We need to find a fairer way of providing Goods and Services to the rest of the people on Earth.Cryptocurrencies and/or Gold Standard of money....maybe the answer to fight hyperinflation caused by too much printing of paper/fiat currencies by Governments and Central Banks all over the World. (https://nomorefiatmoneyplease.blogspot.com)
Hungry? China's food delivery apps bite into Yum revival
As China's economy stutters, growing numbers of diners on a budget are tapping into smartphone applications to snap up meal delivery deals, spelling big trouble for fast food chains like Yum Brands Inc's KFC and Pizza Hut.
PHOTO: REUTERS
[SHANGHAI] As China's economy stutters, growing numbers of diners on a budget are tapping into smartphone applications to snap up meal delivery deals, spelling big trouble for fast food chains like Yum Brands Inc's KFC and Pizza Hut.
People like Li Jiali, a 20-year-old Shanghai student, say they have all the dining options they need nestling in their phones, without needing to venture out of the house. Yum's shares dived this week after it said it's way behind target in a bid to recover from damaging food scandals in China, its top driver for profit and revenue.
Li's Huawei smartphone is packed with cut-price food delivery apps from some of China's biggest internet firms, like Baidu Inc's Waimai, Alibaba-linked Meituan and Tencent-backed Ele.me - meaning "Hungry?". These allow thousands of mom-and-pop restaurants to lure diners previously beyond their marketing reach. "On my phone I have Meituan, Baidu and Ele.me, and I use whichever one has the biggest discount," Ms Li said. Baidu's platform is currently offering the best deals at around 40 per cent off, she said, evidence of a price war raging online.
Yum this week pointed the finger at a "savage battle" under way between apps to explain why China same-store sales grew only 2 per cent in the third quarter, well below the expected 9.6 per cent jump. Yum cut its global forecasts on weakness in China, where the firm has been whipsawed by food safety scandals and marketing missteps over the last few years.
The rise of online apps is a extra blow to Yum, already facing a crowded fast food market, where consultants Euromonitor forecast growth will slow to around 4 per cent by 2019, less than a third of the pace a decade before. "We are experiencing what we believe is a short-term but significant impact of online ordering aggregators entering the casual dining space," Yum's chief financial officer Pat Grismer said on an earnings call after the results.
The company's executives also cited a dud marketing campaign at its Pizza Hut brand and slowing growth in the world's second-biggest economy hitting consumers' willingness to fork out on discretionary spending. Shares sank nearly 20 per cent after the earnings report.
Yum's stumble also undermined bullish predictions earlier in the year, when the firm pegged global growth targets to a then-hoped-for sharp second-half China bounce, posing a problem for newly installed China boss Micky Pant. "Apps like this level the playing field so that every venue has its virtual spot that's equal," said Stone Shi, Shanghai-based founder and Chief Executive of restaurant search platform Bon App. "It used to about being a household name in one sector - pizza, pasta, fast food etcetera. Now people want to see what else is out there." Yum did not respond to specific queries after the earnings disclosure on how the firm would combat the rise of online platforms in China.
The firm, which has 6,867 restaurants in the country, now also faces the challenge of reviving growth when consumers are redirecting spending from food to other areas such as healthcare and transport, analysts said. "(Chinese) consumers now really watch what they are spending," said Edward Jones senior analyst Jack Russo.
Yum's executives say they remain bullish on China in the long-term. But the concern for investors is how the US chain was caught out so dramatically - and whether headwinds such as online apps will continue to cause a drag in the market. "The apps will always survive, though whether the companies that are currently powering those apps survive is another question," said Mark Secchia, founder of Shanghai-based food delivery platform Sherpa's. "These guys are only going to get busier in a down market."
China 'Golden Week' retail sales growth slows to 11% y-o-y
China's retail sales growth slowed during the week-long National Day Holiday, Ministry of Commerce data showed, adding to concerns about weakness in the world's second largest economy.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
[BEIJING] China's retail sales growth slowed during the week-long National Day Holiday, Ministry of Commerce data showed, adding to concerns about weakness in the world's second largest economy.
Revenues of retailers and catering firms grew 11 per cent to 1.08 trillion yuan (S$238.2 billion) during the Oct 1-7 "Golden Week" holiday, a ministry statement said, a decline from the 12.1 per cent growth in the same year-ago period.
The holiday is especially important for retailers, which vie for customers by launching promotions and discounts. Millions of people take time off work to travel, get married and generally spend more than usual during the break.
