Some will argue that success in business is about finding the fastest way to your objectives. I would agree if in so doing, we do not neglect our integrity and ethics. However, many of us tend to forgo the very principles we are brought up with, in favor of shortcuts to success. Expediency rules.

A few examples come to mind. One is our tendency to now ‘buy’ talents rather than groom them internally.

Some would say that’s After all, aren’t clubs in Premier League known to pay smart management.millions for top players? Again, I would agree, if job hopping among senior executives is not as prevalent as it is today and by so doing we are not starting a talent-pinching war among ourselves. Some of us are blind to the fact that not all sweet-talking MBAs are any good or have any loyalty to you or your business. And certainly, few of these people stay long enough to do good for your business.

The sad truth is, few businessmen would have any qualms about pinching their competitors staff, if that means they would learn their competitors secrets and steal their clients. Again, that’s good business to some.

Another phenomenon that has hit many SMEs is the eagerness to raise fund rapidly to expand their business and hopefully make it big in a short time. Words like ‘mezzanine financing’ , ‘investors’ prospectus’ , `IPO’ and ‘exit strategy’ are being brandished even by mom-and-pop operations. Some of these companies seems to have lost all interest in taking care of the basics of business:products and services, building relationship with supplier, staff and clients, and earning money the traditional way. Perhaps the lessons of Lehmann Brothers have not sinked in for many of us. Many of us are developing good quality still caught up with the dotcom tagline: if you have an idea, money will start pouring in.

I don’t discourage businesses raising fund from whatever sources for whatever reasons. But it is good business sense to realize that

businesses cannot be built on air. Many of the dotcom wonders that you read about have also gone through hard work and setbacks like you and I. And business news are so full of unchecked facts nowadays, you should not allow yourself to be swayed by news of a competitor hitting it big through some investment from some mysterious founders. The truth is, money don’t grow on trees. And businesses don’t just grow on their own. If you thought laboring for your business is futile; well, it’s at least a notch better than day dreaming.

This brings us to another shortcut many are resorting to. I call it the `sugardaddy phenomenon’ (or sugarparent’ , to be gender sensitive). The government call it SME assistance program. Again, I would say go for it as it means free money in many cases. But if you are going to be building a business on the back of government handouts and nothing else, you will be steering an empty ship to nowhere. Real businesses are built on solid ideas and real products and services. There’s really no shortcut to success.

The lowest form of ’shortcut’ to success must be those among us who bribe our way through. Some of us would be tempted to offer inducement to get that one lucrative project. After all, some grease between palms make some people easier on the cheque, and shorter on the memory. But consider the long term costs of such business expediency. Many of the truly successful people I know are men of true integrity. Hard to believe, but it is true. Integrity and ethics do make good business sense.

RICH KIDS, POOR KIDS
I have nothing against direct selling. But before you are convinced by an eager sponsor hoping to pin you somewhere among his downlines, make sure you understand what you are getting yourself into. Like any business, it’s 99% effort and 1% luck. 99.9% of everyone who joins a direct selling business fails. And that’s a higher failure rate than conventional business. So YES, direct sales can be a route to success and financial independence, but NO it is not shortcut to success either.

Some of us are born with a silver spoon. Nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, capitalize on it. But again, that is no short cut to success. Your daddy and mommy can only help so much, the rest is still up to you. One of the immutable laws of success in business is this: value creation. If you are not creating value with what you do, if you are a consumer of idea and products rather than creator of value, then you will never meet success.

I am going to tell you the real shortcut to success. It is the one fact that the world’s three richest men: Warren Buffett, William Gates and Carlos Helu Slim, agree upon. It is called hard work.

SMB worldwide spend on remote managed services grew about 9.2 percent in 2009 to reach about US$3.6 Billion and SMBs from Asia Pacific excluding Japan is expected to grow by 12.2 percent, leading as US is only expected to grow 8.5 percent, followed by EMEA at 6.5%.

