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China’s development ’experiment’ key to future growth
Maintaining a balance between environmental sustainability and the continuing process of urbanisation is a major issue facing the Chinese, write the researchers. Although much of China’s biodiversity is being threatened by rapid economic development and human activities, Tang Zhiyao and colleagues report the existence of ten biodiversity ’hotspots’ in mountain ranges that remain largely unaffected. Protecting these mountainous areas is critical for cons...
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Chinese Take a Turn at Turning a Sub-Saharan Profi
Through all the iterations of the world?s engagement with Africa, most of its nations have remained stuck in an economic trap in which they primarily supply valuable raw materials to the developed world while serving as a marketplace for cheap manufactured goods.? But China seems to be offering Africa something new, a straightforward business relationship between equals based on mutual interest and noninterference in the internal affairs of its allies. Excerpts: China, it seems, is sudden...
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Small business growth could reduce poverty in Indonesia: World Bank
Excerpt: Small businesses, which employ millions of Indonesians, could become major engines of economic growth in this cash-strapped country and help reduce poverty, the World Bank has said. Indonesia’s 15.7 million small enterprises make up more than 90 percent of all businesses and employ up to 60 percent of the workforce, outside agriculture, but their growth is hindered by access to credit and poor infrastructure, the World Bank’s Indonesia director said in a report rel...
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Workshop aims to help Vietnam’s poor take advantage of markets
An organization called M4P is exploring how poor Vietnamese can escape poverty by taking advantage of the free market. At a recent workshop in Hanoi, experts said that using market forc es to fight poverty is promising, but far from easy.
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Enterprise holds key to booming start-ups
When Wu Shengying’s wine-selling business failed in 2003, he abandoned farming in his hilly village in Shandong Province and turned to an idea that he hoped would please Chinese palates as much as KFC chicken wings [...] and after breaking several thousand eggs in experiments, he finally worked out a formula that he believes strikes a perfect balance between temperature and timing to make good roasted eggs. Wu’s roasted eggs, with ...
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Hong Kong’s initial foray into BOP enterprise development
More than 300 participants from various sectors on Thursday attended the Conference on Social Enterprise to discuss new approach to helping the poor. The conference, jointly organized by the Commission on Poverty and the Central Policy Unit of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, aims to enhance community understanding of social enterprise and explain its relevance to poverty alleviation. The one-day conference was the first of its kind and scale in Hong ...
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’Missing market’ a target for rural growth
THE UN Commission Report Unleashing Entrepreneurship: Making Business Work for the Poor is a critical first step in identifying the important role that the private sector must play to ensure that business will work for the poor, Foreign Affairs ministry chief executive Isikeli Mataitoga says. He made the remarks when he launched a Pacific workshop to discuss the report in Suva yesterday. The Report suggests ways for developing and developed countries to develop partnership throug...
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China’s Life Insurance Sector Should Tap Rural Areas: McKinsey
To strengthen China’s emerging life insurance sector the country should make more effort to exploit the huge potential in vast rural regions, suggested a report from McKinsey & Company. According to the report, most insurance companies don’t provide sufficient coverage in under-developed areas. New entrants, especially foreign insurers, have concentrated on the wealthiest, most developed areas, leaving vast under-developed areas of the country without recourse to this pow...
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