next in our series: Overview of our outreach

[1] Only 0.02% of metered streets are currently at the maximum $8, so this change only applies to a very narrow set of meters.

[2] San Francisco’s Communities of Concern include a diverse cross-section of populations and communities that could be considered disadvantaged or vulnerable now and in the future. Communities of Concern can have high levels of households with minority or low-income status, seniors, people who have limited English proficiency, people who have disabilities, and more.

[3] The 13% of all SF streets where 70% of severe and fatal collisions with pedestrians and cyclists occur

Published April 17, 2020 at 04:29AM https://ift.tt/2VykEKl from Blogger http://www.ezhomelive.com/2020/04/sfmta-budget-policy-objectives-and.html

#IFTTT #SFMTA

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jacobhinkley · 6 years

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Coinbar Group invests in ARXUM shortly after ICO announcement

Shortly after ARXUM’s ICO announcement, the Singaporean blockchain advisory and private investment group Coinbar invested in the ARXUM project.

ARXUM, a project that changes the manufacturing industry by interconnecting manufacturers, suppliers and customers in a network running on blockchain, announced its ICO last week. Shortly after, Coinbar Group, which is a private investment group consisting of academics, venture investors, market analysts, consultants and developers, invested a substantial (undisclosed) amount of ETH in the ARXUM project. Coinbar has previously invested in ICO’s of well-known players such as IOTA, Kyber Network and Zilliqa.

Mr Sebastian Bausch, CEO of Coinbar Group said:

“ARXUM’s Production Protocol has the chance to drive the technology change in the manufacturing industry towards fully digitalized processes. This will help manufacturers to build Smart Factories and customized mass production”

Jens Harig, Managing Founder of ARXUM said:

“We are pleased to have won Coinbar Group as a strategic investor with extensive technical knowledge and a worldwide network. That could help bringing our product to a global scale”

Markus Jostock, Managing Founder of ARXUM says:

“The funds will be used to further develop the blockchain-based network. We are able to decentralize the manufacturing industry, speed up manufacturing processes, lower manufacturing costs and offer mass customization at the cost of mass production.”

The ICO

The ARXUM token, AX, are used across the ARXUM network and allow investors to benefit from the use of IoT and blockchain within manufacturing. ARXUM has submitted a proposal to the financial authorities of Switzerland, FINMA, and is waiting for the final approval to conduct the ICO. There is a total of 125,000,000 AX token.

Join our telegram group for more information on the ARXUM ICO: https://t.me/arxumforall

Contact

Jens Harig – Founder and Managing Director

Phone +49 172 5222792

E-mail [email protected]

Dr. Markus Jostock – Founder and Managing Director

Phone +49 171 4404755

E-mail [email protected]

To know more, click here!

ARXUM changes the manufacturing industry by interconnecting manufacturers, suppliers and customers in one network. The network lets data be transferred effortlessly between the users, enabling customized manufacturing for the same price as mass production – for the first time in history. In turn, a completely new marketplace is created, where everyone can participate. ARXUM uses blockchain technology and is run by a team of experienced engineers.

The post Coinbar Group invests in ARXUM shortly after ICO announcement appeared first on AMBCrypto.

Coinbar Group invests in ARXUM shortly after ICO announcement published first on https://medium.com/@smartoptions

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garyh2628 · 5 years

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OFFICE OF SECRETARY‬

‪ ‪NOTE: OFFICE OF SECRETARY THE GLOBAL NETWORK ‬ ‪The Global Community Portfolio Responsible for Investment, the Economy and Living your best life. President and legal owner Office of Signature and Stamps and Approvals. ‬ ‪President and Founder of the Global Structure , President of the Prestigious Club; Global legal owner of our Intellectual Property; We don’t speculate on the future. The Family, The Network, Investors, CEOs, The Team and The Family Sector. The Producers Group, International Private Group, Personal Suite, Brooklyn Hub. We build it. Our Strategy on WINE AND COCKTAILS is formidable but not only formidable, its Intellectually built and is designed to facilitate a process of always being your best self and the authority on Intellect and earthquake proof with a strong legal order. It is a bit of an understatement to say we have time to lose. Many of you were given a very restricted and impoverished vision of your future, we must incorporate in order for you to experience the awesome force that you can project when unconstrained by rules ( in the broadest terms) of those that are not your allies. I’m pleased that as a result of this process, provisions will be made for regions in this world who credited me for putting them on the map. I’m looking forward to my private working stint before Intellectual Carnival as I prepare to take the reigns of an important global Position in addition to my duties with the Global Structure. I’m very pleased to know preparation is underway. In case you overlooked the unmissable the Global Structure and me and our Global Monetary Footprints and Mandate has become the surprise star of the Global Sector and those emerging Sectors and the Foundation Sector. The scale of the challenge facing them is now clear, and the scale of the Global Structure saturation is also now clear. Their activities are three fold :‬ ‪How to slow the rate of change and the progress being made across the Globe for Incorporation.‬ ‪How to minimise the coherence and formidability and tranquility of the groups and the Global Mandate as new Technology‬ ‪How can they preserve failure that they grew so accustomed to. ‬ ‪“The problem is that they have no plans for those people other than staying in the news,” says a community participant Investor and CEO. No one had touched it previously, it was in a terrible shape, now thanks to Gary, The Global Structure and the Global Mandate it is now poised to become a rich and thriving Sector, a growing Brand and groupings and the same is forecasted to happen across the Globe after meetings for strategy and Incorporation.” We believe strongly in the Welfare of the employees of the Global Structure and it is for those reasons that this process will be moving to payroll immediately after my meetings for strategy. I’m pleased my private investors agree with the analysis. They are therefore doubling down because this is where the growth area is. We must be vigilant because their era was filled with a track record mixed with phenomenal failure that failed to spur growth, saturated with greed for mediocrity and defined as fiddlers. I’m pleased that my CEOs and my Investors and my Partners and the stakeholders have joined me in distancing ourselves. I’m pleased that you saw enough to know that we have a product et al and as such we are moving forward for provisions and for the Global mandate as New Technology. I’m pleased with the preparation in the South of America and Latin America, welcome on board. It’s always good to keep your options open. I’m looking forward to welcoming you to the Official Residence of the Global Structure and also my Official Private residence for strategic discussions after reporting. We have a good thing set to go in the region inclusive after meetings for strategy. The Network is holding up awaiting my meetings of CEO and our conference (The Authority On intellect.) I’m especially looking forward to our Brand conference for progress. We must double down on moving this process for immediate imminent engagement for my approval and be especially vigilant of those activities of mediocrity that took place across the globe. I’m pleased with the requisite level of deals to be signed and ratified by me which is building up our stable of influence and my profile across the Globe. With the notable exception of one, there is probably no Global mandate in the last decade that have attracted so much dismay and fury, this is because we are leveraging control of this sector and the Global Structure Promise and Philosophy that is creating so much goodwill and influence of rare scope. I’m pleased with your commitment to invest after our private meetings of strategy and your current investment in order to see a successful and lasting intellectual carnival and Global Mandate as New Technology. I’m pleased that you have emerged as one of my stable supporters; bon vivant in this process and my biggest contributor for my address on Philanthropy and Economic to the Prestigious Club and the biggest contributor to my Private wealth Fund. The story of how I did it, will be exclusive to the Pillars and my personal journalist. Thanks for the heads up. Our stakeholders must learn and understand that until incorporation, they have little need to open themselves up to public scrutiny; which is a design for distraction of our influence and success. Each story told in these narratives, illustrate one corner of the making of a vast corporate empire under my Intellectual Stewardship. Our mission is to develop Standards that bring transparency, accountability and efficiency to this process and for the rapid implementation of our Global Mandate around the world. Our work serves to hasten this process for engagement with me for approval and ratification in order to fostering trust, growth and long-term financial stability in the global structure economy. We will replicate those same successes as we incorporate the plethora of components that is the Global Structure incl. We must incorporate to defeat and comprehensively defeat those who are anti business, anti profit, anti financial and Intellectual and Economic stability across the Globe. Further and most importantly to defeat facades once and for all. I’m looking forward to hosting you. Champagne wishes and caviar dreams. As the world turns. ‬

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729renegades · 5 years

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THINK BIG, START SMALL, STAY FLEXIBLE

To eliminate any preconceptions, let me define ‘budget’ for the purpose of this article. A budget is a manifestation of a unique business model created by the business owner and expresses his or her values and aspirations. It’s a detailed plan of how you’ll spend and earn money over the next year.

I spent time last week with a venture capitalist on two funding renewals. Her due diligence requirements include a 12-month budget. She offered the following insight, “I always look to see who’s using their budget to tick the box and who’s using it to run the business.” Let’s take a look at what she means.

There are three ways to define future financial numbers: projections, budgets, and forecasts. I recommend thinking of projections as long-term numbers. They’ll tell the business owner where the company’s financial and operational numbers will be in one, three, and five years’ time. In a similar way, a budget will tell you your short-term numbers, most likely over the next twelve months. Finally, there are forecasts, which are real time adjustments made to the budget during the year to sharpen year-end numbers. These changes are usually made on a quarterly basis and reflect how actual quarterly numbers differ from budgeted ones.

Projections or Longer-Term Numbers

There are three main reasons to create projections. Firstly, they are needed to know the business’ financing needs 6-18 months ahead of time. Secondly, projections are used to value companies. They are also a tool to set goals and expectations: goals for the management team and staff, and expectations for the board and outside investors.

Early stage businesses search for the right business model. They operate in cash mode 24/7 and test hypotheses for product/market fit in real time. At this stage, the entrepreneur’s role is to innovate; the customer’s role is to validate. With all this uncertainty, it seems implausible to create three or five year projections.

Despite this tension, the business owner must be able to envision future growth, competition, and the long-term profits of the business.

She must keep in mind three fundamentals when projecting her numbers. They should be driven by scenario analysis, realistic assumptions, and a clear understanding of the main drivers of the business, namely the key performance indicators.

Scenario Analysis

There are many external factors beyond the control of the business owner, such as competitors releasing a disruptive technology, or key customers unexpectedly going out of business. To avoid being blindsided to potential risks and opportunities, it’s important to envision different scenarios when modelling. The most frequently used scenarios are: best case, most likely or ‘base’ case, and worst case. There is, however, no preset number of scenarios you can use.

When performing scenario analysis, make sure there are 3 types of people in the room. The optimist will imagine the future where every opportunity works out. The pessimist will ask: “What if we’re unable to hire that person?” or “What if there’s an unforeseen delay in launching the product?”. Finally, the realist compares similar businesses to yours and looks at history to see what their path turned out to be. Each person will force you to start over in your assumptions and numbers until, several iterations later, you’ll have a workable plan.

Assumptions

The essence of business forecasting is to predict future cash flows based on realistic assumptions and assigning probabilities to each of them. Learning occurs as you follow each potential path and evaluate each potential outcome.

Always start with your assumptions and clearly document them. A big mistake is to focus first on the outcomes you would like to see. Examine where the numbers come from,their roots, before prematurely congratulating yourself on the outcomes.

Billionaire Vinod Khosla, CEO of Khosla Ventures, and ex-founder of Sun Microsystems provides this warning to entrepreneurs: “The more success you’ve had in the past, the less you challenge your own assumptions in a new venture. The more credentials someone has, the more assumptions he or she makes.”

Get as much feedback as you can around your assumptions. If you have them, ask your investors and board to review them. If you’re a solo-entrepreneur, ask mentors and peers whose wisdom you respect.

Budgets or Short-Term Numbers

In my experience, these are the four budgeting errors to avoid:

1. The business owner is lazy and uses someone else’s budget template. Budgeting is more art than science. You must design your own budget.

2. Never use blanket percentages in your profit and loss statement to project forward 12 months. The lazy business owner will increase revenues by 40%, expenses by 20%, and expect net profit to increase 20%. Instead, frame your budget around the key milestones to hit, the different products you’re selling, or your customer markets.

3. A budget that has been created as outlined in mistake #2 above will invariably show a % cushion incorporated into each important number. I’ve also seen a separate line item at the bottom of the budget that’s called ‘cushion’ and is a plug number to make the numbers more conservative. Both methods constitute poor modelling. Instead, as mentioned previously, each number should be chosen conservatively based upon assumptions and KPIs.

4. The lazy business owner waits until the end of December, or dare I say February, to start creating the budget and ends up stitching together a rushed and feeble plan. Every successful business owner should set at the beginning of each year a financial calendar for the company. Nestled into it is a budgeting timeline that differs for the size of your business.

The business owner who is guilty of making these mistakes has ‘ticked the box’, in the words of the venture capitalist at the start of the article. Although he has a budget to submit, it fails to be an effective tool with which to run the company for the next 12 months.

Budgeting in An Early Stage Business

The budgeting process differs depending on the stage of your company. We will apply the concepts discussed earlier in this article to an early stage growth business, which I define as employing between 1 and 10 staff. In my next article I’ll discuss what projecting and budgeting looks like for companies with 10-100 employees and beyond.