Outsourced services like cloud computing is also expected to see demand from SMEs as such services do require in-house team to manage and deploy the solution. This is especially true with SMEs interested to use IT to improve business efficiencies and profitability but not own it as they are constantly constrained by budget. 5o% of CIOs in Asia Pacific highlighted that cost cutting was a primary driver to adopt cloud computing for the organization.

On that note around SaaS or Managed Services there will always be two camps of thought, those that will want to maintain tight control of their data storage, and those businesses that will embrace Cloud opportunities to reduce internal overheads. In the near future few businesses will rely completely on SaaS applications and the same is true today in the case of storage with some elements remaining local, whilst some is outsourced.

Within the data center, smarter hardware and software will reduce power consumption and space requirements and we will see de-duplication move from the secondary systems (backup & archive) to front end storage. This will transi­tion de-duplication capabilities into the file server space and may eventually reach low end applications, rendering the need for additional disk space moot but asking many more questions about de-dupe management between vendors.

With applications and servers being virtualized, we are not only witnessing the promised increase in utilization & flexibility but also a huge leap in complexity terms of managing servers & storage. You can no longer point to a single server and indentify its primary role. As storage becomes more distributed, the ‘find it, and fix it’ mentality has rapidly vanished. Add the demands of compliance and e-discovery, and we are starting to see the application of data management software, as supplied by CommVault, being deployed by those building the Cloud to be offered as part of an overall service. So whilst not used directly by a Cloud user, storage management can be used to help Cloud providers deliver on the demands for fully audited, granular search. Search technology itself will morph with ever smarter systems to find that nugget you really want instead of the 2 million you don’t; search will be massive in the coming years.

Hardware vendors will continue to claim they are software companies, but still try and ensure their platform is as widely adopted as possible, and software vendors will continue to talk of openness and independence. The winners in this market will therefore be those vendors who deal in the data center space but can also fit in with the growing Cloud service oriented market. SMB and midsize markets will continue for a good while yet, but there’s also huge new opportunity to leverage the economies of scale provided by the SaaS/MSP market; mid-sized and smaller organizations will obtain tools and capabilities at a fraction of the cost than acquiring them outright. This all happened years ago in another sector; who has a generator at home these days?

The High Commission will assist in introducing and recommending Malaysian companies to Brunei companies. As we have quite a number of Malaysians in Brunei in various industries, we would like SMEs from Malaysia to partner as well with them to offer their products and services. These Malaysian companies which are based here in Brunei can be their appointed distributors and agents, for example.

Don’t look at Brunei as a small country with a small population. Our SMEs must change their mindset as Bruneians have the purchasing power as Brunei is enjoying a favourable exchange rate. Brunei government is currently aggressively bringing more foreign investors.

And Malaysia as the closet neighbor, we hold bigger chance and advantage. Besides being closed geographically, we share the same language, culture, tradition and even blood relations.

During the visit of Malaysia Prime Minister Najib to Brunei last August, leaders from both countries have agreed to have a better more economic collaboration. Brunei has also agreed to buy energy from Sarawak.Currently Brunei SMEs are also working closely with their partners from Sabah & Sarawak.

There are many ways to compensate a sales force. But choosing the right plan for your business is a key factor in determining success. But what is the reason? Because sales activities are the life blood of most businesses.

If the sales compensation plan fails to sufficiently motivate and reward your sales people, the overall success of your organization is compromised. And if the plan overcompensates the sales force, are unnecessarily eroded profits

You should be concerned, at a minimum, about each of the following issues when creating a sales compensation plan:

MOTIVATION – the plan must motivate your sales force to high levels of performance.

EQUITY – the plan must be fair and create relatively equal opportunities for earning significant incomes.

PROFIT - your business cannot give away too much and must avoid falling prey to the mistaken notion those sales people are entitled to large portions of the revenue or gross profit they generate.

EASE OF ADMINISTRATION – avoid creating an overly complicated plan that will be difficult to administer.

EASY TO UNDERSTAND - sales people and all other employees have to be able to understand how the plan works.