Economists are closely watching retail data as China's leaders are trying to boost economic growth, which is at its slowest in nearly quarter of a century, through consumption rather than the manufacturing-led growth model of the past.
Rich Chinese can have in-home IMAX theater systems for US$400,000
IMAX China Holding, which made its stock-market debut in Hong Kong this week, is launching an in- home entertainment system targeting wealthy Chinese who would rather stay home to watch movies. The cost: a mere US$400,000.
PHOTO: REUTERS
[HONG KONG] IMAX China Holding, which made its stock-market debut in Hong Kong this week, is launching an in- home entertainment system targeting wealthy Chinese who would rather stay home to watch movies. The cost: a mere US$400,000.
IMAX, which started trading on Thursday on the Hong Kong stock exchange after an initial public offering that raised HK$1.92 billion (S$346.8 million), is teaming up with Chinese manufacturer TCL Multimedia Technology Holdings Ltd. to provide screens 20-feet wide and 10-feet high, projectors and sound systems. Seats and popcorn dispensers are not included.
"There are so many people that have high-end villas and have money and love movies," Richard Gelfond, chief executive officer of IMAX Corp, said in a telephone interview from New York. "The same day that a Bond film comes out you can see it in your home."
China is set to overtake the US in terms of numbers of screens in 2017 as well as at the box office. IMAX had 221 screens in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at the end of June and backlog of 217, according to the company prospectus.
The US$400,000 price tag is a fraction of the US$1.2 million a wealthy acquirer paid in Los Angeles to purchase an IMAX system sold to commercial theaters. The buyer had to build a separate house to make room for the system, which included a 60-foot screen, Mr Gelfond said.
PUB chairman Tan Gee Paw pictured on 23 July 2015. Singapore's newly-appointed transport minister Khaw Boon Wan said in his blog entry on Friday that he has asked National water agency PUB Chairman, Tan Gee Paw, to be his Advisor on Rail Transformation.
ST PHOTO: MARK CHEONG
SINGAPORE'S newly appointed transport minister Khaw Boon Wan said in his blog entry on Friday that he has asked national water agency PUB chairman, Tan Gee Paw, to be his adviser on rail transformation.
Mr Tan, 71, drew up the master plan to clean the Singapore River, helped to diversify the country's water sources and oversaw the development of Newater, Singapore's brand of reclaimed water. He was recently feted with the Institution of Engineers Singapore's (IES) Lifetime Engineering Achievement Award.
Mr Khaw said Mr Tan was the first individual he had consulted for advice and suggestion as soon as he was told of his new posting.
"We discussed the problem of rail disruptions, its possible causes and how we can make rail service as reliable as PUB services. We also discussed the industry structure for bringing about better alignment of incentives. We wondered aloud on how we would structure our rail companies, if we were to start afresh,'' Mr Khaw shared.
The two men also discussed the larger vision of a Singapore where public transport could be so convenient, reliable and hassle-free that there would be no need to own a car.
"We had so much in common on how the future transport system could be like and how to move from here to there. I asked him to be my Advisor on Rail Transformation (ART), with an immediate priority to ramp up rail reliability,'' wrote Mr Khaw.
"This will require a serious re-focus on the part of every player (MOT, LTA, SMRT, SBST) that we are in the engineering business, founded on strong engineering expertise and capabilities. We are no miracle workers, but given political will, clarity of purpose, dogged determination, we are confident that we will arrive at where we want public transport to be. But we need time to bring about this rail (and real) transformation.''
G20 ministers endorse crackdown on corporate tax avoidance
[LIMA] Finance ministers from the world's leading economies gave the green light Friday to a new plan to crack down on tax evasion by multi-national corporations, which costs countries at least US$100 billion a year.
The so-called Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) plan, which seeks to close the loopholes multi-nationals use to avoid taxes, was adopted by finance ministers from the G20 group of leading industrialized and emerging economies at a meeting in Lima, Peru, they announced.
G20 leaders must now give final approval at a summit in November in Turkey.
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Cevdet Yilmaz, who announced the decision, called it a "historic moment" for the fight against tax evasion that costs governments an estimated US$100 billion to US$240 billion a year.
He said the plan addressed a "very comprehensive set of issues," including profit-shifting across borders, corporations' use of no-tax status in multiple countries and the digital economy.
