competitiveness

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China needs more than just exports

China’s economic miracle was possible thanks to three decades of cheap manufacturing and exports. Thousands of workers left their villages to become the cheap labour force of China’s southern cities. Now this is a thing of the past.


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China and EU: agree to disagree

The European Commission accuses China of subsidising its production at home and selling at an uncompetitive low price in Europe. But these days, China is heavily investing in the Old Continent, and some euro zone governments like Germany favour a soft approach instead of fines.



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Growth concerns in Spain will sooner or later re-surface

MADRID | Nobody seems to pay much attention to bad news these days. The stock market shows a bullish bias, recovering from the lows it plunged into driven by fears of utter collapse. Yet, recession has intensified its slide, the second quarter showing a 0,4% GDP decrease. With no prospects of redressing the downturn till the middle of next year, at the best, future outlook doesn’t provide much room for optimism….


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Forget banks and the deficit, Spain must cut down imports

how to get a ex back By Kike Vázquez | www.cotizalia.com | The crisis in Spain is not the consequence of unemployment or of the State deficit. It isn’t even due to the banking sector. These are just symptoms of the real cause. What is the underlying problem, then? In my opinion, it is one single variable: competitiveness. The fact of joining the euro meant a higher effort than expected…


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Spain recovers 70% of lost competitiveness against the euro zone

Divorce Advice How To Get Over Your Ex During the 15 years of real state boom, prices and salaries in Spain rose drastically, causing a strong loss of national companies' competitiveness. In the last four years, the country has regained 13 of 16 points, which means a 70% of the total, largely because of lower unit labour costs, the financial newspaper Cinco Días said in its Thursday edition. The Bank of Spain competitiviness…


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Ferrovial consortium wins Ontario’s Highway 407 East contract

MADRID | Spain’s Ferrovial announced Wednesday that its subsidiary Cintra Infraestructuras, in a 50% consortium with SNC-Lavalin, was awarded the €78-million contract for the first phase of the Highway 407 East project in Ontario, Canada. The group was appointed by Infrastructure Ontario and the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. Phase one of the new highway will extend 22 kilometers east from Brock Road in Pickering, Ontario to Harmony Road in Oshawa, Ontario….


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Spain contracts but recovers faster than any other euro country

MADRID | After the national office for statistics in Spain confirmed everyone’s suspicions about the country returning to recession, with a -0.3% economic contraction versus expectations of -0.4% , a note from BBVA research team on Spain’s strengths could come handy as a reminder that the #spanic would be still avoidable and this Espan-hole could be safely closed. BBVA analysts explained in its monthly report aptly headlined ‘Leaving stereotypes behind‘ that…


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What the euro zone needs: productivity, competitiveness …and patience

By LaCaixa Research Team, in Barcelona | In the years prior to the recession that started in the last decade, in many countries the gradually increasing debt of the private sector allowed for much more intensive economic growth than would have been seen without it. The abrupt appearance of the crisis frustrated this expansion and revealed an excessive level of debt. This debt is now a heavy burden that can counteract…


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Direct investment in Spain increases for the second year in a row

By Carlos Díaz Guell, in Madrid | Global foreign direct investment flows in 2011 increased by 17% year on year, recovering pre-crisis levels. Spain also regained investment flows into equity last year, with a rise in total net investment (total minus divestiture) of 18.2% year on year that reached 1.8% of GDP. Some aspects of this foreign direct investment figure in Spain are worth commenting. For instance, the growth rate was positive…