Flemish and Netherlands PM's Unite On Mission to Texas - “a natural alliance” says Flanders Peeters

Dutch PM Rutte in Texas

Flanders and the Netherlands have a common interest in promoting themselves together as an economic cluster which is far more important than any competition between them, according to a joint statement issued by Flanders’ minister-president Kris Peeters and Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte. The two this week embarked on a three-day economic mission to Texas, accompanied by Flemish mobility minister Hilde Crevits and Dutch infrastructure minister Melanie Schultz van Haegen.

Peeters described the mission, in which the two are joined by more than 90 business representatives, as a “historic” moment. “This is the first time there has been a joint mission in the long history that Flanders and the Netherlands share,” he said. “Flanders and the Netherlands have a lot to offer. We have open economies propelled by our ports; we share the same language, culture and history. That natural alliance is what we will be using this joint mission to further develop.”

Rutte pointed to the size of the joint delegation. “It’s good to see so many people who are going to be making a lot of money in the next few days,” he joked. Flanders and the Netherlands together were small but powerful, he said. Texas on its own would be the 14th-largest economy in the world, he said – roughly the same as Flanders and the Netherlands combined.

Read more: Peeters and Rutte praise “natural alliance” | Flanders Today

Aircraft Industry: Boeing and Airbus: Latin America Is Highly Important to them

It is estimated that in 20 years Latin America will require more than two thousand new passenger aircrafts: 1,653 single-aisle aircraft, twin-aisle 334 units and 41 large aircraft, which together have a market value of $197 billion.

The rise of the middle class in Latin America and the growth of their economies have been reflected in the development of the aviation industry on the continent, bringing synergies to buy 810 aircrafts produced by Airbus during the last 14 years.

The European manufacturer has a business relationship with 27 airlines in the region, with 457 aircrafts in service in their fleets. Only last year and at the beginning of 2013, Airbus received orders for 160 airplanes from six South American operators.

Avianca, TAM, LAN, Volaris, Interjet and Sinergy submitted 364 orders to Airbus to build A320 models that have a single aisle and are more efficient for regional flights, and A330 that have two aisles, more passenger capacity and the autonomy to travel long distances.

Amaya Rodríguez-González, Airbus’ Marketing Director for Latin America, said that the air traffic has doubled in the past 15 years and that history is expected to be repeated in the 15 years to come. The growth of air transport today is higher in growing economies like Latin America which provides a 6% annual increase of passengers per kilometer mobilization.

Read more: Boeing and Airbus: Latin America Is Highly Important | .TR

Belgium: Aluminium Company Aleris praises Flanders’ business climate

Following the opening of a new production unit worth EUR 53 million at its existing site in Duffel (Flanders), US-based aluminium giant Aleris praised the ‘extremely business-friendly environment’ in the region. 

To meet the growing demand for aluminum in cars, Aleris has installed a brand-new cold rolling mill at its site in Duffel, Flanders. CEO Steve Demetriou, who was present for the inauguration, was enthusiastic about the business climate in the region: “It was a pretty easy choice. 

Not only is Flanders located in the heart of the European automotive industry, it is also a very entrepreneurial region that promotes inward investment and offers talented and highly-skilled employees.” Andy Ishmael, Managing Director of the site in Duffel, concurs: “We have an excellent relationship with the Government of Flanders, and immediate access to fantastic engineers and employees.”
 
And what about the labor costs? “They are rather high”, said Roeland Baan, CEO of Global Rolled and Extruded Products at Aleris. “But we can perfectly counter that by focusing on highly innovative technologies that are difficult to copy.”

EU-Digest

Computer Industry: Hungary govt, Microsoft enter strategic cooperation deal

Hungary’s government and the local unit of Microsoft entered into a strategic cooperation agreement on 12 December, writes local online publication Portfolio.hu citing Peter Szijjarto, state secretary for foreign policy and economy at the Prime Minister's Office. The deal was signed by Peter Szijjarto and CEO of Microsoft Hungary Istvan Papp at the headquarters of Microsoft Hungary in Budapest.

The move is part of the Government's plan to sign some 40 strategic cooperation agreements in the near future in order to make mostly foreign-owned and export-focused companies feel more at home and in a predictable environment.

At the signing ceremony, Szijjarto said that having a strong info-communication and technological sector is of utmost importance for Hungary's competitiveness. The government is paying extra attention to supporting R&D and co-operating with large enterprises, Szijjarto added.

By teaming up with Microsoft, the government will bring to life a national digital public education portal and the digital home programme. The negotiations between the two parties concerning this digital home programme are in an advanced stage.