REWARD – the plan must reward sales personnel in a manner that is consistent with their production. Unintended windfalls – protection against paying for unearned sales (not associated with effort of sales person) must be built into the plan.

RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION -the compensation plan has to be attractive enough to recruit and retain top notch talent.

LONGEVITY - a good sales compensation plan will weather large increases in sales volume and be able to remain in place for long periods of time.

One of the challenges facing businesses hiring sales people is the fact that most sales compensation plans are poorly developed and either over or under compensate sales reps. This means that these sales people have certain biases and possibly some resentment about compensation.

And many sales people have had bad experiences with previous or current employers altering their sales compensation plans, territories or customer base when the employer believes they start making too much money. Having a well thought out and well developed plan that address each of the issues above is critical to being able to attract and retain excellent sales personnel.

At this juncture it is important to dispel the notion that people are not motivated by money. When college business students are taught Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs, they are often told that money is not important to people. While this is without question true for many people, it is rarely the case with good sales people.

In fact, experience tells us clearly that it is not true for many employees, sales people or otherwise.

One thing you will want to avoid as much as possible is getting greedy with your employees. Remember that a good sales compensation plan will amply reward strong performers and their overall compensation could very well end up being quite substantial.

Avoid the jealous or greedy boss or owner syndrome characterized by a feeling that one or more employees is making too much money and needs a reduction in pay. This is almost always a very negative situation for you and your sales force and will usually result in high turnover and low morale.

There is a fair amount of psychology involved with motivating your employees. People are people and have certain needs and wants. And every persons is just a little bit different from the next one. Crafting a sales compensation plan for people who tend to be high energy and high maintenance is sometimes not easy to do.

According to the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report XIV, a 192 percent increase in spam was detected across the Internet, from 119.6 billion messages in 2007 to 349.6 billion in 2008. The nature of spam continues to evolve, and it is becoming harder to stop.

Today, businesses are faced with more critical issues relating to spam, namely, the strain it puts on bandwidth and storage requirements for messaging.

Over the years spammers have been working feverishly to devise new ways to evade spam filters. The result: email servers are now being flooded with image-based spam which looks like text-based spam messages but are comprised of one or more images in order to defeat traditional spam filtering technology. On average, an image-based spam message is five to ten times larger than a text-based spam. This means that more than ever spam clogs bandwidth, soaks up disk space, and slows servers which often forces businesses to increase their storage capacity requirements. Smaller businesses working with minimal bandwidth are especially feeling the increasing strain that this new spam is putting on their network.

On the other hand, phishing is becoming sophisticated email users. New phishing threats are integrating spam and phishing techniques to get the message into the recipients’ mailboxes and, more importantly for spammers, to get the recipients to click on the URL contained in the message. enough to fool many seasoned

Just as spam is a vector for malware such as viruses and spyware, so tool is Instant Messaging (IM). IM is a public service which can be downloaded by anyone, in many cases for free, and is usually unregulated by internal IT teams. It is not easy for businesses to control and secure IM – and IM faces all the same email threats listed above – except they spread faster. Just like the “instant” nature of its messages, an IM compromise will spread in real time. For example, if someone accidentally downloads something, it can spread to their entire buddy list within seconds.

The combination of these issues creates the need for businesses to have single point protection for all business messaging at the gateway, where spam can be stopped before it impacts email servers and networks downstream. There are a host of solutions in the market to help stop these ongoing messaging problems, in addition to preventing viruses and spyware from propagating. Small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) should ensure that they have centralized control and protection for inbound and outbound IM and email at the gateway in an all-in-one appliance that sits at the edge of the business network.

Mail security solutions for SMBs should ideally be able to identify spam and phishing in an integrated fashion by pushing rules to gateway devices for filtering out specific spam attributes and URL lists that are known phishing sites. The solution must allow for a host of policies and content filtering rules that can be set at the discretion of the business to monitor not only inbound content, but also outbound content. For instance, a rule can be set to ban any documents that say “confidential” on them from being sent outside of the business. Specific tools can also be added to help mitigate risks associated with data leakage and regulatory compliance.

