Brexit and EU enlargement will be priorities during Croatia’s six-month presidency of the bloc, Foreign Minister Goran Grlic Radman said recently. Britain is due to leave the European Union on Jan. 31 but will remain in a transitional arrangement until the end of the year while negotiators try to thrash out future trade ties. European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen ...

Former chief economist of the World Bank, Justin Yifu Lin, has called on international financial institutions and donor countries to reevaluate debt sustainability to help developing countries, especially in Africa. According to Yan Wang, a senior fellow at the Institute of New Structural Economics, Peking University, “The traditional model of more-developed countries in the so-called global north funneling aid to ...

African nations are looking towards a prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth and sustainable development. African people want to eradicate poverty by increasing opportunities for youth employment, promoting modern agriculture, climate smart industrialization, leading socially responsible management of natural resources and by participating in the innovation drive promised by science, technology and research to address well documented strategic bottlenecks. This is ...

President of the African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina, has said that the biggest thing to happen to Africa is the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), saying the free trade area itself is worth over 3.3 trillion dollars. Adesina, who stated this when he addressed State House correspondents in Abuja recently, expressed hope that the effective implementation of AfCFTA would take ...

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is set to take over the chairmanship of the African Union for the year 2020, replacing Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi who chaired the organization through 2019. In his New Year’s address, the South African leader pledged to use the opportunity to rally Africa to actualize the Continental Free Trade Agreement, whose operational phase was launched in ...

The US-China trade war has driven many Taiwanese firms to relocate production of high-end product lines back home from China in 2019, but it has also taken tolls on exports of some industries and dented Taiwan’s economic growth while also dampening China-bound investments, according to industry sources. Besides triggering a wave of homeward investments among Taiwanese businesses operating in China, ...

EU-China relations stand at a new historical starting point. China senses an opportunity as the EU could be the next target of a United States effort to replace multilateral trade rules with managed trade. China may expect some wins in Europe in 2020 in the area of 5G infrastructure. Huawei has signed 20 commercial contracts with European operators. Before the ...

Global stock markets were mixed after Wall Street rose amid optimism that U.S.-Chinese trade relations are improving. Frankfurt, Paris and Hong Kong gained in early trading. London and Shanghai were unchanged and Tokyo declined. Investors welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump’s comment that an interim “Phase 1” trade deal was “getting done.” Trump said he and Chinese President Xi Jinping would hold a ...

TriLinc Global Impact Fund recently announced that it has approved an additional $17.6 million in term loan transactions, bringing total financing commitments as of November 30, 2019 to $408.8 million for business expansion and socioeconomic development through its holdings in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Emerging Europe. TGIF is an impact investing fund that provides growth-stage loans and ...

More than 70 representatives from Indonesian and Cambodian companies attended a business forum in Phnom Penh to explore business opportunities and seek new partnerships in the Kingdom. This was the second such forum hosted by the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia. The forum was attended by representatives from several companies from Jepara Regency, in the northeast of the Indonesian province of Central Java. ...