The highly competitive industrial environment coupled with the impact of economic crisis is forcing companies across all sectors to re-assess their budget spending and improve their overall efficiency to stay competitive and maintain profit margins. The move towards adopting wireless solutions could be an effective solution to reduce costs and improve plant efficiency if wireless technology is understood and adopted for the right application areas.
Experts from Etoro, which specializes in foreign currency trading, conducted a survey, the conclusion of which determines that from October to December 2008, investors from all over the world have abandoned Wall Street for foreign currency trading.
While general cost pressures continue to be the main challenge for manufacturers globally, rising energy costs have reached a new level of concern according to TBM Consulting Group's sixth annual "Multinational Manufacturing Pulse." The study found that manufacturers' level of anxiety over rising energy costs has more than doubled since last year resulting in an increased commitment to eliminate waste.
Over the past nine years the Russian economy has demonstrated strong growth, spurring investors to seriously consider the economic benefits of Russian investments. Currently, Russia is the world's second biggest producer of oil, it is not dependent on foreign capital flows, is relatively stable politically, boasts reasonable market valuations as well as having access to the biggest growth story of our time, Asia.
While East Asian countries have entered the current crisis substantially better prepared than they were for the 1997 Asian financial crisis, none have been spared the full fury of the global economic storm, says the World Bank's latest six-monthly assessment of the East Asia & Pacific region's economic health.
In the midst of the most severe global financial crisis in decades, the World Bank today urged the international community to look to Latin America for innovative solutions to avert a climate crisis. The region is in a position to lead middle income countries in reducing emissions from deforestation, breaking the impasse on hydropower development, improving energy efficiency, and transforming urban transport, a new Word Bank study concludes.
The World Bank Group announced the creation of a $ 2 billion fast-track facility to speed up grants and long-term, interest-free loans to help the world’s poorest countries cope with the impact of the global financial crisis.
Eighty-nine entrepreneurs from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Jordan, Mexico, South Africa and Uruguay reported that the current credit crunch has led to reduced sales, a rise in input costs and difficulty in accessing financing.
The standardised unemployment rate for the OECD area was 6.2% in October 2008, 0.1 percentage point higher than the previous month and 0.6 percentage point higher than a year earlier.
The EP Agriculture Committee called for "immediate and continuous action" to ensure global food security. It believes the aid of EUR 1 billion that the EU has decided to give to developing countries should be accompanied by fresh investment in agriculture and it calls for mechanisms to be set up to ensure that sufficient global food stocks are available.