"These are very complicated issues that required an extensive technical effort and a hard-to-build consensus in some cases," Mr Yilmaz said.
The 15-point plan aims to tackle low tax bills for the likes of Google and McDonald's, which have managed to sharply reduce their taxes while remaining within the law, provoking public outrage in recent years.
"Base erosion and profit shifting is sapping our economies of the resources needed to jump-start growth, tackle the effects of the global economic crisis and create better opportunities for all," said Angel Gurria, secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which drafted the long-awaited plan.
Update: Malaysian central bank urged criminal prosecution of 1MDB
Malaysia's central bank said on Friday it had urged the country's attorney general to begin criminal prosecution of troubled fund 1MDB after completing its investigation, piling more pressure on Prime Minister Najib Razak who chairs the fund's advisory board.
PHOTO: AFP
[KUALA LUMPUR] Malaysia's central bank said on Friday it had urged the country's attorney general to begin criminal prosecution of troubled fund 1MDB after completing its investigation, piling more pressure on Prime Minister Najib Razak who chairs the fund's advisory board.
At the centre of a political crisis over its debt of nearly 42 billion ringgit (US$11.5 billion) and alleged financial graft, 1MDB is the subject of several probes by different authorities, including Malaysia's central bank.
The central bank's statement comes just one day after the attorney general said it had seen a report of the central bank's investigation and concluded that 1MDB officials had not committed any offence. The attorney general, appointed by the prime minister in late July, also said it had rejected a central bank request for a review of the decision.
In its statement, the central bank also said 1MDB had secured permits for investment abroad based on inaccurate or incomplete disclosure of information, thus breaching domestic regulations.
The central bank added it revoked three permits granted to 1MDB for investments abroad totalling US$1.83 billion and ordered the state fund to repatriate the funds to Malaysia.
1MDB did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The attorney general's office declined to comment.
In July, the Wall Street Journal reported that investigators looking into 1MDB had identified a payment of nearly US$700 million into a bank account under Najib's name. Reuters has not independently verified the report.
Mr Najib has denied taking money for personal gain.
The central bank did not specify which permits were revoked or where it believed the US$1.83 billion was being held.
Earlier this year, 1MDB said it redeemed US$1.1 billion from the Cayman Islands and parked it in BSI Bank Limited Singapore, a local unit of Swiss asset manager BSI.
China plane maker reveals stealth jet capabilities to lure buyers
Avic said the fifth-generation fighter jet, which has a 1,200 km combat range and a top speed of 2,205 kph, is designed to be in service for up to 30 years.
PHOTO: AFP
[BEIJING] China's top aircraft manufacturer has revealed specifications of an advanced stealth fighter jet in a bid to lure foreign buyers, the official China Daily reported on Friday.
In a rare disclosure, the state-owned Aviation Industry Corp of China (Avic) unveiled the capabilities of the J-31 aircraft at an aviation show, even though the jet is still being tested, the newspaper said.
Avic officials have made no secret of the fact that they are seeking foreign buyers for the aircraft, hoping to compete with Lockheed Martin's F-35.
Countries that cannot buy weaponry from the United States have increasingly sought them from China, particularly because Chinese arms are often cheaper.
Avic said the fifth-generation fighter jet, which has a 1,200 km combat range and a top speed of 2,205 kph, is designed to be in service for up to 30 years, the China Daily reported.
It has a maximum payload capacity of 8 metric tons, the newspaper said.
An Avic executive said last year the jet could "take down"foreign rivals in the sky. The twin-engine J-31 took its maiden flight in 2012.
Defence analysts have often compared the jet to the US-made F-35, and US officials have speculated that China may have used cyber espionage to acquire classified knowledge about the aircraft's development.
Stealth aircraft are vital to China developing the ability to carry out both offensive and defensive operations, the Pentagon has said in a report about developments in China's military.
The J-31 is China's second domestically produced stealth fighter jet.
President Xi Jinping has pushed to toughen the 2.3 million-strong armed forces as the country takes a more assertive stance in the region, particularly in the South China and East China seas.
Top, AFP/Getty Images; bottom, AP Photo/Sergei Chirikov, Pool
Top, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev, 1980; bottom, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin, 2005
Russia’s entry into the Syrian conflict has fundamentally changed the dynamic of the four-and-a-half-year-old war there. With a bombing campaign that now includes launching cruise missiles into Syria from Russian warships in the Caspian Sea, the Kremlin is gambling that it can preserve the weakened Assad regime. The move brings Russia into a costly and intractable civil war, raises the threat of terrorism by Islamist groups in Russia, and puts Russian forces in direct confrontation with the US-led coalition that is arming moderate Syrian rebels and fighting ISIS.
