Gotta blogmark a couple worthy emerging markets datapoints -
Global business confidence is at a five-year high, according to a survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which found nine out of 10 top executives rating business prospects over the next three years as good or very good.
The dynamism in emerging markets – especially China and India – was the main reason for this optimism, with a majority of the 1,006 executives from around the world planning to invest more in developing countries than in developed economies....
Nearly a third of the executives rated business prospects “very good”, compared with just six per cent five years ago. Given the strong global economic outlook, growth in sales was regarded as a greater priority for 2007 than controlling costs.
Rising demand in developing economies was cited by 34 per cent as the strongest influence in the global economy, followed by 32 per cent who said global sourcing. Most executives saw emerging markets as a route to cutting costs and viewed developed economies as a source of ideas and innovation...
India-based executives were more optimistic than those based in China, with 70 per cent saying prospects were very good, compared with just 3 per cent of those in China.
!!!!!! Are the Indians wildly optimistic? Are the Chinese stuck in a depressive rut? Or do they know something about the prospects for growth in their respective economies that I (we?) don't?
Annnd - via Lounsbury - similar vibes in the MENA region:
There are two huge stories coming out of the Middle East these days. One is the headline story of wars, civil wars, terrorism and destruction with, perhaps, worse to come in the shape of isintegrated Iraq, and an Iran with the power to produce a nuclear weapon in five to ten years time. The other is the impact of the last three years of high oil prices which, combined with the recent huge increase in world trade led by booming economies of in China and India, has produced very high levels of growth not just in the oil exporting countries of the Gulf but also in some of the non-oil, or little oil economies like Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Turkey.
Both stories are, of course, largely true. But the second is still much less well-known except by those in the West who read the financial press or who have a direct interest in managing the hundreds of billions of Middle Eastern money which passes through the banks of London or Geneva as well as those in the Gulf itself. And yet the figures are staggering. Looked at in aggregate, the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) economies have been growing at some 4-5 percent a year since 2003 with almost all experiencing a substantial increase in FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) as well...
Looked at in historical perspective, two other developments are of the greatest importance. The first is that for the oil exporters, and, to some extent, for their non oil-rich neighbours, the 1990s were a time of little or no growth due to low oil prices, the Asian economic crisis of 1997 and, in the case of Kuwait and Saudia Arabia in particular, the huge drain imposed on their financial resources by the need to pay for a large part of the first Gulf War. The Saudis experience no growth at all at this time with falling per-capita incomes, while the best performing economies, those of Israel, Turkey and Egypt, could only manage some 1 to 1.5 percent a year.
The second follows from the first. It seems likely that if it had not been for this period of intense economic difficulties most Middle Eastern regimes would have not embarked on all the measures now in place to balance their budgets, to improve regulatory mechanisms and to encourage foreign investment. This was as true of the Gulf states - witness Kuwait's foreign investment law of 1999 and that of Saudia Arabia in 2000 - as it was of, say, Egypt, whose 2004 package of economic reforms is widely credited with preparing the way for that country's present boom. The decision by so many countries to join large international trade organizations like the European Union's Mediterranean project or the World Trade Organisation were also significant.
The economic stagnation of the 1990s, followed by the international response to the World Trade Center attack of September 2001, also played a considerable role in directing how the Middle East's new wealth should be spent. For one thing, there was now an opportunity to make up for the world-wide neglect of investment in oil exploration and development consequent on the reduced oil revenues of those days. Hence Saudi Arabia's recently-announced plan to expand its facilities so as to be able to produce some 12.5 million barrels/day by 2009. For another, the fact that so much Gulf money was withdrawn from the United States after 9/11 and, to some extent, Europe, out of fears that accounts might be frozen, has encouraged the emergence of a new investment climate in which Arab fund-managers are not only much more confident in their abilities to manage their funds without western help but are also demonstrating a much greater willingness to seek out Middle Eastern rather than European and American outlets for their money.
Billions of problems remain of course, but still - it's good to keep in mind that for every major ongoing (US and MENA) government-perpetrated catastrophe in the region, there are hundreds of smaller, private sector successes that, with enough compound interest, could be accumulating into something much more significant in the long term -