At this early stage of growth, it’s tempting to start with the budget and neglect establishing long term projections due to uncertainty around your business model. Delaying, however, would be a mistake. Budgeting is a refinement of the projections. Always do your projections before budgeting.

The budgeting process launches annually in October or November with final approval in December by your board or your team. Two people can do your budget, likely the collaboration between the business owner and a finance savvy person.

It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it – George W. Bush

Start with the structure of a 3-year financial model. Lock down key business or performance metrics for the next 12 months and commence creating your assumptions. In the act of planning the business owner identifies her risks and builds contingencies against them.

It’s especially important to project conservatively in an early stage business. Revenue lines and drivers change often as you continue to mould and develop your business model. One key goal of the revenue section is to show product market fit, indicated by total revenue.

Your focus with expenses is on hiring and people costs. The business owner wants to determine the number of staff she is able to hire, and at what salary level, in each month over the next 12 months. There will be a cash burn analysis at the bottom of your budget to help with this analysis.

This is your monthly liquidity analysis; it tells you how much cash you have left each month to invest in your business. It will also tell you in what month you’ll run out of cash if you continue to follow your plan. Please refer to ‘The Numbers Game’ article in October 2015 where I explain this topic in detail.

Once approved by the board, share your budget with the entire team. I recommend only showing and providing the rationale behind the major line items. It’s important that your team understands the reasoning behind your numbers, but the

details can be distracting to them. Ensure that the monthly cash flow projections are removed. There is no benefit to alarm your team if you will be running low in cash in the future. The budget must make sense to your staff internally

and to your board of directors externally.

We’re in a bull cycle where growing as fast as possible is desired and even encouraged. In fact, last year, Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, designed and taught a class at Stanford Business School called “Blitz-scaling”.

However, Vinod Khosla provides a strong warning against scaling without having appropriate product/market fit and an established business model. He says: “The more money you raise and the more people you hire, the more difficult it is to

execute on your plan. And that can lead to disaster. It’s much easier to discover your plan when you have less people, and less money. The plan is never complete until the business model is set and that could be a long way down the road. Use

your budget early on to establish your business model, not to figure out how to grow at the highest rate possible.

Forecasting or Real Time Numbers

Successfully implementing a budget is a continuous iterative process, especially during the early years.

Each month report actual numbers vs budgeted numbers and track how you’re doing. Keep an account of lessons learned, unexpected outcomes, difficulties encountered, and changes in future plans. This will be presented at board meetings and used for strategic planning.

If the budget is relatively close to the actual numbers being recorded, then you’re running according to your plan and no adjustments are needed.

However, if there are large discrepancies, new forecasts must be made during the year in order to come up with more accurate year-end numbers. In this case, the budget is not thrown out, but comparisons are now made between actual numbers and the original budget, and actual numbers and the new real-time forecasts.

Having an inaccurate budget should only be viewed as temporary defeat. It means your plan doesn’t work. Many business owners fall into the trap of lowering their year-end numbers. Instead pivot and create a new plan. Repeat this process until you find one that works.

As the business progresses, your assumptions will start to become fact and you will gain greater clarity into your business model. Then, creating a budget moves beyond a boring requirement into the astute entrepreneur’s toolbox for a smarter business.

from Blog | 729renegades http://bit.ly/2w6wPSn

#Blog | 729renegades

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cryptobrief · 6 years

Link

BitMax.io (BTMX.com), the industry-leading next-generation digital asset exchange, has announced a strategic partnership with Fantom, the decentralized nervous system of the smart cities of the future, and the platform for nearly instantaneous payments. Fantom solves the problems of existing distributed ledgers such as Ethereum and Bitcoin, by utilizing its revolutionary technology on a global scale. The Fantom token was listed for trading on the BitMax.io exchange on March 12th, 2019.

What is Fantom?

Fantom’s mission is to provide compatibility between all transaction bodies around the world, creating an ecosystem that allows real-time transactions and data sharing with low cost. The distributed ledger proposed by Fantom is combined with a high-performance virtual machine and secure smart contract execution.

The new network proposes a groundbreaking consensus mechanism which utilizes gossip to reach aBFT consensus. The developers behind Fantom consider themselves to be specialists in holistic consensus. They’re building the network and the next generation infrastructure or backbone to power smart cities and blazingly fast payments. Fantom is a highly scalable, decentralized, and secure network. It has the ability to collect a large quantity of high-speed data transmission with scalable solutions across multiple smart city service providers.

By 2020 it is estimated that smart cities will have 90 billion IoT devices sending data that needs to be stored securely and be accessible to stakeholders for smart city data-driven Smart contracts and DApp. As an IT infrastructure backbone, the Fantom platform will change the operation of public utilities, smart homes, healthcare, education, traffic management, resource management, and environmental sustainability.

Fantom uses a new protocol called the “Lachesis Protocol” for maintaining consensus. This protocol will be integrated into the Fantom OPERA Chain. Applications built on top of the Fantom OPERA Chain will enjoy instant transactions and near-zero transaction costs.

The platform is open-source and will be used and changed by the community to provide various application support tools that can be used to create decentralized applications (DApps).

Fantom’s solution to current blockchain problems

Fantom’s technology is intended to create potentially infinite scalability, processing transactions very quickly even with a large number of nodes participating in the network. It will use a method where a single event block verifies the transaction prior to it, and transactions are verified and processed in a non-synchronized way without being approved by miners as in prior blockchains. The increased transactional load won’t lead to bottlenecks or delayed approval. It also intends to manage historical information without assistance from external databases, such as the Oracle Database.

Event blocks that store information from transactions contains multiple data packages. A data package may include historical information, transactions, Smart Contracts, reputation management, and rewards.

Third generation blockchain technology shows improved performance, but the speed of creating blocks is still slow. The OPERA Chain intends to ensure high creation and processing performance of up to 300,000 transactions per second.

With a high level of scalability and reliability, Fantom’s strong third-generation blockchain technology will be able to be utilized on a large scale across many industries and domains. It intends not only to process large numbers of transactions at scale but to process Story and historical data to ensure the reliability of transactions.

Team Members

Dr. Ahn is the CEO of Fantom Foundation. Ahn is a contributing writer at Fortune Magazine and has been awarded the President Award for his successful IT business. In 2010, Dr. Ahn established a successful food-tech platform SikSin, which has since acquired over 3.5 million downloads and 22 million monthly page views.

Jake Choi has been involved in the cryptocurrency space for over three years as an investor, trader, advisor, and entrepreneur. Previously, he worked as Vice President of Sales at digi.cash, a digital currency platform, where he established their cryptocurrency brokerage and vaulting business, facilitating trades up to US$5million worth of cryptocurrencies.

Michael Kong is a smart contract developer who has been involved in the blockchain space for several years. He previously worked as the Chief Technology Officer at Block8, a venture capital-backed Blockchain incubator where he managed all of the business’s projects.

What is BitMax.io

BitMax.io is the industry leading next-generation digital asset exchange that provides a broad range of financial products and services to both retail and institutional clients across the globe. This innovative trading platform was founded by a group of Wall Street quant trading veterans and built upon the core values of blockchain, transparency, and reliability, to deliver high-quality client services and efficient trading experience.

Last November, BitMax.io team introduced a revolutionary trading model that combined “transaction-mining” and “reverse-mining.” Different from traditional transaction-mining-only exchanges, BitMax.io platform users receive not only BTMX tokens as a reward for trading on the platform but also rebates for executing maker trades. “Reverse mining” helps to support the liquidity on the platform.

BitMax.io always strives to provide its global users with a comprehensive set of trading products. Its recently launched margin trading function is another step forward from a product offering perspective to better serve their dynamic trading needs. For those users who understand and acknowledge the risks involved in margin trading, the function allows users to borrow funds from the platform and to trade more digital assets than they normally could afford. The list of digital assets that can be traded on margin has increased from the initial four to 18 different tokens, even including BTMX platform native token. Again, this is the pioneering move among all the exchange players, that not only builds upon its progressive BTMX token economics but also expands the utility functions of BTMX, especially with those BTMX under lock-up that can be used as collateral.

Overall margin trading can bring more trading volume and enhance liquidity on the platform. And with increased buying power, users can leverage their tradable asset as collateral for a potentially higher return on investment when the price goes up. However, they need to bear the risk of potential losses from margin trading when the price moves down. (The margin trading function of BitMax.io is not available for North American markets.)

A Collaborative Partnership

BitMax.io has already expanded its global client base to 40,000 active community members and over 110,000 registered users. Last several weeks the team has successfully launched the listing of seven innovative new projects and the Fantom listing will be part of this impressive track record. BitMax.io and Fantom are both committed to encouraging the broad-based adoption of cryptocurrencies with focus on real-world usability and scalability.

For more information, follow BitMax.io on:

Website: http://www.BitMax.io

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BitMax_Official

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BitMax/

Telegram: https://t.me/BitMaxioEnglishOfficial

Medium: https://medium.com/bitmax-io

CONTACT: [email protected]

The post BitMax.io (BTMX.com) and Fantom (FTM) Form a Strategic Partnership appeared first on ZyCrypto.

#briefs

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cryptswahili · 6 years

Text

BitMax.io (BTMX.com) and Fantom (FTM) Form a Strategic Partnership

What is Fantom?

The platform is open-source and will be used and changed by the community to provide various application support tools that can be used to create decentralized applications (DApps).

Fantom’s solution to current blockchain problems

Team Members

What is BitMax.io

A Collaborative Partnership

For more information, follow BitMax.io on:

Website: http://www.BitMax.io

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BitMax_Official

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BitMax/

Telegram: https://t.me/BitMaxioEnglishOfficial

Medium: https://medium.com/bitmax-io

CONTACT: [email protected]

The post BitMax.io (BTMX.com) and Fantom (FTM) Form a Strategic Partnership appeared first on ZyCrypto.

[Telegram Channel | Original Article ]