The continued growth and evolution of messaging applications presents attackers with a wider range of targets and various means to launch malicious activity. Today, a security solution that merely provides basic network protection is no longer adequate for businesses to effectively protect themselves from advanced messaging threats. SMBs should look out for a new generation of messaging security solutions that provide multiple layers of protection.

An effective solution does more than just accurately identify and address risks, but also deliver consistent protection across platforms to save SMBs the hassle of keeping up with the constantly changing threat landscape.

In next month’s article, which will be the last article in this SMB data protection series by Symantec, we will look into backup challenges for SMBs and practical ways to deal with this issue.

Group Energy

their business process is already efficient, although it is not true. Many managers think that they have been running the business the way it is for many years, and they were seeing no reason for changes. They believe this because their business has survived implementation of any improvement methodology, and will endanger organization in the future as they nee for many ages until now. This kind of idea will halts to be more competitive.

Statistically, major resistance in implementing an improvement program is dealt with reluctant from employee rather than technical aspects. Hence the top management support and commitment is the key to successful implementation of any improvement program.

Lean strategy has been originally derived from Toyota Production System. This strategy has promoted many organizations to achieve most efficient process by eliminating all non value added activities. It applies in small scale organization up to giant industry. In lean principles, organization are pushed to strive to eliminating eight deadly waste namely transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, over process, defect/ rework, and non-utilize employee.

All of this waste will only give burden to your process but not adding value to your product or service. Your end customer is not willing to pay for all of these, instead will add organization operational costs. As operational cost increase, it will impact to organization profitability. If the profitability decreases, the product or service offered will not be competitive.

Lean is most adopted strategy originated from automotive and then later implemented in various industries such as manufacturing, transactional, transportation, sales, and many more. Key lean principles are:

1. Define value from perspective of end customer
2. Identify value streams
3. Flow
4. Pull
5. Strive to perfection

Value is determined by end customer. It is what customer willing to pay for. We should evaluate all process and identify whether the process is value added. There are many processes which is considered as non value add activities, they take time, space, and resources but giving no value add to the product or service.

Examples of this activity are rework, scrap product, setup time, document waiting, searching for tooling or document, machine downtime, material transportation, approval bureaucracy, and others. Typically there are many activities will fall to this non value add categories, they will make process not efficient and add more cost to product or service.

The method to implement lean strategies begins with top management commitment. Plan and preparation is required to create team to work on continuous improvement at selected area. Next, after the value is well defined, all wasteful steps are need to be eliminated or reduced. The idea of flow is to make steps from raw material to finished good can flow continuously without material waiting (work in progress between processes) by implementing one piece flow or batch size reduction.

This will reduce overall lead time dramatically. Pull is philosophy is to draw material from end process based on customer consumption instead of traditional push systems which push or introduce material from first process step to subsequent process and have risk of being overproduction and material waiting. And it will surely prolong the manufacturing lead time or service lead time. Strive for perfection is continuous improvement instil in every employee heart to make process even simpler, preventing mistake, and make process more efficient.

The fundamental of lean principles is making organized workplace by implementing 5S. The purpose is to make workplace area more efficient by eliminating searching, unnecessary transportation, error, defects, and other waste. Visual control at this level will help everyone can instantly spot if there is abnormality happens in the process. Such that the corrective action can be instantly taken.

Wheel Improvement Plan

Visual management is implemented through glass wall whereas all key performance indicator and improvement project is displayed in production boards to make target become clear to everyone up to shop floor level.

Others lean tools such as single minute exchange die, total productive maintenance, replenish pull system, mistake proofing, level loading, batch size reduction, are designed in such a way will help process to be as efficient as possible and make process faster, create better quality product, and produced at lower cost.