So the question arises: Why is Russia doing this now? According to a high-level source in the Kremlin, the decision to intervene in Syria was urged on Putin this summer by three senior members of his team: Sergei Ivanov, head of the Russian Presidential Administration, Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Nikolai Patrushev, former head of the FSB and now the leader of the Russian Security Council. Assad’s regime was increasingly in danger, facing not only ISIS, but al-Nusra, and holding, by some estimates, less than 17 percent of Syria’s territory. Even the Alawites, Shiite Muslims who are a crucial base of support for the Assad, had begun fleeing the country. With the conflict in Ukraine still unresolved and Putin increasingly isolated by the West, intervention in the Middle East was intended to reassert Russia as a major world power and act as a counterforce to Western support for the Ukrainian government in Ukraine.
It was no surprise that the principal targets of Russian bombing raids in Syria have not been ISIS, but rather other rebel groups that the US and its Western allies support. (Though Russian cruise missiles have now also been directed as ISIS targets.) Putin, in his appearance at the UN in late September, stated unequivocally that Russia was committed to keeping the Assad regime in power, and from the Kremlin’s point of view, this makes sense. Russia fears the total collapse of the Syrian state, which would end a decades-old alliance and threaten its strategic position in the Middle East. And it views Islamic insurgents as not only a threat to Assad, but also a potential threat at home.
It is important to note that Russia has a long history with Syria, dating back to the immediate post-World War II period. The Soviet Union signed a secret pact with Syria in 1946, promising political and military support to Syria’s national army, followed four years later by a non-aggression treaty. The 1955 Baghdad Pact, an agreement among Britain, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Pakistan to prevent Soviet expansion in the Middle East, led to further rapprochement between Syria and the Soviet Union. The alliance was strengthened during the Suez crisis of 1956, which brought the two countries together in backing Egypt.
Syria, at this time, had the largest Communist Party in the Arab world and significant oil and gas reserves, which offered the Soviets an opportunity to provide technological support to its energy ventures. The geo-strategic position of Syria became even more important to the Soviets in 1971, when they leased a naval base at Tartus, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast. Tartus hosts the fleet of ten Russian warships and auxiliary vessels in the area. Given that Russia’s Mediterranean fleet is so distant from home, this base is crucial to Russian military interests.
This is not to mention the income Russia has received from selling arms to Syria. Russia has been Syria’s major arms supplier for decades, accounting now for over three quarters of Syria’s arms purchases, including in August, a package of YAK-130 attack jets and MiG-29 fighters. Since Damascus is now essentially bankrupt, Moscow has had to write off much of the debt from the Soviet era, but that has not stopped the continuation of arms contracts with Russian firms.
All of which has provided a strong incentive for Russia to prevent the collapse of the Assad regime. Kremlin decision-making is always an enigma, but the comments of Dmitry Rogozin, deputy Russian prime minister in charge of the defense industry and one of the architects of the Crimean invasion, who is on the EU sanctions list, suggest that Putin’s close advisors are in unison on Syria. Rogozin directs an economic cooperation committee between Russia and Syria established this year by Putin. After Russia began bombing in Syria last week, he posted this on Facebook: “Our guys in Syria are suppressing a war against Russia on distant plains. Anyone who does not understand is a fool or an enemy.” This is as clear a statement yet of Russian motivations, however irrational and short-sighted they may seem to the West.
A more important question is how Russia’s new military involvement in Syria will play out with the Russian population. The chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee for International Affairs, Alexei Pushkov, has said that Russia’s air campaign in Syria would continue for two to three months, but he could not exclude the possibility that it would last longer. Meanwhile, Russia has said it plans to send ground troops, claiming of course that they are “volunteers,” as it has done with Ukraine. As yet, there is no confirmation of any major deployment in Syria. But if the Kremlin does carry out such a plan, what happens when body bags start to arrive home? 75 percent of over 50,000 responders to a recent poll by the independent radio station Ekho Moskvy were against Russia deploying ground forces in Syria. This audience represents a select group that reaches beyond state-controlled television for its news, but a poll by the authoritative Levada Center in Moscow showed that 69 percent of respondents opposed Russia introducing troops to support Assad. Russian journalist Gamid Gamidov, predicting that Russia will be mired in the Syrian conflict for a long time, observed that “a war on foreign territory, at a time of deepening financial crisis, means increasing the likelihood of more dissatisfaction…on the side of [Russia’s] population. The idea that ‘we have nothing to eat here and they are throwing all the money on a war in Syria’ will gain momentum and discontent with the [Kremlin] regime could bring it to an end.”