#cryptocurrency

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mideastsoccer · 6 years

Text

A China Wins Twice Proposition: The Belt and Road Initiative By James M. Dorsey A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn and Tumblr China’s dazzling infrastructure and energy-driven Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a US$1 trillion investment across Eurasia and beyond, has lost its shine. Increasingly, China’s leveraging of the initiative is being perceived by a growing number of recipients and critics alike as a geopolitical power play, a tool to shape a new world order partly populated by autocrats and authoritarians, and progressively characterized by intrusive surveillance, potential debt traps, and perceived as a self-serving way to address domestic overcapacity. As a result, China’s most immediate problem is a growing perception that its principle of win-win economic cooperation often amounts to little more than China wins twice, both economically and geopolitically. It is forcing China to focus in the short-term less on the Great Game—the rivalry with the United States and its allies for dominance in a swath of land stretching from the China Sea to Europe's Atlantic coast—and more on ensuring that it does not lose hard-won ground. Ironically, China’s immediate allies as well as rivals in efforts to maintain its status are not exclusively the United States, India or Japan, but also its newly assertive, geopolitically ambitious friends in the Gulf: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran. Nowhere is this truer than in Pakistan, which — with its Prime Minister Imran Khan and together with Malaysia and Myanmar — is leading the charge in resisting China’s approach to the Belt and Road and seeking to change its focus. A $45 billion-plus crown jewel of the Belt and Road, Pakistan is insisting that Chinese investment—in what both countries have dubbed the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—shift from infrastructure and energy to agriculture, job creation, and the enabling of third-party investment, primarily from countries of the Gulf. Fuelling Chinese concern, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have exploited Chinese irritation with Pakistan’s demands, as well as initial criticism of the crackdown on Turkic Muslims in the north-western province of Xinjiang, to their advantage. Massive aid and investment, to the tune of $30 billion in balance of payment support, deferred oil import payments and investment in the troubled Pakistani province of Balochistan, which borders Iran, has helped the Khan government to avoid approaching the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cap in hand to bail it out of an imminent financial crisis. It also shielded China—which refrained from rushing to Pakistan’s financial aid—from potentially embarrassing disclosures of the financial terms of CPEC-related projects that the IMF was demanding as part of any bailout. Media reports said that Pakistan had told the IMF about having to pay China $40 billion over 20 years for $26.5 billion in Chinese funding of CPEC-related projects. The official disclosures would have likely reinforced notions that the Belt and Road is less benign than China asserts. China worried, however, that greater Saudi and UAE influence in a restive region on Iran’s border—which could serve as a launchpad for possible efforts to destabilize the Islamic Republic—may complicate the security of its massive investment and suck the People’s Republic into the escalating maelstrom of Saudi-UAE-Iranian rivalry. China and Saudi Arabia were careful not to raise the issue of Pakistan during Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s recent visit to Beijing that was designed to put on display ever closer cooperation and shore up Prince Mohammed’s image tarnished by the Yemen war and the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Bolstered by Gulf support, Pakistan has put its money where its mouth is. In January, Pakistan asked China to shelve a joint $2 billion coal power project because of its expense. Pakistan planning and development minister Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtyar advised his Chinese counterpart that the 1,320-megawatt Rahim Yar Khan project was not a priority. The government was reportedly planning to slash hundreds more CPEC-related projects. Two Chinese companies that drafted a master plan to turn the strategic Baloch port of Gwadar into a smart city, meanwhile, complained to the government about delays in the project’s approval. Pakistan was just the last, albeit most crucial, node on the Belt and Road to challenge China’s commercial and geopolitical approach. Malaysia has suspended or cancelled $26 billion in Chinese-funded projects. Speaking during a visit to Beijing, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohmad warned the Chinese: “you don’t want a situation where there’s a new version of colonialism happening because poor countries are unable to compete with rich countries in terms of just open, free trade.” Mahathir was echoing his earlier assertion that “we gain nothing” from Chinese investment and risk selling off the country to foreigners. At about the same time, Myanmar was negotiating a significant scaling back of a Chinese-funded port project on the Bay of Bengal from one that would cost $ 7.3 billion to a more modest development that would cost $1.3 billion, in a bid to avoid shouldering an unsustainable debt. Myanmar feared that the debt burden would ultimately force it to follow in Sri Lanka’s footsteps, with debt having left Sri Lanka with no choice but to hand over its strategically located Hambantota port to the Asian giant. China was also pressuring Myanmar to revive the suspended $3.6 billion Myitsone dam project, which if built as previously designed would flood 600 square kilometres of forestland in northern Kachin state and export 90 percent of the power produced to China. In return, China reportedly offered to support Myanmar, which has been condemned by the United Nations, Western countries, and some Muslim nations for its repressive campaign against the Rohingya, some 700,000 of whom fled to Bangladesh last year. Similarly, recent protests against the forced resettlement of eight Nepali villages persuaded China International Water and Electric Corporation (CWE), a subsidiary of China Three Gorges, to consider pulling out of a 750-megawatt hydropower project. CWE said it was looking at cancelling the project because it was “financially unfeasible.” The Soup Barometer Ambivalence toward China and its signature Belt and Road is perhaps most complex in Central Asia, where a heavy soup made of pulled noodles, meat, and vegetables symbolizes the region’s close cultural and ethnic ties with the People’s Republic’s repressed Turkic and Hui Muslims also explains growing Central Asian unease with China’s re-education campaign in Xinjiang and the Belt and Road. Named Ashlan Fu and introduced to Kyrgyzstan in the late nineteenth century by Dungans, exiled Chinese Hui Muslims who fled over the Tien Shan Mountains after a failed rebellion in 1877, the soup has become a staple of Kyrgyz cuisine. Members of Kyrgyzstan’s far right Kyrk Choro (Forty Nights) group protested in December and January outside the Chinese embassy in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek against the inclusion of ethnic Kyrgyz in the up to one million Muslims detained in re-education camps in Xinjiang as part of the Chinese crackdown. In a sign of the times, Kyrk Choro, a nationalist group that has gained popularity and is believed to have the support of the Kyrgyz ministries of interior and labour, migration, and youth, and the National Security Committee (GKNB), focused its protest exclusively on ethnic Kyrgyz in Chinese detention. Acting as vigilantes, Kyrk Choro raided clubs in Bishkek four years ago in a campaign against prostitution, accusing Chinese nationals of promoting vice. In a video of an attack on a karaoke club, a Kyrk Choro leader showed a receipt that featured a girl as one of the consumed iteYet, while standing up for the rights of ethnic Kyrgyz and Kyrgyz nationals, Kyrk Choro has also called for Uighurs, the Turkic Muslims that populate Xinjiang, to be booted out of Bishkek’s most popular clothing bazaar and replaced by ethnic Kyrgyz. Kyrk Choro further demanded the expulsion of illegal Chinese migrants. It insisted that the government check the documents of migrants, including those who had obtained Kyrgyz citizenship over the last decade, among them 268 Chinese nationals who in majority were of Kyrgyz descent. Kyrk Choro’s contradictory demands and claims reflect not only a global trend towards ethnic and religious nationalism with undertones of xenophobia, but also concern that Belt and Road-related projects serve Chinese rather than Kyrgyz and Central Asian interests. The Kyrgyz government recently reported that 35,215 Chinese citizens had arrived in the country in 2018, many of them as construction workers on Chinese-funded projects. Political scientist Colleen Wood noted that social media activists were linking criticism of Chinese commercial practices with China’s crackdown in Xinjiang. “One widely-shared image, which declares “Don’t let anyone take your land,” depicts a strong fist—adorned with a Kyrgyz flag—stopping a spindly hand—marked by a Chinese flag—from snatching factories and a field,” Wood wrote in The Diplomat. Wood said that some activists compared Chinese practice to the 2002 demarcation of the Chinese-Kyrgyz border during which the Central Asian nation handed over 1,250 square kilometres of land to China. Another Facebook page, Kytai baskynchylygyna karshybyz, which roughly translates to “we’re against Chinese aggression,” posted articles about Chinese mining companies operating in Kyrgyzstan, which are a target of Kyrgyz protesters, alongside articles depicting the intrusiveness of the crackdown in Xinjiang, according to Wood. The Kyrgyz government, much like the vast majority of Muslim countries, has so far avoided taking China to task on its crackdown for fear of jeopardizing its relations with the People’s Republic. Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov insisted that “the ethnic Kyrgyz of China are citizens of China, who obey the laws of their country. How can we intervene in their domestic matters? We can’t.” If Kazakhstan—where the issue of ethnic Kazakhs detained in China has flared up—is anything to go by, the Kyrgyz government is walking a tightrope. Kyrgyz national Asyla Alymkulova recently established the Committee to Protect the Kyrgyz People in China after her husband, Shairbek Doolotkhan, a Chinese-born Muslim, vanished in October during a business trip to Xinjiang. Doolotkhan’s company subsequently advised Alymkulova that her husband had been “sent away to study” in a camp. Short of a reunion with her husband, there is little that is likely to convince Alymkulova, or the relatives of thousands of other Central Asians, including up to 7,500 Kazakhs, that Chinese policy towards Muslims is benign and benefiting the community and the region’s progress. That, in turn, will not make things easier for the Kyrgyz and other Muslim governments at a time when ethnic and cultural identities in a nationalistic and at times xenophobic environment are becoming prevalent. Kyrgyz attitudes towards Ashlan Fu may be the barometer. Anti-Chinese sentiment in Central Asia simmers at the surface, with Tajikistan having become the first Central Asian nation to be trapped in debt. As a result, Tajikistan was forced to cede control of some 1,158 square kilometres of disputed territory in exchange for having an undisclosed amount of Chinese debt written off. Scholars of international relations Robert Daly and Matthew Rojanski noted on a recent trip to Russia, Kazakhstan, and China that was intended to gauge responses to the Belt and Road that Eurasian nations were eager to benefit from Chinese investment, but wary of Beijing’s intentions. “We found an eagerness to participate in projects that support national development, but deep resistance to any westward or northward expansion of China’s practices, ideas, or population […] Neither (Russia or Kazakhstan) hope that China’s power will increase with its investments,” the scholars said. Matching Words with Deeds Debt has been a focal point of criticism of the Belt and Road. It has allowed China to fly under the radar on other controversial issues, such as its support for the kind of dirty-power projects in Central and South Asia and Africa, which the People’s Republic has banned at home because of the increased cost of carbon pricing and air pollution regulations associated with coal-fired power plants. “BRI has the potential to transform economies in China’s partner countries. Yet it could also tip the world into catastrophic climate change,” warned China environment expert Isabel Hilton, noting that coal-driven power was long at the heart of China’s economic development. “The more than 70 countries that are signed up to BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) have an average GDP of around one-third of that of China. If they adopt China’s development model, which resulted in a doubling of China’s greenhouse gas emissions in the first decade of the century, it would make the emissions targets in the Paris Agreement impossible,” added climate change scholar Nicholas Stern. Chinese President Xi Jinping has capitalized on the American withdrawal from the Paris Agreement—the landmark United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance—by projecting China as a leader in environmental good governance. In 2016, Xi called for a “green, healthy, intelligent, and peaceful” Belt and Road. He urged participating countries to “deepen cooperation in environmental protection, intensify ecological preservation and build a green Silk Road.” On paper, Chinese environmental good governance looks good. The problem is that the government’s guidelines are non-binding and often ignored. As a result, Xi has yet to back up words with deeds. China is developing some 240 coal projects with a total generating capacity of 251 gigawatts in 25 countries that include developments in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kenya, Ghana, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, and is also funding new coal capacity in Egypt, Tanzania, and Zambia. Many of those projects do not incorporate carbon capture technology that would align them with global efforts to control climate change. Chinese financial institutions are the world’s largest financier of overseas coal plants, investing $15 billion in coal projects from 2013 to 2016 through international development funds, with another $13 billion in proposed funding […] Chinese firms are involved in the construction, ownership, or financing of at least 16 percent of all coal-fired power stations under development outside China, according to a report published by environmental advocacy groups CoalSwarm, Sierra Club, and Greenpeace. Huang Wei, a climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia, warned that Chinese banks’ and companies’ investments in coal abroad are a cause of major concern because of their potential to lock in more climate warming emissions in our carbon-constrained world […] If China wants to enhance its leadership on climate and ‘ecological civilization,’ Chinese companies’ and banks’ investment must steer away from coal towards renewable alternatives, such as wind and solar.” Hilton notes that the heavy price China paid for its coal addiction in water scarcity, acid rain, and air pollution, coupled with the country’s gradual shift from an industry to a services-based economy, has forced it to create ecological safeguards and emphasize clean, green energy. The problem, Hilton said, is that “while China is making commendable efforts to clean up at home and reduce its carbon emissions, the Belt and Road Initiative threatens to lock China’s partners into the same high-emission development that China is now trying to exit.” Symptomatic of the China-centric focus of the Belt and Road, China’s push for dirty energy beyond its own borders is a bid to support its coal and energy companies that faced a bleak future because of reform at home that emphasized renewable energy instead of coal. Quoting energy and environmental scholar Kelly Sims Gallagher, Hilton said that more than half of 50 Chinese-financed, coal-fired power plants constructed overseas between 2001 and 2016 used low-efficiency, sub-critical coal technology. Together, the plants were expected to release nearly 600 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, equivalent to 11 percent of total American emissions in 2015. Hilton said that by building new coal plants along the Belt and Road, “China is creating […] risks for the countries that host these projects, risks most of them can ill afford. If these new coal plants continue to operate, they will they make it much more difficult for poor countries to meet their climate goals under the Paris Agreement, and, far from offering a cheap energy option, they will become a financial burden either to the governments or consumers, even as these plants lock out cheaper and cleaner alternatives.” On the Defensive A series of reports by Western think-tanks, coupled with official American warnings of the pitfalls of the Belt and Road, have added to China’s woes, contributed to the People’s Republic being put on the defensive. They have added to the domestic debate in China itself. Xi’s pledge last year of US$60 billion in new loans to Africa triggered a wave of grumbling in a sign of mounting popular hostility to his international ambitions, and to the tightening of political controls at home. One blogger asserted that the money would be sufficient to fund China’s cash-strapped education ministry for three years. The critical comments on social media were quickly deleted. All of this has not stopped the drumbeat of criticism from outside of China. China “is not in it to help countries