Lean can achieve tremendous success if all employees support this program and realize the benefit. Managers also required motivating and guiding the team to accomplish improvement. Program can begins with Kaizen Blitz (Quick Improvement) where team are selected and isolated from their regular job to be trained and executed improvement directly on production line during 5 days under guidance from Lean Champion.

While Kaizen Event is scoped by top manager assigned to Kaizen team to identify waste in that particular area and make all necessary improvement.

All in all, lean principles can be applied to any organizations and create abundant cost reduction and make business process more efficient. Ultimate purpose of lean is to build improvement culture in every employee so that the company can gain competitive advantage. This will help organization to be more profitable and use it for business growth.

There are various industries that SMEs and companies can tap into. For example, the Brunei youth development. The government have set-up a dedicated Youth Development Grant. This grant is meant for any programs that assist in the country youth development and if our SMEs and companies are in youth development products or services, they can be involved in this youth development program. government are also looking into

Brunei is currently looking into improving their food security. This is also one of the area of opportunity that our SMEs can grab and venture into. The Brunei government is encouraging their SMEs into this sector. We can offer our expertise and technology to co­operate in their food security sector.

Health industry is also another area where we can offer our product & services. We can provide our medical facilities which are known for its international equipment and services. Our Malaysian government are emphasizing health tourism, especially in Penang and Malacca – to offer this to Bruneians. Companies from Brunei can co-operate and partner with Malaysian health service providers to establish such health services or center here in Brunei.

Currently Brunei is Malaysia’s fourth biggest tourism market. It is certainly a very important market to Malaysia.

Malaysia is actively promoting its tourism industry. Brunei also is promoting their tourism industry. One of their plans to boost their tourism industry is by partnering with Malaysia for joint tourism package which includes Malaysia & Brunei tourism destinations.

Brunei is also keen to form joint ventures with foreign partners in the argo based industries.

Sultan of Brunei

driven economy, instead of private sector economy. Currently the Brunei Government is promoting to diversify the country’s economy, an effort to not depend solely on the oil & gas industry.

I believe this is a good opportunities for our SMEs and companies to penetrate the Brunei market. The Brunei government has their own They also have a Vision 2035 blueprint, and between the year of 2007 – 2012, the National Development Plan. Brunei government have set their main focus as the development of SMEs.

Brunei Country Map

These include entrepreneurs’ development, developing more ICT centre and hubs, and more business assistance ft the country’s SMEs. The country has started development for SMEs by providing training programmes, assistance in banking and SME financing schemes.

The Brunei government have set their objective in placing the country to be among top 10 industrial countries in the world by 2035. The country manufacturing industries is not much developed yet. However the country has started small manufacturing in food & beverage. This is of course in partnership with foreign companies, mainly from Malaysia, Thailand and Australia.

Brunei Industrial Development Authority

Nearly 30,000 Malaysian works in Brunei. Most of them are working here in various industries in Brunei. Most of the Malaysians are working in the hospitality, manufacturing, and even in the local education centers.

Even have 2 Malaysian associations here, Malaysian Citizen Association Brunei and Persatuan Kebajikan Penduduk Semelayu Malaysia. There are also quite a number of Malaysian companies here in Brunei. For example, 2 of Brunei’s leading advertising and events companies are Malaysian owned.

The country is encouraging business partnership between local SMEs with foreign investors to help develop various industries. Brunei government, through Brunei Economic Development Board (BEDB) have set up an ICT centre, known as the I-Centre. Its main objective is to develop the country’s ICT industry by providing training, guidance and assistance. It is the incubator in technology which also includes mentorship programme between the country’s ICT SMEs with estab­lished ICT companies. In these programs, I-Centre has appointed a Malaysian com­pany, Skali Sdn Bhd as a mentor.

Customer retention is a cost effective and very profitable strategy, but in order to ensure the longevity of a business, it is by all means a must in every business plan. Just remember, 80% of sales come from an estimated 20% of your entire customer and clientele base.