 Read more: Hungary govt, Microsoft enter strategic cooperation deal - Telecompaper

Belarus: Belarusian, Kazakhstan businessmen sign cooperation agreements

Representatives of the business communities of Belarus and Kazakhstan have signed cooperation agreements during the visit of the Belarusian delegation to Kazakhstan. The Belarusian delegation was led by Chairman of the Belarusian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Mr Mikhail Myatlikov. The delegation included representatives of 43 companies and organizations, BelTA learnt from the press service of the Belarusian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

At the business match-making session Brest Electro-Mechanical Plant and Motor-Detal discussed supplies of Belarusian products to Kazakhstan; Bellakt and SPAVEX ASIA agreed about the export of Belarusian dairy foods to Kazakhstan. Representatives of Seismotekhnika held talks with the company Akor about joint manufacture of oil production equipment. Esgit and Alma-Ata Kraski discussed joint projects, too. Lida Meat-Packing Plant and Kobrin Meat-Packing Plant expressed interest in establishing links with KazMeat, Nash Torg and Merei.

The business community of Belarus took part in the 9th session of the Belarus-Kazakhstan intergovernmental commission for trade and economic cooperation during which the parties reviewed the joint efforts to implement the economic cooperation program. They also outlined promising cooperation avenues for 2013. They discussed cooperation in the manufacturing industry, agriculture and power engineering, transport and logistics.

The Chairman of the Belarusian Chamber of Commerce and Industry met with his Kazakhstan counterpart Sabr Yesimbekov. “The chiefs of the chambers discussed a possibility to introduce a single certificate of origin in the Customs Union and the Single Economic Space, as well as Kazakhstan’s accession to the WTO, the use of ATA carnets in the Customs Union, cooperation between the chambers of commerce and industry next year, including interregional cooperation,” the press service of the Belarusian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said.


Read more: Belarusian, Kazakhstan businessmen sign cooperation agreements - Economy / News / Belarus News | Belarusian news | Belarus today | news in Belarus | Minsk news | BELTA - Belarus News | Belarusian news | Belarus today | news in Belarus | Minsk news | BELTA

Building the entrepreneurial state - by Mariana Mazzucato

There is no point in talking about innovation, if economic policies focused on austerity prevent key investments which can increase productivity and human capital. There are five strategies that could drive a visionary industrial growth policy.

1. Do something different

As Keynes wrote in 1926 in The End of Laissez Faire, "The important thing for government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all."

His key insight was that private business investment is volatile and pro-cyclical: too much during booms and too little during busts. To avoid recessions turning into depressions, government needs to focus on counter-cyclical policies -- the opposite of what is happening today. But the focus on "doing something different" is not just about counter-cyclical measures. It is also about the need for government to focus on policies that cause types of economic activity that would not have happened otherwise. Industrial policy is about making this happen in the areas of productivity enhancing investments that lead to growth and innovation.

2. Transform animal spirits into investment

Since investment is driven by "animal spirits" (the gut expectations that investors have on the future state of the economy), a key role of government is to get that investment moving. Large reductions in corporate tax rates did not increase investment in the 80s nor will they today (they simply change income distribution). Government-led investments that open up new technological and market opportunities will. This includes not only properly funding education and research infrastructures but also providing early financing for innovative firms, and new key technologies, which private venture capital has proven too risk averse to fund. Without the state there would have been no internet revolution, biotech revolution or nanotech revolution. Without the state, the green-tech revolution is still-born.

One of the failures of current UK policy is the assumption that firms want to grow, and all they need is a "nudge" in the right direction. While the Green Investment Bank is surely a positive development, it assumes that the willingness to invest is there and all that is needed is some co-financing. But "green" investment is currently confined to incremental areas, and the government is not stepping in to fill the gap. The UK's investment of £12.6 billion in this area in 2009/10 is, according to PIRC, "under 1 per cent of UK Gross Domestic Product; half of what South Korea currently invests in green technologies annually; and less than what the UK presently spend on furniture in a year".

3. Market making not market fixing

What I have called the "entrepreneurial state" is not about fixing markets but creating them. The state has acted in the past as catalyst, lead investor and creator (not just facilitator) of the knowledge economy. This requires far-sighted investments in technologies that are too risky for the private sector, such as offshore wind and carbon capture and storage. It also involves the creation of clear policy signals that increase business confidence in areas that are otherwise seen to be too high risk, such as feed-in tariffs for solar energy (recently cancelled in the UK causing even more uncertainty and less investment).

A more entrepreneurial role for government extends beyond procuring innovative products to making them directly in public labs when the private sector is reluctant to step in. Indeed, 75 per cent of the New Molecular Entities with priority rating in the pharmaceutical industry have originated in public sector labs, because private pharma is more interested in the low risk "me too" drugs. It is the large amounts of US public funds for life-sciences research (via the National Institutes of Health) that has enticed Pfizer and GSK to leave the UK for the US. From 1978 through 2004, NIH spending on life sciences research totaled $365 billion.