out, they’re in it to grab their assets,” warned Ray Washburne, president and CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), an intergovernmental agency that channels American private capital into overseas development projects. He accused China of intentionally plunging recipient countries into debt, then going after “their rare earths and minerals and things like that as collateral for their loans.” That view persuaded Greenland, helped along by US pressure, to select a Danish rather than a Chinese company to build and upgrade three airports. “The big fear is that even a small Chinese investment will amount to a large part of Greenland’s GDP, giving China an outsized influence that can be used for other purposes,” said Danish foreign and defense policy scholar Jon Rahbek-Clemmensen. A study by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) argued that the Belt and Road was driven by “interest groups within and outside China (that) are skewing President Xi’s signature foreign policy vision.” The study asserted that the positioning of the initiative persuaded Chinese local and regional authorities, as well as companies, to brand their activities as Belt and Road-related in order to gain economic and political advantage. The similarly Washington-based Center for Global Development warned that 23 of 68 countries benefiting from Belt and Road investments were “significantly or highly vulnerable to debt distress.” The centre said eight of 23 vulnerable countries—Pakistan, Tajikistan, Djibouti, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, the Maldives, Mongolia, and Montenegro—were particularly at risk. Djibouti already owes 82 percent of its foreign debt to China, while China is expected to account for 71 percent of Kyrgyz debt as Belt and Road-related projects are implemented. “There is […] concern that debt problems will create an unfavouable degree of dependency on China as a creditor. Increasing debt, and China’s role in managing bilateral debt problems, has already exacerbated internal and bilateral tensions in some BRI countries,” the report said. Rex Tillerson, a former American secretary of state, echoed the centre’s concerns during a visit to Africa while still in office in March 2018. China “encourages dependency using opaque contracts, predatory loan practices, and corrupt deals that mire nations in debt and undercut their sovereignty, denying them their long-term, self-sustaining growth. Chinese investment does have the potential to address Africa’s infrastructure gap, but its approach has led to mounting debt and few, if any, jobs in most countries,” Tillerson said. Raising the Stakes The Belt and Road’s geopolitics are a double-edged sword. Geopolitics is what many believe is its driver. Yet, geopolitics is also its potential Achilles Heel. The arrival in mid-December of the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier group in the Gulf had on the surface nothing to do with the Belt and Road and everything to do with American efforts to increase pressure on Iran. Yet, Pakistan’s mounting dependence on Saudi Arabia and the UAE, coupled with the American campaign intended to curb Iran’s regional projection, increasingly raises the stakes for China beyond the Trump administration’s efforts to force China and others to comply with its tough economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic. The carrier group’s presence in the Gulf, the first by an American aircraft carrier in eight months, raised the spectre of a potential military conflagration on Balochistan’s doorstep. It coincided with a suicide attack on an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps headquarters in the Indian-backed Iranian port city of Chabahar, a mere 70 kilometres up the coast from the Chinese-backed port of Gwadar, which killed two people and left 40 wounded. The attack raised the spectre of Saudi and/or American covert support for militants in Iran, a key node in the Belt and Road’s land link to Europe. Saudi and Iranian media reported that Ansar al-Furqan—a shadowy Iranian Sunni jihadi group which Iran asserts is supported by Saudi Arabia, along with the United States and Israel—had claimed responsibility for the attack. Saudi-based pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat suggested that the attack “reflects the anger harboured by the (city’s Baloch) minority against the government.” The paper said the Iranian government had expelled thousands of Baloch families from Chabahar and replaced them with Persians, in a bid to change the city’s demography. It asserted that Iran was granting nationality to Afghan Shiites who had fought in Syria and Iraq and was moving them to Chabahar. The paper went on to say that “anti-regime Baloch movements have recently intensified their operations against Tehran in an attempt to deter it from carrying out its plan to expel and marginalize the Baloch from their ancestral regions.” The Saudi media reports stroked with staunch Saudi support for Washington’s confrontational approach toward Iran. Pakistani militants say the kingdom has pumped large amounts of money into militant, ultraconservative Sunni Muslim, anti-Shiite, and anti-Iranian religious seminaries along the border separating Balochistan from the Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchestan, which is home to Chabahar. The funding was designed to create the building blocks for a potential covert effort to destabilize Iran by stirring unrest among its ethnic minorities. Moreover, Saudi think-tank the Arabian Gulf Centre for Iranian Studies (AGCIS), renamed the International Institute of Iranian Studies and believed to be backed by Prince Mohammed, argued in a study that Chabahar posed “a direct threat to the Arab Gulf states” that called for “immediate counter measures.” Written by Mohammed Hassan Husseinbor, identified as an Iranian political researcher, the study warned that Chabahar posed a threat because it would enable Iran to increase its market share in India for its oil exports at the expense of Saudi Arabia, raise foreign investment in the Islamic republic, increase government revenues, and allow Iran to project power in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Noting the vast expanses of Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province, Husseinbor went on to say that “it would be a formidable challenge, if not impossible, for the Iranian government to protect such long distances and secure Chabahar in the face of widespread Baluch opposition, particularly if this opposition is supported by Iran’s regional adversaries and world powers.” Neo-Colonialism in the Twenty-First Century The Pakistani government’s insistence on refocusing CPEC amounts to far more than a commercial and economic reorientation of Chinese investment. It challenges the core of the Belt and Road, at least as it relates to Pakistan, in terms of what some critics have termed a neo-colonial approach. It also casts a shadow over China’s hope that economic development in Xinjiang fuelled by linking the province to its neighbours will help it achieve the sinicizing of Turkic Muslims. A leaked plan for CPEC detailed not only benefits that China would derive from its investment in Pakistan, but the way Pakistan would be turned, even more than it already is, into a surveillance state in which freedoms of expression and media are manipulated. It also suggested the degree to which the Belt and Road was designed to establish China as Eurasia’s dominant power based on economics, as well as the adoption of measures that undermine democracy or inhibit political transition in autocracies. The plan appeared to position Pakistan as a raw materials supplier for China, an export market for Chinese products and labour, and an experimental ground for the export of the surveillance state China is rolling out in Xinjiang. It envisioned Chinese state-owned companies leasing thousands of hectares of agricultural land to set up “demonstration projects” in areas ranging from seed varieties to irrigation technology. Chinese agricultural companies would be offered “free capital and loans” from various Chinese ministries, as well as the China Development Bank. It projected that the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps would introduce mechanization and new technologies to Pakistani livestock breeding, development of hybrid varieties, and precision irrigation. Pakistan would effectively become a raw materials supplier rather than an added-value producer, a prerequisite for a sustainable textiles industry. The plan further saw the Pakistani textile sector as a supplier of materials like yarn and coarse cloth to textile manufacturers in Xinjiang. “China can make the most of the Pakistani market in cheap raw materials to develop the textiles and garments industry and help soak up surplus labour forces in (Xinjiang’s) Kashgar,” the plan said. Chinese companies would be offered preferential treatment with regard to “land, tax, logistics, and services,” as well as “enterprise income tax, tariff reduction, and exemption and sales tax rate” incentives. In other economic sectors, such as household appliances, telecommunications and mining, Chinese companies would exploit their presence to expand market share. In areas like cement, building materials, fertilizer and agricultural technologies, the plan called for the building of infrastructure and the developing of a policy environment to facilitate the entry of Chinese companies. A full system of monitoring and surveillance would be built in Pakistani cities to ensure law and order. The system would involve the deployment of explosive detectors and scanners to “cover major roads, case-prone areas and crowded places […] in urban areas to conduct real-time monitoring and 24-hour video recording.” A national fibre optic backbone would be built for internet traffic, as well as the terrestrial distribution of broadcast media that would cooperate with their Chinese counterparts in the “dissemination of Chinese culture.” The plan described the backbone as a “cultural transmission carrier” that would serve to “further enhance mutual understanding between the two peoples and the traditional friendship between the two countries.” The plan identified as risks to CPEC “Pakistani politics, such as competing parties, religion, tribes, terrorists, and Western intervention,” as well as security. “The security situation is the worst in recent years,” the plan said. Its solution is stepped up surveillance rather than policies targeting root causes and appears to question the vibrancy of a system in which competition between parties and interest groups is the name of the game. The risks have been driven home in attacks on Chinese targets and rejection of CPEC by Baloch nationalists who have seen little benefit to resource-rich, sparsely populated Balochistan itself, and fear that Chinese economic dominance will render the achievement of their rights even more difficult. “This conspiratorial plan (CPEC) is not acceptable to the Baloch people under any circumstances. Baloch independence movements have made it clear several times that they will not abandon their people’s future in the name of development projects or even democracy,” said Baloch Liberation Army spokesman Jeander Baloch. In the latest incident, in November 2018, three Baloch Liberation Army suicide bombers launched a brazen assault on the Chinese consulate in Karachi. According to Financial Times columnist Jamil Anderlini: “China is at risk of inadvertently embarking on its own colonial adventure in Pakistan—the biggest recipient of Belt and Road investment and once the East India Company’s old stamping ground… Pakistan is now virtually a client state of China. Many within the country worry openly that its reliance on Beijing is already turning it into a colony of its huge neighbor. The risks that the relationship could turn problematic are greatly increased by Beijing’s ignorance of how China is perceived abroad and its reluctance to study history through a non-ideological lens [...] It is easy to envisage a scenario in which militant attacks on Chinese projects overwhelm the Pakistani military and China decides to openly deploy the People’s Liberation Army to protect its people and assets. That is how ‘win-win’ investment projects can quickly become the foundations of empire.” History Repeats Itself In an ironic twist, China’s taking control of critical national infrastructure in countries trapped by Chinese debt amounts to the People’s Republic adopting the same approach that it feels lies at the core of its humiliation in the nineteenth century. “China is replicating the practices used against it in the European-colonial period, which began with the 1839-1860 Opium Wars and ended with the 1949 communist takeover—a period that China bitterly refers to as its ‘century of humiliation,’” said Indian strategist Brahma Chellaney. Chellaney argues that, just as European imperial powers employed gunboat diplomacy to open new markets and colonial outposts, “China uses sovereign debt to bend other states to its will, without having to fire a single shot. Like the opium the British exported to China, the easy loans China offers are addictive. And, because China chooses its projects according to their long-term strategic value, they may yield short-term returns that are insufficient for countries to repay their debts. This gives China added leverage, which it can use, say, to force borrowers to swap debt for equity, thereby expanding China’s global footprint by trapping a growing number of countries in debt servitude.” The Indian strategist noted that the terms for a 99-year lease of the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota, which the government was forced to accept as part of a restructuring of its debt, resemble those European powers imposed for the lease of Chinese ports like Hong Kong, or its lease of Australia’s deep-water port of Darwin. Kenya’s crushing debt to China threatens to turn its busy port of Mombasa—the gateway to East Africa—into another Hambantota. Chellaney said that “these experiences should serve as a warning that the Belt and Road is essentially an imperial project that aims to bring to fruition the mythical Middle Kingdom. States caught in debt bondage to China risk losing both their most valuable natural assets and their very sovereignty. The new imperial giant’s velvet glove cloaks an iron fist—one with the strength to squeeze the vitality out of smaller countries.” Tone Deaf China’s supposed obliviousness to the potential impact on recipients, and the standing of its own economic, commercial, and geopolitical approach appears to be rooted in President Xi Jinping’s rewriting of history and reality spin that threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Launching the Belt and Road Initiative in a speech in Kazakhstan in September 2013, Xi suggested that the initiative constituted a revival of China’s centuries-old relationship with Eurasia. More than 2,100 years ago […] (Chinese) imperial envoy Zhang Qian was sent to Central Asia twice to open the door to friendly contacts between China and Central Asian countries, as well as the transcontinental Silk Road linking East and West,” Xi told his audience. In Indonesia a month later, Xi reminded the country’s parliament that “Southeast Asia has since ancient times been an important hub along the ancient Maritime Silk Road.” Scholars Daly and Rojanski noted that the historic Silk Road was never centered on China, and that it served both commercial and military purposes. “The term ‘Silk Road’ was coined in 1877 by a German geographer to connote the historic phenomenon of Eurasian trade rather than a particular route,” the scholars said. They suggested that Eurasian nations had not forgotten that historically Chinese expansion westwards had often been violent,” a fact that Xi chose to overlook in his projection of the Belt and Road. It was, moreover, not immediately clear “that China’s branding, cash, and ambition can overcome the uneven development, political and cultural diversity, age-old hatreds, and daunting geography” of the Belt and Road, Daly and Rojansky said. Xi’s projection of a China-centric world is reflected in the country’s media, which position the Belt and Road as a vehicle to cement China’s place in the world, as well as that of Communist Party rule, despite paying lip service to the principle of a win-win proposition. Chinese ambitions are further evident in its efforts to internationalize its currency, the renminbi, as well as the inclusion of elements of the Chinese surveillance state and the propagation of Chinese culture through local media in investment-target countries. They are also apparent in the creation of special Chinese courts to adjudicate Belt and Road disputes. Moreover, China announced the establishment of a new agency to coordinate its foreign aid program in 2018. The agency is part of an effort to project China’s global influence more effectively, and to increase Communist Party control. Taking issue with the Chinese approach, the Center for Global Development suggested that China and recipients of Beijing’s largess would be better served if the People’s Republic adopted a multilateral approach to Belt and Road-related funding rather than insisting on doing it alone. Scott Morris, a former U.S. Treasury official and co-author of the centre’s report, said: “the way forward demands a clear policy framework aligned with global standards, something that has been absent from China’s lending practices to date. Whether Chinese officials have the will to pursue this approach will be critical in determining the ultimate success or failure” of the Belt and Road. Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast. James is the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title and a co-authored volume, Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa as well as Shifting Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa and recently published China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom

[1] [i] James Kynge, China’s Belt and Road projects drive overseas debt fears, Financial Times, 8 August 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/e7a08b54-9554-11e8-b747-fb1e803ee64e

[1] [ii] Kirsty Needham, Malaysia cancels Belt and Road projects with China over bankruptcy fears, The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 August 2018, https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/china-malaysia-agree-to-mutual-respect-amid-belt-and-road-tensions-20180820-p4zyo3.html

[1] [iii] Jon Emont and Myo Myo, Chinese-Funded Port Gives Myanmar a Sinking Feeling, The Wall Street Journal, 15 August 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-funded-port-gives-myanmar-a-sinking-feeling-1534325404

[1] [iv] Syed Irfan Raza, CPEC focus must be on job creation, agriculture: Imran, Dawn, 9 October 2018, https://www.dawn.com/news/1437770/cpec-focus-must-be-on-job-creation-agriculture-imran

[1] [v] Saeed Shah, Pakistan Turns to Gulf Countries to Keep Economy Afloat, The Wall Street Journal, 22 January 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/pakistan-turns-to-gulf-countries-to-keep-economy-afloat-11548160203

[1] [vi] Mehreen Zahra-Malik, ‘No urgency’ for Pakistan to enter IMF program: Finance minister, Arab News, 14 December 2018, http://www.arabnews.com/node/1420756/world

[1] [vii] Ali Salman Andani, All-weather friend? Pakistan falls into China’s debt trap, Asia Times, 11 January 2019, V http://www.atimes.com/all-weather-friend-pakistan-falls-into-chinas-debt-trap/?utm_source=The+Daily+Report&utm_campaign=3759569bec-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_01_11_01_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1f8bca137f-3759569bec-31513393

[1] [viii] Adnan Aamir, Saudi investment in Pakistan stokes tensions with China, Asia Nikkei, 28 January 2019, https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-Relations/Saudi-investment-in-Pakistan-stokes-tensions-with-China

[1] [ix] James M. Dorsey, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman must walk geopolitical tightrope during Asian tour, South China Morning Post, 18 February 2019, https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2186570/saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman-must-walk-geopolitical

[1] [x] Haroon Janjua, Cash-strapped Pakistan asks China to shelve US$2 billion coal plant, South China Morning Post, 16 January 2019, https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2182326/cash-strapped-pakistan-asks-china-shelve-us2-billion-coal

[1] [xi] Behram Baloch, Chinese firms concerned over Gwadar Master Plan approval delay, Dawn, 21 January 2019, https://www.dawn.com/news/1458803/chinese-firms-concerned-over-gwadar-master-plan-approval-delay

[1] [xii] Hannah Beech, ‘ We Cannot Afford This ’: Malaysia Pushes Back Against China’s Vision, The New York Times, 20 August 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/20/world/asia/china-malaysia.html

[1] [xiii] Bloomberg, Mahathir Warns Against New ‘Colonialism’ During Visit to China, 20 August 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-20/mahathir-warns-against-new-colonialism-during-visit-to-china

[1] [xiv] Gordon Fairclough and Uditha Jayasinghe, Sri Lanka to Sell 80% Stake in Strategically Placed Harbor to Chinese, The Wall Street Journal, 30 August 2016, https://www.wsj.com/articles/sri-lanka-to-sell-80-stake-in-strategically-placed-harbor-to-chinese-1481226344?mod=article_inline

[1] [xv] Ibid. Emont and Myo, Chinese-Funded Port Gives Myanmar a Sinking Feeling

[1] [xvi] Yubaraj Ghimre, China Eyes Exit, Nepal’s West Seti Hydropower Project in Jeopardy, South China Morning Post, 30 August 2018, https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2161968/nepals-west-seti-hydropower-project-jeopardy-china-eyes-exit

[1] [xvii] Richard Collett, How Muslim-Chinese Food Became a Culinary Star in Kyrgyzstan, Gastro Obscura, 18 December 2018, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-to-eat-kyrgyzstan

[1] [xviii] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Bishkek Protesters Rally Outside Chinese Embassy Against 'Reeducation Camps,' 20 December 2018, https://www.rferl.org/a/bishkek-protesters-rally-outside-chinese-embassy-against-reeducation-camps-/29667706.html

[1] [xix] Anna Lelik, Kyrgyzstan: Nationalist Vice Squad Stirs Controversy, eurasianet, 10 February 2015, https://eurasianet.org/kyrgyzstan-nationalist-vice-squad-stirs-controversy

[1] [xx] Radio Azattik, Government: From 2010 to 2018, more than 260 Chinese citizens acquired Kyrgyz citizenship (Правительство: С 2010 по 2018 год гражданство Кыргызстана получили более 260 жителей Китая), 18 December 2018, https://rus.azattyk.org/a/29662156.html

[1] [xxi] Colleen Wood, Why Did Kyrgyz Stage a Protest Outside the Chinese Embassy? The Diplomat, 29 December 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/12/why-did-kyrgyz-stage-a-protest-outside-the-chinese-embassy/

[1] [xxii] Radio Azattik, Jeenbekov on Chinese Kyrgyz: These are Chinese citizens, we cannot interfere (Жээнбеков о китайских кыргызах: Это граждане Китая, мы не можем вмешиваться), 19 December 2018, https://rus.azattyk.org/a/29664421.html

[1] [xxiii] AsiaNews.it, Kyrgyz and Kazakhs detained with Uyghurs in Xinjiang, activists say, 19 December 2018, http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Kyrgyz-and-Kazakhs-detained-with-Uyghurs-in-Xinjiang,-activists-say-45787.html

[1] [xxiv] Bakhtiyor Atovulloev, Takiistan is turning into the new province of China, Eurasia News, 30 December 2016, https://tajikopposition.com/2016/12/30/tajikistan-is-turning-into-the-new-province-of-china-eurasianews/

[1] [xxv] Robert Daly and Matthew Rojanski, China’s Global Dreams Give Its Neighbors Nightmares, Foreign Policy, 12 March 2018, https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/12/chinas-global-dreams-are-giving-its-neighbors-nightmares/

[1] [xxvi] Isabel Hilton, How China’s Big Overseas Initiative Threatens Global Climate Progress, Yale Environment 360, 3 January 2019, https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-chinas-big-overseas-initiative-threatens-climate-progress

[1] [xxvii] China Daily, Xi calls for building 'green, healthy, intelligent and peaceful' Silk Road, 22 June 2016, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2016xivisitee/2016-06/22/content_25812410.htm

[1] [xxviii] Feng Hao, China’s Belt and Road Initiative still pushing coal, chinadialogue, 12 May 2017, https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/9785-China-s-Belt-and-Road-Initiative-still-pushing-coal

[1] [xxix] Christine Shearer, Neha Mathew-Shah, Lauri Myllyvirta, Aiqun Yu, and Ted Nace, Boom and Bust 2018, Tracking the Global Coal Plant Pipeline, Coalswarm, Sierra Club and Greenpeace, March 2018, https://endcoal.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/BoomAndBust_2018_r4.pdf

[1] [xxx] Huileng Tan, China is massively betting on coal outside its borders — even as investment falls globally, CNBC, 6 April 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/06/china-is-massively-betting-on-coal-outside-its-shores--even-as-investment-falls-globally.html

[1] [xxxi] Ibid. Hilton

[1] [xxxii] Ibid. Hilton

[1] [xxxiii] Robyn Dixon, China has spent billions in Africa, but some critics at home question why, Los Angeles Times, 3 September 2018, https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-china-africa-20180903-story.html

[1] [xxxiv] Owen Churchill, China hasn't changed belt and road's 'predatory overseas investment model', US official says, South China Morning Post, 13 September 2018, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2163972/china-hasnt-changed-belt-and-roads-predatory-overseas

[1] [xxxv] Aaron Mehta, How a potential Chinese-built airport in Greenland could be risky for a vital US Air Force base, Defense News, 7 September 2018, https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2018/09/07/how-a-potential-chinese-built-airport-in-greenland-could-be-risky-for-a-vital-us-air-force-base/

[1] [xxxvi] Jonathan Hillman, China's Belt and Road Is Full of Holes, CSIS Briefs, September 2018, https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/180905_Hillman_ChinasBelt_FINAL.pdf?uhtZC7Pbw2UjbwtitdOXmexJDWjVWfyr

[1] [xxxvii] John Hurley, Scott Morris, and Gailyn Portelance, Examining the Debt Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative from a Policy Perspective, Center for Global Development, March 2018, https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/examining-debt-implications-belt-and-road-initiative-policy-perspective.pdf

[1] [xxxviii] U.S. Embassy in Senegal, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson Remarks – U.S.-Africa Relations: A New Framework, George Mason University March 6, 2018, 6 March 2018, https://sn.usembassy.gov/secretary-state-rex-w-tillerson-remarks-george-mason-university-march-6-2018/

[1] [xxxix] Nancy A. Youssef, U.S. Sends Aircraft Carrier to Persian Gulf in Show of Force Against Iran, The Wall Street Journal, 3 December 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sends-aircraft-carrier-to-persian-gulf-in-show-of-force-against-iran-1543871934

[1] [xl] Bourse& Bazaar, When the Sun Sets in the EastNew Dynamics in China-Iran Trade Under Sanctions, January 2019, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54db7b69e4b00a5e4b11038c/t/5c4ad5ffc74c505f6368f1a8/1548408321766/B%26B_Special_Report_China_Iran_Trade_v2.pdf

[1] [xli] The New Arab, an hints at Saudi role in deadly suicide bombing, 6 December 2018, https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2018/12/6/iran-hints-at-saudi-role-in-deadly-suicide-bombing

[1] [xlii] Jamal Ismail, Ansar Al-Furqan Group Claims Attack against IRGC HQ in Iran, Asharq Al-Awsat, 8 December 2018, https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1495831/ansar-al-furqan-group-claims-attack-against-irgc-hq-iran

[1] [xliii] James M. Dorsey, Pakistan caught in the middle as China’s OBOR becomes Saudi-Iranian-Indian battleground, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, 5 May 2017, https://mideastsoccer.blogspot.com/2017/05/pakistan-caught-in-middle-as-chinas.html

[1] [xliv] Mohammed Hassan Husseinbor, Chabahar and Gwadar Agreements and Rivalry among Competitors

in Baluchistan Region, Journal of Iranian Studies, Year 1, Issue 1, December 2016, https://rasanah-iiis.org/english/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/05/Chabahar-and-Gwadar-Agreements-and-Rivalry-among-Competitors-in-Baluchistan-Region.pdf

[1] [xlv] Khurram Hussain, Exclusive: CPEC master plan revealed, Dawn, 21 June 2017, https://www.dawn.com/news/1333101

[1] [xlvi] Al Jazeera, Gunmen kill 10 labourers in Balochistan's Gwadar, 13 May 2017, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/05/gunmen-kill-10-labourers-balochistan-gwadar-170513111330168.html

[1] [xlvii] Asad Hashim, Gunmen attack Chinese consulate in Karachi, Al Jazeera, 23 November 2018, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/11/shots-heard-china-consulate-pakistan-karachi-181123051817209.html

[1] [xlviii] Jamil Anderlini, China is at risk of becoming a colonialist power, Financial Times, 9 September 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/186743b8-bb25-11e8-94b2-17176fbf93f5

[1] [xlix] Brahma Chellaney, China’s creditor imperialism, The Strategist, 21 December 2017, https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/chinas-creditor-imperialism/

[1] [l] Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, President Xi Jinping Delivers Important Speech and Proposes to Build a Silk Road Economic Belt with Central Asian Countries, 7 September 2013, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/topics_665678/xjpfwzysiesgjtfhshzzfh_665686/t1076334.shtml

[1] [li] Asean China Center, Speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Indonesian Parliament, 3 October 2013, http://www.aseanchinacenter.org/english/201310/03/c_133062675.htm

[1] [lii] Ibid. Daly and Rojanski

[1] [liii] Saori N. Katada, Can China Internationalize the RMB? Foreign Affairs, 1 January 2018, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-01-01/can-china-internationalize-rmb

[1] [liv] Louisa Lim and Julia Bergin, Inside China's audacious global propaganda campaign, The Guardian, 7 December 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/dec/07/china-plan-for-global-media-dominance-propaganda-xi-jinping

[1] [lv] Nicolas Groffman, Meet the 8 Chinese Judges Who’ll Sit on Belt and Road Cases, South China Morning Post, 25 September 2018, https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/2165567/meet-8-chinese-judges-wholl-sit-belt-and-road-cases

[1] [lvi] Chinese Embassy in Mongolia, The Official Website of China International Development Cooperation Agency Has Been Released, 20 September 2018, http://mn.china-embassy.org/eng/zmgx/t1597178.htm

[1] [lvii] Ibid. Hurley, Morris, and Portelance

[1] [lviii] Scott Morris, China Needs to Avoid ‘Belt and Road’ Debt Problems, Inter Press Service, 14 May, 2018, http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/03/china-needs-avoid-belt-road-debt-problems/

#China (PRC)#china #pakistan #saudi arabia #saudi #uae #balochistan #myanmar #malaysia #srilanka #Central Asia #South Asia #kazakhstan #kyrgz #tajikistan #environment #coal #green energy

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jacobhinkley · 6 years

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Coinbar Group invests in ARXUM shortly after ICO announcement

Shortly after ARXUM’s ICO announcement, the Singaporean blockchain advisory and private investment group Coinbar invested in the ARXUM project.

“We are pleased to have won Coinbar Group as a strategic investor with extensive technical knowledge and a worldwide network. That could help bringing our product to a global scale” – Jens Harig, Managing Founder of ARXUM

The ICO

Join our telegram group for more information on the ARXUM ICO: https://t.me/arxumforall

Contact Jens Harig Founder and Managing Director

Phone +49 172 5222792 E-mail [email protected]

Dr. Markus Jostock Founder and Managing Director Phone +49 171 4404755 E-mail [email protected]

Website: https://arxum.com

This is a sponsored press release and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views held by any employees of NullTX. This is not investment, trading, or gambling advice. Always conduct your own independent research.