In the old world, many advertising and marketing efforts were created based on the pretense that ‘more of new, is better’. Most of these campaigns were built solely to attract and obtain customers from competitors or customers who have not yet been exposed to the products or services.

In the new IT based economy, customers are more learned, more sceptically, and much pickier. This makes for a much tougher crowd to please, thus making the margin of ‘new’ customers turning up in front of your shop less.

Business owners need to rethink advertising, marketing, as well as sales strategies to ensure that they come up with something new, refreshing and catchy; to fish out customers who already have strong opinions and many options before them.

Over your years conducting business, you would have at least once heard that it is five times more cost effective to retain current customers as compared to that of acquiring new ones. Grocery stores emphasize on god customer relations, restaurants provide much better services (with smiles and chatter), and even regular retail outlets offer loyalty cards. What is this telling you?

The world has changed. Once the customer was a nameless entity, purchasing solely to fatten bank accounts and go through products without recognition. An example of why businesses fail is because they don’t even know why they failed in the first place. When your nameless customers disappear, you will be unable to ask what caused them to jump the ship. The crucial part knows how they FEEL about YOU.

Customers of now are treated as friends, as people with names and different personalities. This way, you reach them on a personal level, to remember them, understand them, and know why they buy what they buy from you.

We need not fraught about the revelation that we must know each and every one of our customers. There are plenty of solutions out there in the form of sophisticated technology and database equipment (which now has ballooned into a thriving itself) which has made it possible for industry businesses to make the attempt at improving their customer relations.

These are transcribed by database marketing programs which then move businesses up the recognition level in their customers minds, on the way to retain them permanently (well almost). Establishing a detailed client database allows businesses to keep track of each individual customer’s personal information and preferences.

With this, businesses would be able to provide better service and what those individuals perceive as ‘value’, improve repeat sales, and more customer referrals. Remember that to achieve the objectives of a customer retention program, the entire campaign should be designed around the customer.

The exercise will only be effective if the customer recognizes and associates some value with being part of your database. If they do not perceive any form of in the program; all of your ‘value’ communication messages, coupons, loyalty schemes, special offers, and personalized newsletters will be automatically junked.

If possible, put up a customer hotline for your business, and also allow the customers to give feedback anonymously (not everyone likes to disclose their personal information).

When they are able to remain anonymous, in leads to more honest feedback.

B) Thank You For Your Feedback

If a customer is giving feedback, even if it is in the form of a rude complaint, you must realize that you are benefiting from his/her frustrations. Do give some form of compensation as a nice thank you note no matter what the feedback may be so that your customers feel appreciated for their time taken.

In the end this will also show your customers that whatever their thoughts and comments mean something important to you.

C) Analyze Their Feedback

Is this feedback based on an isolated incident? Have you received similar feedback before from other customers? Is this customer being reasonable in their requests and/or suggestions? Will acting on this feedback benefit the organization as well as other customers, or just this one customer?

You certainly do not have to act on all suggestions, but you certainly should consider all of them with care.

Customer feedback should be used as just one of the sources of information in decision making, but never the primary source. There are times when you know your product better than anyone and your vision and determination will make it work despite an anonymous.

Companies that fail to live up to that expectation find customers leaving without comment – the majority of dissatisfied customers will not complain, in fact they will simply just change suppliers. It’s way easier and much more convenient.

Those businesses that introduce an exceptional level of customer service are differentiating themselves from the competition in an increasingly saturated market place. Which is a wonder why till this day; many businesses are still failing to address the issues of good customer service.

When one mentions the phrase ‘The Customer Is King’, means that in any product’s design, production, distribution and marketing should have one integral part (albeit the most major one)that influences all decision-making processes from start to finish, is the customer. All these products, services, communication efforts and activities should be skewed towards the customer first, not the company.

Customers are no longer mindless drones which buy just because you offer them goods. We must listen to them, and more importantly, act on the feedbacks that they give. This is one of the best ways to trans­form a struggling business into a successful one because you know what your custom­ers want and expect. Serve them like you serve the king, and they will reciprocate your efforts with loyalty and referrals.