Putin has justified the Russian incursion in Syria as a fight against global terrorism, warning that Russian militants fighting against Assad could come back home and carry out terrorist attacks. But it seems far more likely that Russia’s own involvement in Syria will encourage, rather than contain, such threats. Russia has a population of over 15 million Muslims, most of them Sunnis. And there are millions more in the neighboring republics of the former Soviet Union. While Russia has a history of militant and terrorist attacks, until now, there have not been incidents tied to ISIS or the war in Syria. However, the Kremlin’s attacks on Sunni strongholds in Syria could well produce a backlash and radicalize these Muslim populations, particularly in the North Caucasus.
Putin may hope that Russians will come to view the Kremlin’s Syrian venture as they have its involvement in Ukraine. In contrast to Syria, the Ukraine intervention continues to have broad public support. A Levada poll in June revealed that a majority of Russians backed the annexation of Crimea and saw the war in Ukraine as a result of the US and its allies’ efforts to undermine Russia. According to Russian sociologistDenis Volkov, “Russian television’s portrayal of Ukraine as a failed and disintegrating state overrun by nationalist forces has mostly had the desired effect.”
While the Western press has been preoccupied with Syria, Russia has continued its activities in Ukraine. In early October, Putin had talks with the leaders of Ukraine, France, and Germany in Paris, the first meeting since a peace deal was signed in Minsk in February. Russia agreed to persuade Ukrainian separatists in Eastern Ukraine to postpone their plans to hold their own elections this month, which Kiev and its Western allies have opposed. But a disturbing report by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) last week about a new and highly destructive Russian weapons system—the so-called Buratino multiple rocket launcher—appearing in Eastern Ukraine raises doubt about Russian intentions.
A larger question, however, is whether the serious decline in the Russian economy could erode support for these military ventures. The plunge in oil prices, together with Western economic sanctions, have caused real incomes in Russia to fall significantly, with inflation reaching more than 15 percent. According to the independent Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta, Russian expenditures on the Syrian military effort are so far within the bounds of the country’s budget, and much less than the estimated $9.9 million a day that the US and its allies are spending there in bombing attacks. The Russians are using airplanes and ammunition that have long been paid for. But the price will rise significantly if Russia introduces ground troops into Syria or its bases are attacked by militants. According to Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, “Serious spending will begin when losses have to be replenished—damaged ammunition, motor vehicles and maybe aircraft.” All this will add to Russia’s budget deficit, which is projected to be 3 percent this year and next. It may be only a matter of time until Russians begin questioning Russia’s involvement in Ukraine along with Syria.
The Kremlin’s involvement in Ukraine and Syria seems to be motivated partly by its aversion to democratic regimes, in particular the so-called color revolutions that have sprung up in the Middle East and in Georgia and Ukraine. The Arab Spring came only half-heartedly to Syria, with the democratic uprising soon overtaken by armed conflict. But this does not rule out, from the Kremlin’s point of view, the possibility of insurgent groups unfriendly to Russia eventually taking over the country. The breakup of Syria, or the replacement of the Assad regime by a government more aligned with the Sunni Arab world, would leave Russia without a client state in the Middle East.
As for Ukraine, it is dangerously close both to Russia and to countries belonging to the European Union and NATO. At the UN in late September, Putin mentioned how difficult it has been for Russia, after the fall of the Soviet Union, to contend with the expansion of NATO to countries along its border. This may explain why Russia has been increasingly aggressive in violating NATO airspace in the Baltics, just as it has recently violated the airspace of Turkey, a NATO member.
In both the Ukrainian and Syrian conflicts, the Kremlin is trying to provide a counterweight to NATO. Yet while Russia has managed thus far to hold its own in Ukraine, the Syrian gambit is far riskier. In the words of the prominent Russian journalist Yulia Latynina: “The Islamists, including ISIL, are operating in this war with much longer experience and more successfully than the Kremlin…The scandals over Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib will seem like kindergarten in comparison to what in a month the western media will be saying about Russian involvement in Syria.”