Coinbar Group invests in ARXUM shortly after ICO announcement published first on https://medium.com/@smartoptions

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lewisgabriel84z31 · 6 years

Text

Coinbar Group invests in ARXUM shortly after ICO announcement

Shortly after ARXUM’s ICO announcement, the Singaporean blockchain advisory and private investment group Coinbar invested in the ARXUM project.

“We are pleased to have won Coinbar Group as a strategic investor with extensive technical knowledge and a worldwide network. That could help to bring our product to a global scale” – Jens Harig, Managing Founder of ARXUM

The ICO The ARXUM token, AX, are used across the ARXUM network and allow investors to benefit from the use of IoT and blockchain within manufacturing. ARXUM has submitted a proposal to the financial authorities of Switzerland, FINMA, and is waiting for the final approval to conduct the ICO. There is a total of 125,000,000 AX token.

Join our telegram group for more information on the ARXUM ICO: https://t.me/arxumforall

Contact: Jens Harig Founder and Managing Director

Phone +49 172 5222792 E-mail [email protected]

Dr. Markus Jostock Founder and Managing Director Phone +49 171 4404755 E-mail [email protected]

Website: https://arxum.com

https://ift.tt/2K79zsF

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garyh2628 · 6 years

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QUASI- JUDICIAL

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

Chairman and Managing Operational CEO (Global Legal Authority Quasi-Judicial)

(Finance, planning, industry and foreign trade portfolios) Private

Head of Human Resources Finance and People and Global Head of Corporate Responsibility

Investments/Contracts/Superior/Technically Competent and Right-Hand Men

NGO - (Finance, planning, industry and foreign trade portfolios) Private

To my Pharma Hubs, Technology Hubs, Social Creative/Personal Hub, My Private Hubs, My Financial Hubs and my Health and Wellbeing/Scientific Hubs, Legal and Innovation Hubs, Hinterland Hub and to my Eastern Caribbean Hub, Linguistic/Psychology Hub, to my beloved additions and to my Institutions and Partners and Team, Pool of Potential Personal Assistants and Private Secretaries and Business Managers and also to my Fitness Hub which is an extension of my Health and Wellbeing Hub and not to forget my beloved Brooklyn Hub and my Wine/Adviser Hub, Influential Legal Cashier, Strategic Partnerships, STATEMENT OF INTENT, MY WEALTH FUND AND PERSONAL ATTORNEY and PROPERTY EXPERT GUY and THE ATTACHMENT AND MY PERSONAL BOARDROOM AND MY CHIEF STRATEGY AND INNOVATION OFFICER. The core founding support regions of this Network and Global Structure. MY FAVOURITE CEO.

All Options remain on the Table applying the finishing touches to our Genius and my Genius and the Network and this Global Structure Genius. DRAFT

The Network, Strategic Partnerships and Global Structure is hot–but watch the margins

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL INTELLECTS IN THE WORLD

THIS GLOBAL STRUCTURE AND INTELLECT SHARE MANY OF THE SAME QUALITIES, INDESTRUCTIBLE, PURE AND BEAUTIFUL TO BEHOLD

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU EXPERIENCE SOMETHING SO BEAUTIFUL, IT CHANGED HOW YOU SAW THE WORLD

DELIVERING THE PREPARATORY DETAILS MAKING WAY FOR PRIVACY USING THE URGENCY OF NOW.

I’m delighted to say today that though the process was delayed and though disruption took place, I’m so far happy as in the process we demonstrated that we are the authority on Intellect, we use that time to deliver on the various additions which will augur well for not only me but that will stand the Network and this Global Process and Structure in better stead. In any event we have guaranteed assurances that all the deliveries are underwritten and the process of deliveries in its entirety to me are guaranteed. All my framework and directives are enacted and are guaranteed until full delivery to myself is done. All our funds are underwritten. My Eastern Caribbean Practice and Management Consultancy Head said: “we have launched a special portal and has had a steady stream of registrations, especially from the Intellectual community, and region. But we are aware there are still people and organisations that haven’t submitted their details and its vital they do so, as soon as possible so we can communicate the next steps in the delivery of the underwrite after full delivery to me and after discussions and approvals to the system. Directly after the preparatory work is completed and the way have been paved for privacy my Chief Technology Officer and the team Globally will be look at these systems and delivering the requisite Global Policies surrounding this. We will deliver for Technology and we will deliver the full Network and the Economic Community to myself and all those details were our Monetary Footprints are. It’s time for you to live you best life. I’m looking forward to being included in the preparatory work, those details from the various Counsels and general Counsel’s Globally. We also need to remind people that even if they submitted earlier upon receiving an email rom myself, they still need to register those details with the Global System upon receipt of my email. This Network and this Economic Community and Global Structure does not subscribe to zero contract and we do not subscribe to poverty of we do not subscribe to class.

My potential leading man called the behaviour of those of that order and the disruptive behaviour of some and those behaviour as it relates to the slowing down of the process ‘extremely unwise’ ‘makes no sense’ ‘There’s a lot of love and Global support and a lot of anticipation from various Community both Intellectually, Finance, Education and across Sector.”. Those life time achievement awards are underwritten for life Globally and will be delivered to me in its entirety, that blue print after testing is underwritten or life as it now received all the various legal approvals across the board, Globally and it is patented to me personally and to this Network and Global Structure. He said, ‘a little more common sense would help everybody especially when discussing the Statement of Intent and the Region, my Official Capacities and the broad mandate and the things of the Network and those details that those Counsel and General Counsels should have submitted a long time ago.” Discussion of Network policies without it being issued from me the Legal owner or polices in relation to the suite of Companies that I own have been described as “extremely unwise” by my leading man and from my favourite CEO and my Influential Advisers Council. During a media event to promote me in my Official Capacity and as the Head of the Foundation Family, he did not refer to the chief executive of by name but criticised a line of argument he about me and the Network and the policies surrounding the teams et al that I own. We will deliver for the Foundation policies and we will develop those Philosophy and I’m delighted that I am ratified in my Top 5 supporting regions as the Chairman and CEO and my Technically and Intellectually Competent Right Hand man will be delivering those preparatory work to completion and we have also been ratified in my Attachment Private Offices and Family Home. I’ve also been ratified in my official Capacity Globally and in those Private Hubs and Attachment and Regions.

Those were told that their attempts to take control of the agenda in certain regions and in the Statement of and across my Top 5 supporting regions and family sector, face an uphill battle for approval when it gets to me. He went further to say that that information he gathered where mediocrity is used and those who are trying to sidelined the process but were caught also face an uphill battle for approval when it gets to me. I’m delighted you told them that they lack the requisite Intellect and legal authority to hijack or even control the agenda. I wish and they wish to be Strategic like Gary, or even Intellectual or Technically Competent as Gary. I’m delighted with those great Monetary Results achieved. Those who tried to sideline you, they were told they will face an uphill battle when those details reach me for forensic audit. Great work potential Private Secretaries, Business Managers, Strategic Partners and from my long-term Partner and from my fiancée. He explained his approach to the topic of the Foundation family and me by saying: “I’m looking at the lessons of history. Hunting, coursing, circuses, sea life, dolphins, it’s all changing, and they didn’t move with it in time. I want to stay ahead of it by robustly arguing we are doing all we can to manage avoidable risk as it relates to Gary’s Welfare until the full set of preparatory work is completed using the URGENCY OF NOW and delivered imminently to me to make way for privacy.” He made no effort to distinguish or offering definitions as he said that is left for Gary’s Office to issue. He’s happy that I took over fully and he’s happy that the finish product will indeed stand the environment in best stead for thousands of years to come and he’s happy with what Gary is doing with this aspect of the Global Structure he would define as a Project. He knows what the mandate is and no one else could be able to execute t in this manner. We will deliver on Philosophy and we will deliver on Guideline and we will deliver for my profit centres and we will deliver for my print media and we will deliver for media and I’m looking forward to a smooth handover after preparatory work. Thanks for reminding me.

While He did not name Gary for Network guidelines and Economic Community legal restrictions and the Foundation family legal restrictions and that of Privacy, he praised my words. Previously prior to Gary taking the helm he said on Sunday things were in “rude health” but under my leadership we are moving in the right direction and more should be done to deliver for privacy in order for mote to be done to emphasise the positive stories it has to tell. “There’s some very excellent things that will happen when the full apparatus after perusal goes into place in this industry and across the Globe,” he said after intervening to set the record straight. Those who were stripped would find they will face an uphill battle for approval once the guidelines, policies and Philosophy is in full operation and once the personal boardroom is in operation and Gary is sitting in Office and in all of his official Capacity in the Quasi Judicial Capacity Globally.

Today I would like to report again a series of excellent News. In my New Year and Christmas postings I reported a set of actions that we as a Global Structure will be engaged in this year and a set of achievements. I’m happy to say those weren’t just lip service. Those implementations and actions were undertaken and with regards to the delivery of the particulars and the tool kits and the Offices and the Global portfolio actions have began to get it done. My CEOs, Team, Superiors, Partners, Additions and Institutions have narrowed losses and increased sale. Intellectuals we are on track to deliver big this year. This year is a year of practical actions. Those whose future was in doubt can now rest assured that we have taken the necessary actions to increase confidence. However, administration officials insist that those CEO will calm down once investors see that the actions, we have taken have stood them in good stead. To be fair, the result so far, into the year continues to bring in the great news both in the Health, Technology and Fashion Sector. We are getting good news about more deals to be done. It continues to be an all-round success for the Global Structure and Intellectuals as a whole. The delivery will take place.

I’m delighted to learn that with regards to the review, the particulars will get to me for data validation and perusal to prevent the softening of standards in the name of modernisation. My legal cashier who sit in the Head of the Influential Adviser Council, the body leading the reform charge with my CEOs, are preparing the compilation of all the legally binding agreements for my perusal, amendments and further approval. These agreements that relates to environment, will allow the sector CEOs, Business Managers, Private Secretaries, Team, Partners and Institution to be directly involved in all the activities in relation to the attachments and all the projects in relation to influencing and supporting the Global Environment across sectors. Further, they will also be directly involved with the public job I’ll be doing across the board. Intellectuals, I’m excited with all the different things that we have lined up for Humanity and the sector as a whole. My Influential Adviser Council is brimming with confidence and are in bullish mode. I have the last word and those particulars will get to me for scrutiny. We are packed to near double capacity 😊. Those foundation sector said, they will face an uphill battle fror perusal once the data get to Gary.

It is Estimated that in her lifetime, a woman/man views/use her Intellectual Capacity over a million times. In this Family, we ensure that at every use, it is both full capacity correct and a pleasurable experience for the user and stakeholders.

QUASI JUDICIAL

Chairman and Managing Operational CEO Global Legal Authority Quasi-Judicial

(Finance, planning, industry and foreign trade portfolios) Private

Head of Human Resources Finance and People and Global Head of Corporate Responsibility

QUASI JUDICIAL

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megadarkbouquettidalwavethings · 7 years

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News VietNamNet

VNR aims to raise modest $6.2m from share sale

The Viet Nam Railway Corporation (VNR) hopes to raise at least VND139 billion (US$6.2 million) in 2018 from selling its ownership in 15 subsidiary and affiliate companies, reported online newspaper baodautu.vn.

Deputy Transport Minister Nguyen Ngoc Dong recently signed Document 1142/BGTVT-QLDN, approving VNR’s selling of its holdings in those 15 companies.

The 15 companies have total charter capital of VND680.5 billion, and VNR holds one-fifth of the figure, equal to VND139.1 billion based on the face value of shares (VND10,000 per share).

Those firms are divided into three groups. Nine of them are those in which VNR had previously sold parts of its ownership, including Transport Investment and Construction Consultant JSC, Da Nang Construction JSC and Railway Urban and Infrastructure Development Investment JSC.

Four of the 15 companies are those in which VNR had previously put its shares up for sale, but failed to draw attention from investors. Those included Railway Construction Corporation and Project 3 Construction and Investment JSC, which are traded on the stock market.

The remaining companies are mining business Dong Mo Stone JSC and My Trang Stone JSC. VNR will make its first attempt to sell stakes in these two companies.

Though shares of these companies are apparently unattractive to investors, they are highly valued by securities firms. Shares of My Trang Stone JSC are valued at 11.2 times their face value, 4.2 times for Dong Mo Stone JSC and 2.3 times for Railway Construction Corporation.

If the sales are carried out successfully, VNR could raise more than VND139 billion, to increase its spending on purchasing new rail cars and upgrade large railway stations this year.

“The management board of VNR should ask for opinions from the finance and planning and investment ministries so that it could develop the plan to sell its shares in those companies, while assuring the deals comply with existing regulations and provide high income to the State budget,” Deputy Minister Dong said in the document.

In order to make the sales more attractive to investors, in November 2017, VNR proposed its divestment plans to the Ministry of Transport, including starting prices and offering methods.

Under the plan, VNR will offer shares in packages for bidding on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange and financial institutions, seeking to sell the remaining shares in the nine companies in which it had previously sold part of its ownership.