Remember that the way you think your customers feel about your product is not always the same as what your customers really think or feel about your product or brand. Customers have evolved to have the largest say in whether they should or should not give you any business at all. In fact, there are just too many choices around that they can just turn their heads to the next store in a second.

When your customers say that your products need improvement, they mean it. When they say your services should have more ‘happy looking customer relations‘, they really mean it too. Nobody wants to be treated like a nobody.

In the last 10 years, people have evolved into a ‘me generation’ where they have become the center of the universe. It may be a selfish thought, but if you think of it, businesses once thought of themselves the same too back 30 years ago. “I have the goods; the customers will come, because I have the goods”. This no longer works.

Randy Tinseth

“China is the world’s most dynamic market for commercial airplanes. The strong domestic air travel growth in the country during the first half of this year gives us confidence that the world aviation industry is beginning to recover,” said Tinseth, after issuing the annual long-term China market outlook in Beijing.

Latest figures showed that China’s three largest airline groups all experienced significant year-on­-year growth in passenger traffic in August.

China Main Issue Is Regulation Curb Marine Pollution

China’s State Council, or the Cabinet, issued a new regulation Wednesday targeting prevention and remedies for marine pollution caused by ships.

The regulation, which includes nine sections and 78 rules, said transportation departments under the Cabinet should compile emergency plans to deal with pollution caused by ships or related activities.

China’s transport departments and governments above city level have also been asked to establish emergency mechanisms and plans to prevent and deal with marine pollution. The regulation will take effect on March 1, 2010.

Official statistics say 733 ship pollution accidents occurred between 1998 to 2008 in sea areas in China’s jurisdiction, which led to huge economic and environmental losses. The regulations will apply to every type of shipping, except military.

The agreement was signed in February this year. According to the agreement, based on the commitments to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Pakistan will open 102 sub-departments in 11 service departments and China will open 28 sub-departments in six service departments.

China – Shang Hai Sustainable Economic Gain With Restructuring

Shanghai is prioritizing its economic structure to achieve sustainable gains in the city’s economic growth. Vice Mayor Tu Guangshaon said that the city is prepared to sacrifice a bit of economic growth if necessary.

Shanghai’s economy grew in the second quarter, pushing the growth rate in first half of 2009 to 5.6% after a sluggish gain of 3.1% in the first quarter. However, Shanghai lagged behind some cities in terms of the first half economic growth.

The State Council in April issued a directive to build Shanghai into a global financial and shipping center by 2020. The municipal government has framed implementation policies to facilitate the task.

imports from China. Yao said China has held negotiations with the US over the case but the US still sticks to this decision, which is serious trade protectionism, with which China is strongly dissatisfied.

The Ministry said the US had violated the WTO rule by this decision, and also its relevant commitments made on the G-20 financial summit. The business situation of the US tire producers has shown no apparent changes after the entry of Chinese products. There exists no direct competition between China’s tire products and the US made ones as China’s tires mainly go for the US maintenance market.

Join Forces In Science Research In Between China And Costa Rica

Costa Rican National Institute of Biodiversity

Costa Rica and China signed a statement of understanding recently to promote joint scientific research and exchanges.

The agreement signed by the Costa Rican National Institute of Biodiversity (INBio) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) under last year’s Science and Cooperation Technology Agreement between the two countries.

Chinese Academy of Sciences

The new deal came after delegations of both countries paid high-level visits and held extended conversations. A high-level delegation from Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences and the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, both part of the CAS, visited Costa Rica in 2008. This was followed by a visit by Costa Rican experts to China at the beginning of 2009.