4. Rebalancing indicators of performance

Creating markets is also about shaping the indicators that are used to measure economic performance so they reward rather than penalise the most innovative companies. In this sense, "rebalancing" is not necessarily about sectors. It is more about redirecting "indicators of performance" away from short run financial towards long run "real economy" measures. Firms investing in expensive R&D and human capital will have a higher risk profile, since innovation is so costly and uncertain. The most innovative companies have suffered the largest increases in the cost of credit.

Furthermore, the focus on boosting stock prices through share buybacks (Fortune 500 companies have spent $3 trillion on buybacks over the last decade) has been shown to be directly related to lower investments of these companies in human capital and R&D. These are tradeoffs which industrial policy must combat.

Battling against these problems includes devising policies that nurture "patient capital" that can protect the flow of credit to the most innovative companies. In Germany this occurs through the state-backed investment bank - KfW, which works alongside the regional Landesbanken as well as the large network of savings banks. Innovation in Brazil, which has surpassed the UK as the world's fifth largest economy, has been directly funded by the Brazilian Development Bank. In the UK, a National Investment Bank could today be formed relatively quickly out of the nationalised RBS (an idea included in Cable's leaked letter). Selling it off would be a wasted opportunity.

5. Being first matters

China recently announced that it is spending $1.5 trillion over the next five years in seven new key industries (including environmentally friendly technologies and new generation IT). Its industrial policy is its growth policy -- its economic strategy. Similarly, after the crisis hit in 2008, Germany increased its government funded RandD spending by 10 per cent, while the UK has since cut it by the same amount, signalling very different visions of what will drive post-crisis recovery.

Note EU-Digest: Mariana Mazzucato is Professor of Economics and RM Phillips Chair in Science and Technology Policy at the University of Sussex. She is the author of The Entrepreneurial State.

EU-Digest

A club in China to help Chinese entrepreneurs go overseas

Private enterprises account for the majority of jobs created in China, but they are often disadvantaged compared with their state-owned brethren in tapping financing or government support, both at home and overseas.

It is a bigger problem overseas, given the scant knowledge most Chinese entrepreneurs have of operating in alien surroundings. China has a decade-old "going out" policy, but it is primarily oriented toward helping the biggest state-owned firms establish themselves internationally.

With 16 founding members who lend their names to the venture and almost 500 private companies in tow, the AEA organizes investment road shows to potential destinations with the aim of ultimately negotiating joint office space and other services to give members a quick start in setting up overseas.
Feng figures that the global financial crisis has created plenty of office buildings and warehouses eager to give a break to a new group of Chinese tenants. 

The most concrete initiative to date is in Belgium, where property developer Group Bernaerts -- which itself is expanding into China -- has wooed the Chinese arrivals with 300 plane tickets and a year of free rent on an office and warehouse complex still under construction half-way between the port of Antwerp and the European Union capital, Brussels.


A club in China to help entrepreneurs go overseas | Reuters

EU 'must respond to world changes'

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg of Britain, a liberal Democrat, is to call for a European response to match dramatic political change in North Africa.

In a speech in Brussels he will set out why the European Union needs a radical rethink of its policy towards the region in the wake of popular uprisings which have already toppled leaders in Tunisia and Egypt and now threaten Colonel Gaddafi's regime in Libya. Mr Clegg says the EU cannot afford to stay neutral, and he intends to use his speech at the UK's EU ambassador's residence to warn that monumental change in North Africa is as much a defining moment of the EU as for the region itself.

In his prepared speech he says: "This is a precious moment of opportunity for the region. Precious because it is the people, especially the young people, who are speaking up, and they are doing so for the most part peacefully and with dignity.

Note EU-Digest: Mr.Glegg "hits the nail right on the head",  Europe has to "put its money where its mouth is", and stop sitting on its hands or be a US lapdog or anyone's lapdog for that matter. After all, this is Europe's backyard. If it goes up in flames, Europe will also get burned.


For more: The Press Association: EU 'must respond to world changes'

EU-Digest: What Entrepreneurs Need to Know about Social Networking

Click on this link to read more about this revolutionary new marketing technique to help you increase your corporate exposure and sales

"What Entrepreneurs Need to Know about Social Networking"

Everyone who has been keeping up to date on the latest marketing trends across corporations around the world, and up and down the organizational ladders, are talking about the benefits of social networking to increase their exposure and sales. It's a major development that has been growing rapidly during the past few years. People are exchanging information about everything under the sun via a variety of platforms on the internet and you can be part of it or not, because it happens with or without you. It's your choice whether you want to participate or ignore this technological tidal wave.