VNR will sell shares of the four firms that are traded on the stock market at market prices at the correct times. Also, the State-run railway corporation will offer shares of the two stone mining companies for sale on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange.

To declare the starting prices of the sale, VNR proposed that the Ministry of Transport allow it to use the share price valuations conducted by financial institutions.

According to Dong, the divestment plans were also sent to the ministries of Finance and Planning and Investment to collect feedback.

In response, the Ministry of Planning and Investment said the plans may work well for the four companies trading on the stock market, and for Dong Mo and My Trang stone miners, as they comply with the Government’s Decree 91/2015/ND-CP dated October 13, 2015 on management of State capital in businesses.

However, the planning and investment ministry raised some concerns over the divestment plans for the four companies in which VNR planned to sell shares on the Unlisted Public Company Market (UPCoM), as the market prices of the shares were lower than the face values.

ZaloPay targets 1,000 points of sale

ZaloPay e-wallet, developed by VNG Corportion, aims to open about 1,000 new points of sale in 2018, according to Phan Thanh Thao, business development director of Zalo Pay.

Run by ZION Company Limited, a member of the Viet Nam Banking Association, ZaloPay enables electronic payment for bills such as electricity, water, internet and TV as well as money transfer via QR code and connection with bank accounts for cash withdrawals or recharge.

To date, ZaloPay is accepted at many retail chains such as The Gioi Di Dong, FPT Shop, Vien Thong A, Nguyen Kim, Circle K, Family Mart, 7 Eleven, B’s Mart, Lotte Cinema, Galaxy Cinema, BHD Cinema, Viettravel and Tiki.

Thao said that ZaloPay aims to become a popular e-wallet accepted by e-commerce websites, shopping centres and even small retailers.

During Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday, ZaloPay is implementing a service to send lucky money among users.

Pham Thong, marketing director of Zalo Pay, said that Viet Nam’s mobile payment market had significant potential, given its young population and the popularity of smartphones.

Da Nang licenses two major projects worth US$62.2 million

The Da Nang municipal People’s Committee has granted licences to the East Sea Technology Engineering Electrical Automation Company (ESTEC) to invest in two US$62.2 million projects at Da Nang Hi-Tech Park.

Accordingly, the first project will be a logistics trade and service centre, comprising offices for rent, a logistics depot, a container storage yard, shopping mall, multifunctional sports complex, and a convention hall and hotel complex. The construction process will be divided into three phases and built on an area of more than 9ha at a total cost of VND1,230 billion. The company will begin break ground for the initial phase in the first quarter of this year, which is expected to enter operation in early 2021.

The second project is an ESTEC digital plant spanning an area of nearly 1ha and drawing a total investment capital of VND182 billion. It includes a research and development centre for automation technologies, digital data management, and cloud computing, which are scheduled to come into operation in January 2020.

da nang licenses two major projects worth us$62.2 million hinh 1 The Da Nang Hi-Tech Park has so far lured 10 projects to choose the prime location as a home, with a total investment of more than US$249 million, including three wholly foreign invested projects.

According to Deputy Head of Da Nang Hi-Tech Park Management Board Doan Ngoc Hung Anh, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has signed a decision on incentives for the Park, boding well for its operations this year.

Nafoods and new major shareholder shoot for high growth in 2018

Vietnam-focused activist investment company Endurance Capital Vietnam I Ltd. recently decided to increase its ownership in local partner Nafoods by adding a total of 753,958 shares to its current holding, and thereby becoming the latter’s major shareholder with a total of 5.5 per cent of the shares.

Founded in 1995, privately-held Nafoods is a globally recognised manufacturer and supplier of fruit ingredients for the local food and beverage processing industry.

The transaction, in which Endurance Capital Vietnam I buys shares directly from the family of Nafoods’ chairman Nguyen Manh Hung, took place on February 9 through a put-through transaction at market price.

“We like owner-operated Vietnamese mid-caps that have the potential to triple their value over 3-5 years–we see this potential, and more, in Nafoods,” said Christopher Beselin, chairman and chief investment officer of Endurance Capital Vietnam I. “We have worked closely with Nafooods for 1.5 years and seen many positive changes implemented by the company’s management.

The VND410-billion ($18.6 million) investment into the new and modern factory that is coming online in the first quarter of 2018 is the most obvious one, as it dramatically changes both capacity and production cost.”

“There are also more recent initiatives in Nafoods that we like and which we think hold equally big future profit potential. Vietnam has a great strategic advantage over other countries growing passion fruit and Nafoods has the right integrated-value-chain-oriented strategy to utilise it fully,” he added.

“We are very happy that Endurance Capital Vietnam I has become a major shareholder in Nafoods,” said Nafoods chairman Nguyen Manh Hung. “We think the close co-operation we had with Endurance Capital over the past years has been very fruitful for both the company and its shareholders and I am looking forward to how this even deeper engagement will build even more value going forward.”

“We simply see them as a great partner to have fully onboard when we set off to implement our VND850-billion ($38.6 million) sales and VND85-billion ($3.8 million) net income plan for 2018, as well as for the years to come,” Hung added.

“Nafoods has put in some years of really hard work and is now getting ready to reap the benefits,” said founding partner of Endurance Capital Johan De Geer, who joined Nafood’s Board of Directors in September 2017.

“The projects now underway in R&D for seedlings, fresh fruit technology for faster and bigger sales to Europe as well as continuous organised concentrate sales into the enormous market in China, are of course very exciting to follow,” De Geer said.

“The recent months also meant reaching important milestones, as the first deliveries of Nafoods Fresh Fruit from Son La, Nghe An, and the Central Highlands fulfilling all major European certifications have been exported to Switzerland, France, and the United Kingdom. We think the coming years will be very good for Nafoods!”

Pyn Elite increases holdings in a series of companies

Pyn Elite Fund (Non-Ucits) has announced increasing its holdings in a series of companies where it still holds a partial stake, namely JVC, HBC, CMG, VCG, and CII.

pyn elite increases holdings in a series of companies hinh 0 Notably, on February 5-6, Pyn Elite announced completing the purchase of 924,130 shares in Japan Vietnam Medical Instrument JSC (JVC) and one million shares in Hoa Binh Corporation (HBC) to increase its holding in JVC to 12.38 million (11 per cent) and 22.4 million (17.25 per cent) in HBC, respectively.

Besides, it acquired an additional 347,580 shares in CMC Corporation to increase its holdings to 3.69 million or 5.48 per cent.

On the same day on February 6, Pyn Elite announced buying 1.38 million more shares in Vietnam Construction and Import-Export Joint Stock Corporation (VCG), a subsidiary of Vinaconex to increase its holding in VCG to 23.24 million shares or 5.26 per cent.

Besides, Pyn Elite bought two million shares in Ho Chi Minh Infrastructure Investment JSC (CII) to increase its holding to 27.4 million shares or 11.13 per cent.

According to the shares values of VCG and CII on the stock exchange, Pyn Elite poured VND69 billion ($3.04 million) into CII and VND32 billion ($1.41 million) into VCG, as well as VND64.9 billion into the three other purchase deals.

Previously, in December 2017, PYN Elite Fund signed an agreement to purchase a 4.99 per cent stake in Tien Phong Commercial Joint Stock Bank (TPBank) for $40 million, marking its first investment in the banking sector. This investment was one of the fund’s three largest investments.

Entering Vietnam in 2013, PYN Elite is the third largest foreign-investment fund in the country with a total investment capital of $491.4 million. At present, PYN Elite owns stakes in numerous large-scale domestic enterprises.

Vissan profit rises 12 per cent

Leading food processor Vissan Joint Stock Company reported pre-tax profit of VND165.7 billion ($7.29 million) on revenues of VND3.9 trillion (US$171.78 million) for last year, an increase of 12 per cent and 6 per cent, its general director said.

Last year it produced 25,001 tonnes of pork and beef, up 13 per cent, and 19,009 tonnes of processed products, up 11 per cent.

General director Nguyen Ngoc An said since becoming a joint stock company in July 2016 the company had restructured its business and management in line with market trends.

Vissan targets profits of VND179 billion on sales of VND4.68 trillion this year.

Its fresh meat and processed food output are expected to increase respectively by more than 24 per cent to 31,094 tonnes and 15 per cent to 21,874 tonnes, he said.

The company would focus on research to make new products to offer customers more choices.

For Tet it has stocked up products worth VND650 billion, including 2,900 tonnes of pork, 31 per cent more than for Tet last year, 160 tonnes of beef (12 per cent) and 3,500 tonnes of processed foods (15 per cent).

Besides traditional products like sausages and meat pastes, it has launched many new products for Tet like lean meat paste in banana leaf, smoked pig legs, dried chicken with lemon leaves, many kinds of hot dogs, and shrimp/beef sausage.

From February 8 to 11 Vissan is offering discounts of 15 per cent on fresh pork at all its stores in the south.

Tien Giang attracts nine million USD of investment in early 2018

The Mekong Delta province of Tien Giang has received positive investment signs since the start of this year, said Deputy Director of the provincial Planning and Investment Department Nguyen Dinh Thong.

In early 2018, the province lured two new foreign direct investment (FDI) projects worth nine million USD, comprising a garment-textile company and a steel pipe producing company.

Tien Giang will continue stepping up administrative reform and support businesses in investment law and climate, the official added.

The province is now home to 93 investment projects, including 66 FDI ones with total capital of more than 42.9 trillion VND (1.89 billion USD). Those projects generate jobs for some 83,000 workers while occupancy rate at the provincial industrial parks has hit 64.29 percent.

The industrial production value of firms operating in the province’s industrial parks since the beginning of this year exceeded 5.2 trillion VND (230.83 million USD), up 21.77 percent year-on-year.

Export turnover of those firms exceeded 180 million USD in the period, or an increase of 22.37 percent against the same time last year.

Vietnamese goods win customers’ trust

Vietnamese goods are dominating the domestic market in recent days, thanks to reasonable prices and improved quality.

Tran Thu Trang, a customer from Hanoi, said previously her family often bought imported confectionary, especially those from Europe, despite high prices.

However, this year, her family changed this habit and switched to using more made-in-Vietnam products, not because of the prices but good quality and eye-catching packaging, she added.

More locally-made products are sold at major supermarkets in Hanoi such as Big C, Metro, Hapro and Fivimart than in previous years.

Besides supermarkets, convenience stores are also putting more Vietnamese goods on their shelves.

According to an owner of a convenience store in Hanoi, her store still imports foreign products but in modest quantities, mainly wine and tobacco. Most confectionary and gift packages are made locally.

The increasing presence of Vietnamese products in the market was contributed to the “Vietnamese people prioritise Vietnamese goods” campaign, which was launched in 2009 nationwide to change customers’ attitude toward locally made products while enhancing the competitiveness of domestic enterprises.

Contest for rural youth start-ups launched

The Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union (HCM CYU) has recently launched a contest to encourage young people to launch agricultural start-ups.

The contest aims to build start-up spirit among young people, as well as create a favourable climate for rural youth start-ups, especially in high-tech agriculture.

Standing Secretary of the HCM CYU Doan Nguyen An voiced his hope that the contest will attract many contestants across the country, thus helping Vietnamese youths participate in the agricultural sector and drawing more investment from domestic and foreign businesses.

Vietnamese people aged from 18 to 35, with start-up projects in agriculture, including cultivation, animal husbandry, seafood, forestry, preservation and processing industries, among others, are eligible for the contest.

The 60 most outstanding projects will qualify for the next round of the contest called “Building start-up project”. In the second round, contestants will receive training and meet with economic experts and successful entrepreneurs.

The 10 best projects will enter the final round and will feature in newspapers and the HCM CYU’s website.

The contest and awards ceremony are slated for September 2018.

Car sales in January go contrary to usual market situation

Car sales in January 2018 dropped 7 percent from December 2017 but rose by 28 percent from the same period last year to 26,037 units, according to the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (VAMA).

In January, 18,371 passenger cars were sold, up 25 percent month on month, while the sales of commercial and special-purpose vehicles respectively fell 38 percent and 78 percent to 7,363 and 303 units.

Although 20,586 vehicles assembled domestically were sold, up 3 percent, the sales of imported completely built-up units (CBUs) were 5,451 units, down 30 percent from December.

Insiders attributed the sales decline, especially of the CBUs, which was contrary to the usual strong sales growth at the end of a lunar year, to new business conditions relating to the auto market that took effect in the beginning of 2018.

[Auto imports in record drop in January: GSO]

When the import tariff on CBUs hailing from ASEAN countries was reduced to zero percent on January 1, a number of regulations tightening car production, import and business conditions and restricting the import of used cars also came into force.

As a result, prices of both new and used cars imported into Vietnam were augmented considerably, crashing domestic consumers’ expectation of a price nosedive.

Meanwhile, the Government’s Decree 125/2017/ND-CP also cut import tariffs on car components for domestic assembly to zero percent. However, businesses will need some more time to import components at this preferential tariff level, leading to the recent scarcity of domestically assembled vehicles.