Jet chairman Naresh Goyal told a TV channel Tuesday night that the pilots have held the airline and the to ransom. He added that he will not hesitate to shut down operations if the employees do not comply with the company’s principles. Market watchers said the crisis came at a time when concerns about the prospects of the aviation industry were clouding investor sentiment. country

“The company is anyway neck deep in debt given the soaring ATF prices, staff expenses and other rising costs. Airline companies have no control on reduction of duties on ATF or on trimming their workforce. Given all these factors, even if Jet were to shut down as the chairman has threatened may be in the operations interest of the company. Probably, this could force the government to tow the line in favor of airline companies in terms of subsidies or lowering ATF prices,” said a senior analyst domestic brokerage firm. with a large

Pranab Mukherjee Hints At India GDP Hiccup

The economy is somewhat shaky on the growth path after a downturn year, according to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. He also added that a new challenge was looming over developing economies as India key member world’s elite G20 economies — that of pressures over the climate change issue. becomes a

Mukherjee said the second and third quarters of the current financial year are unlikely to see the economy expanding at the pace it did in April-June period, but he stuck to the government’s original growth forecast of more than 6% for the current fiscal year.

Early signs of a recovery in India’s economy amid a global downturn emerged as gross domestic product (GDP) for April to June 2009 quarter grew 6.1%, up from 5.8% in the previous quarter, but the specter of a drought in nearly half the country, threatened to pull down growth in the subsequent months.

“Especially on monetary policy, we will not exit unless we are sure that recovery is secured …but soon thereafter when we make the judgment that the recovery is secured, we have to unwind the accommodation monetary policy,” said RBI Governor, D. Subbarao.

However, the Governor added, the government and the RBI will have to take a call on exiting from stimuli given for perking up the slowing down economy sooner than most of the countries. He said RBI will look at number of factors like WPI inflation, CPI inflation, components within inflation, industrial growth and credit expansion while unwinding the soft monetary policies.

Higher Risk Cover For Exporters In India

On a move that will provide cushion to Indian exporters in uncertain global markets, and improve risk coverage, the government will provide a higher insurance cover to the sector. State-owned  Export Credit Guarantee Corporation (ECGC), which promotes exports by providing cover to export risks on credit, has promised to increase risk cover of exporters by 5%, according to a senior ECGC official.

The risk cover, given to banks by ECGC for its loans to exporters, will be increased by 10%. To provide this additional credit cover to exporters and banks, ECGC will utilize an amount of Rs 350 crore allocated to it by the Center under the corpus of the national exports insurance, which is being set up to support medium- and long-term business.

The amount was earmarked by the government to increase insurance coverage for exporters earlier this year as part of its incentive package to help the Indian industry survive the global slowdown. ECGC expects an initial cover to banks and exporters will not exceed Rs 60 crore in the current fiscal year.

India IT Industry Review

markets especially the US and Europe. The freeze on IT budgets by companies association Nasscom initially forecast that IT exports would grow by 22-24% in 2008-09, but as the recession deepened, this was revised down to 16%. For this fiscal, the association making a tentative return. around the world meant that new orders dried up. Industry has projected a mere 4-7% growth to $48-50 billion.

S Ramadorai

“That phase of drastic downturn is behind us,” says S Ramadorai, CEO of Tata Consultancy Services, and India’s IT Company. “There’s stability now. The deal pipeline is but the time it takes to close a deal remains long. And many encouraging,customers are yet to fully open up their IT budgets.” Ashok Reddy, MD of TeamLease Services says employee rationalization measures have tapered off. The badly hit banking biggest and finance vertical now accounts for a quarter of Team Lease’s open positions.

Left Wing Extremism Gravest Threat To National Security

Indian’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

Indian’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described left wing extremism as perhaps the “gravest internal threat” facing India and said there had not been much success in containing the level of violence despite efforts.

“I have consistently held that left wing extremism is, perhaps, the gravest internal security threat we face. We have not achieved as much success as we would have liked in containing it. It is a matter of concern that despite our efforts, the level of violence in the affected states continues to rise,” Manmohan Singh said.

Expressing concern over the volatile situation in the northeast, Manmohan Singh said, “The situation in the north-eastern parts of our country is far from comfortable. In two of the states, Manipur and Assam; current levels of violence give us cause for concern.”