Fruit, veggie exports estimated at 321 million USD in January

Vietnam earned some 321 million USD from fruit and vegetable exports in January 2018, rising by 36.9 percent from the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD).

China, Japan, the US and the Republic of Korea remained the biggest importers of Vietnamese fruits and vegetables in the month. The markets with soaring imports from Vietnam were Japan (69.3 percent), the United Arab Emirates (56.3 percent), and China (52.4 percent).

Meanwhile, the country imported 152 million USD worth of these commodities in January, of which fruits accounted for 76 percent.

The Ministry said the domestic fruit market saw great fluctuations, with a rise in the price of dragon fruit in the Mekong Delta region.

The trend is expected to continue in the lead-up to the Lunar New Year (Tet) festival.

Prices of star apples and jack fruits also climbed up, reaching 15,000 VND (0.7 USD) and 43,000 VND (1.9 USD) per kg due to increasing demand for these two products in the US and China, respectively.

Meanwhile, orange prices in the Mekong Delta region fell dramatically due to abundant supply and the crops face diseases.

Prices of several vegetables also dropped in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong due to high supply fueled by favourable weather.

Insurance books should not be used as collateral

Lawmakers, lawyers and leaders from Vietnam Social Security (VSS), a State agency in charge of the country’s social insurance programme, have all advised against the practice of using social insurance books as collateral by banks, credit institutions and small loan businesses at a conference last week on the subject.

The experts cited numerous legal issues and the high risk associated with the practice, which has frequently been reported since last year, especially among workers in industrial zones.

The country’s new Social Insurance Law, which came into effect in 2016, allowed workers to hold their own social insurance books. The move was a drastic departure from an earlier version of the law which made employers the responsible party for keeping the books.

Lawmakers were prompted to change the regulation after several problems surfaced, including soaring social insurance debt and even fraud in some cases due to a lack of awareness among workers regarding their own rights as well as their inability to keep track of their employers’ social insurance payments made on their behalf.

Giving workers their social insurance books helped eliminate the above-mentioned problems, keep workers informed of their status and progress, and save employers’ time and expenses in keeping a record of workers’ insurance files, said deputy director of VSS, Trần Đình Liệu

“Due diligence was taken by social insurance agencies and employers to ensure the books, when handed to workers for safe-keeping, were up-to-date and complete,” Liệu said.

More cases are being reported in which books are taken to commercial banks and used as collateral. The VSS branch office in the south-central province of Phú Yên even notified VSS head office that they had received requests from the banks to co-operate with legal proceedings in such cases.

“As of this moment, there are no laws that prohibit the use of those books as collateral. There are also no laws that require VSS to comply with such requests from the banks. An official ban on this practice must be in place to stop these high-risk transactions,” said lawyer Trương Thanh Đức.

Liệu said that while these transactions are of a civil nature and not prohibited, social insurance payouts would only be made to workers who managed to meet all requirements of their insurance scheme.

“VSS will not authorise payouts to be made to the banks. It’s entirely their responsibility and their risk if they choose to proceed with such transactions,” said the deputy director, “We (VSS) have informed and advised commercial banks, credit institutions and small loan businesses against taking the books as collateral.”

There have been cases of workers, after using their books as collateral to take out loans, reporting them as missing and requesting replacements. VSS offices were told to refuse such requests.

Experts at the conference also pointed out that there is currently no acceptable method to determine the monetary value of social insurance books. In the event that the books’ owner dies, they will be invalidated and can’t be cashed in. Furthermore, the use of those books as collateral defeats the country’s social insurance scheme’s mission: to mitigate the adverse effects of undesirable events that may happen to the insured such as sickness and unemployment.

Danang Hi-Tech Park receives $62 million investment

The management board of Danang Hi-tech Park (DHTP) has just granted the investment certificates to two projects: a commerce-logistics services centre in DHTP and ESTEC Digital Factory, representing total investment of over $62 million.

The project to build a commerce-logistics services centre in DHTP will be carried out by Southeastern Asia High-Tech Logistics JSC over the area of 9.2 hectares. The centre will be built at H1 plot in the area of logistics and services for DHTP, with total investment of VND1.230 trillion ($54.19 million) over three stages.

The first stage of this project will focus on completing blocks of offices for lease, logistics warehouses, and container yards. The next stage is to build distinct zones for diverse purposes, including commerce-supermarket, food court-display, and recreation combined with multi-sports facilities, as well as fuel stations. In the third stage, a convention centre and hotel complex will be established.

According to the scheme, the construction for the first stage will start in the second quarter of 2018 and come into operation in early 2021.

Meanwhile, East Sea Technology Engineering Electrical Automation will be the lead investor of the project to build a digital factory at the A14 plot—the hi-tech manufacturing area in DHTP—over a total area of 0.982ha. The project is supposed to receive total investment of around VND182 billion ($8 million) and is to be carried out in two stages.

In the first stage, the investor will establish a centre for research and automation and hi-tech development, a centre for implementing and providing solutions, products, and services in line with the 4.0 Industrial Revolution, as well as a centre for automation and hi-tech training.

The second stage of the project will concentrate on expanding the hi-tech research centres, carrying out projects and training courses on creating and manipulating digital statistics. The investor committed to implement the first stage in early 2018 and officially put the project into operation in January 2020.

According to the management board, Danang Hi-Tech Park has attracted about ten projects so far with the total registered investment of over $249 million over 34.6ha. Among these ten projects, three are 100-per cent financed from Japanese investors.

The post News VietNamNet appeared first on Breaking News Top News & Latest News Headlines | Reuters.

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csrgood · 7 years

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AEP’s Clean Energy Strategy Will Achieve Significant Future Carbon Dioxide Reductions

American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP) today released a report outlining the company’s strategy for a clean energy future. The strategy includes new carbon dioxide emission reduction goals and investments in renewable resources and advanced technologies to enhance the efficiency of the power grid.

In the report, AEP outlines a business strategy that will lead to reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from its power plants of 60 percent from 2000 levels by 2030 and 80 percent from 2000 levels by 2050.

AEP expects to achieve its carbon dioxide emission reductions through a variety of actions including investments in renewable generation and advanced technologies; investment in transmission and distribution systems to enhance efficiency; increased use of natural gas generation; and expanded demand response and energy efficiency programs.

“AEP is focused on modernizing the power grid, expanding renewable energy resources and delivering cost-effective, reliable energy to our customers,” said Nicholas K. Akins, AEP chairman, president and chief executive officer. “Our customers want us to partner with them to provide cleaner energy and new technologies, while continuing to provide reliable, affordable energy. Our investors want us to protect their investment in our company, deliver attractive returns and manage climate-related risk. This long-term strategy allows us to do both.”

AEP’s resource plans include adding 3,065 megawatts (MW) of solar generation and 5,295 MW of wind generation to the portfolio serving its regulated utility customers by 2030. AEP’s largest planned renewable energy investment is the $4.5 billion, 2,000-megawatt Wind Catcher Energy Connection project in Oklahoma. If approved, Wind Catcher will be the largest contiguous wind farm in the U.S. and will deliver nearly 9 million megawatt-hours of low-cost wind energy annually to AEP customers in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. Wind Catcher approval would accelerate how quickly AEP can add new wind generation to its portfolio.

AEP also is investing in renewable energy in competitive markets. Between 2018 and 2020, the company plans to invest approximately $1.2 billion in contracted renewables and renewables integrated with energy storage.

To enhance the efficiency and resiliency of the energy delivery system, AEP’s strategy includes plans to invest nearly $13 billion over the next three years in its transmission and distribution system.

AEP has factored future carbon regulations into the company’s evaluation of generation resource options for many years and will continue to do so. The company already has cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 44 percent since 2000.

AEP’s generation capacity has gone from 70 percent coal-fueled in 2005 to 47 percent today. Its natural gas capacity increased from 19 percent in 2005 to 27 percent today, and its renewable generation capacity has increased from 4 percent in 2005 to 13 percent today.

“This transition to a more balanced resource portfolio will help mitigate risk for our customers and shareholders alike and ensure a more resilient and reliable energy system into the future,” Akins said.

AEP’s Strategic Vision for a Clean Energy Future 2018 report complements the integrated Corporate Accountability Report that AEP has produced for the last 11 years to provide a comprehensive view of the company’s performance on key financial, environmental, social, governance and sustainability issues that are important to shareholders, customers and other stakeholders. Additionally, AEP helped lead the steering committee for Edison Electric Institute’s ESG/sustainability reporting effort, a voluntary electric industry initiative to help provide industry investors with more uniform and consistent environmental, social, governance, and sustainability-related (ESG/sustainability) metrics.

More information about AEP’s clean energy strategy is available at: http://aep.com/investors/docs/AEP2018CleanEnergyFutureReport.pdf.

American Electric Power, based in Columbus, Ohio, is focused on building a smarter energy infrastructure and delivering new technologies and custom energy solutions to our customers. AEP’s more than 17,000 employees operate and maintain the nation’s largest electricity transmission system and more than 224,000 miles of distribution lines to efficiently deliver safe, reliable power to nearly 5.4 million regulated customers in 11 states. AEP also is one of the nation’s largest electricity producers with approximately 33,000 megawatts of diverse generating capacity, including 4,200 megawatts of renewable energy. AEP’s family of companies includes utilities AEP Ohio, AEP Texas, Appalachian Power (in Virginia and West Virginia), AEP Appalachian Power (in Tennessee), Indiana Michigan Power, Kentucky Power, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, and Southwestern Electric Power Company (in Arkansas, Louisiana and east Texas). AEP also owns AEP Energy, AEP Energy Partners, AEP OnSite Partners and AEP Renewables, which provide innovative competitive energy solutions nationwide.

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This report made by American Electric Power and its Registrant Subsidiaries contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Although AEP and each of its Registrant Subsidiaries believe that their expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, any such statements may be influenced by factors that could cause actual outcomes and results to be materially different from those projected. Among the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are: economic growth or contraction within and changes in market demand and demographic patterns in AEP service territories; inflationary or deflationary interest rate trends; volatility in the financial markets, particularly developments affecting the availability or cost of capital to finance new capital projects and refinance existing debt; the availability and cost of funds to finance working capital and capital needs, particularly during periods when the time lag between incurring costs and recovery is long and the costs are material; electric load and customer growth; weather conditions, including storms and drought conditions, and AEP’s ability to recover significant storm restoration costs; the cost of fuel and its transportation, the creditworthiness and performance of fuel suppliers and transporters and the cost of storing and disposing of used fuel, including coal ash and spent nuclear fuel; availability of necessary generating capacity, the performance of AEP’s generating plants and the availability of fuel, including processed nuclear fuel, parts and service from reliable vendors; AEP’s ability to recover fuel and other energy costs through regulated or competitive electric rates; AEP’s ability to build transmission lines and facilities (including the ability to obtain any necessary regulatory approvals and permits) when needed at acceptable prices and terms and to recover those costs; new legislation, litigation and government regulation, including oversight of nuclear generation, energy commodity trading and new or heightened requirements for reduced emissions of sulfur, nitrogen, mercury, carbon, soot or particulate matter and other substances that could impact the continued operation, cost recovery, and/or profitability of AEP’s generation plants and related assets; evolving public perception of the risks associated with fuels used before, during and after the generation of electricity, including nuclear fuel; a reduction in the federal statutory tax rate that could result in an accelerated return of deferred federal income taxes to customers; timing and resolution of pending and future rate cases, negotiations and other regulatory decisions, including rate or other recovery of new investments in generation, distribution and transmission service and environmental compliance; resolution of litigation; AEP’s ability to constrain operation and maintenance costs; AEP’s ability to develop and execute a strategy based on a view regarding prices of electricity and gas; prices and demand for power generated and sold at wholesale; changes in technology, particularly with respect to energy storage and new, developing, alternative or distributed sources of generation; AEP’s ability to recover through rates any remaining unrecovered investment in generating units that may be retired before the end of their previously projected useful lives; volatility and changes in markets for capacity and electricity, coal, and other energy-related commodities, particularly changes in the price of natural gas; changes in utility regulation and the allocation of costs within regional transmission organizations, including ERCOT, PJM and SPP; AEP’s ability to successfully and profitably manage competitive generation assets, including the evaluation and execution of strategic alternatives for these assets as some of the alternatives could result in a loss; changes in the creditworthiness of the counterparties with whom AEP has contractual arrangements, including participants in the energy trading market; actions of rating agencies, including changes in the ratings of AEP debt; the impact of volatility in the capital markets on the value of the investments held by AEP’s pension, other postretirement benefit plans, captive insurance entity and nuclear decommissioning trust and the impact of such volatility on future funding requirements; accounting pronouncements periodically issued by accounting standard-setting bodies; and other risks and unforeseen events, including wars, the effects of terrorism (including increased security costs), embargoes, cyber security threats and other catastrophic events.

source: http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/40752-AEP-s-Clean-Energy-Strategy-Will-Achieve-Significant-Future-Carbon-Dioxide-Reductions-?tracking_source=rss

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