Opinion

  The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is at loggerheads with European creditors regarding plans over ability of Greece to repay debts. While European Union (EU) insists it has already charted out plan for debt relief, the IMF says these plans are not strong enough, and will not bail out Athens from its current economic difficulties. Under the EU programme, Greece ...

  Catherine Putz SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Al-Qaeda is ostensibly the reason the United States got involved militarily in Afghanistan more than a decade ago. But as the war in Afghanistan progressed, al-Qaeda receded as a target and seemingly as an active player. When Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011 in neighboring Pakistan, the group seemed to be at ...

  Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was in China Thursday and Friday for a fly-by visit that lasted just over 36 hours. Nonetheless, it was an important trip – as Turnbull’s first visit to China since assuming office last fall, it was important to set the tone for the Australia-China relationship under his administration. And that tone was relentlessly upbeat, ...

Matthew Sedacca SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Lowering his voice nervously, Yang Kechao confessed that over half of his workers at Huaxinyuan Steel Company are on vacation. The employees did not leave the factory owner with stations half-filled to go bask in the warm weather of Hejin, Shanxi, a North China province where the plant is based. Nor did they head ...

  Laos is a country that is usually described in accordance with one of two narratives. The first portrays a Buddhist Shangri-La — the ‘real,’ ‘hidden,’ and ‘untouched’ Indochina dreamed of in Western backpacker fantasies — while the second depicts a highly impoverished country in desperate need of foreign aid and technical assistance. Both depictions have some merit. Laos is ...

  Among the world’s major economies, America’s is “the least ugly,” as Adam Posen, head of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, puts it. So it is. The American economy is plodding along at about a 2 percent annual growth rate, which is much slower than most past periods, but compared with most other economies, looks stellar. Peterson economist Paolo ...

  Sara Hsu SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Recently, the 2016 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, produced by Ambassador Michael Froman in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, stated, controversially, that China’s Great Firewall presents a trade barrier to American suppliers. The Cyberspace Administration of China has rebutted this claim by asserting that the firewall was in ...

  The International Monetary Fund released its world economic outlook this week, and the news isn’t good for Central Asia. According to the IMF, recovery will be put off until at least 2017, for reasons frequent readers will find familiar: the Russian recession and low oil prices. “The economic outlook for the Commonwealth of Independent States remains very weak, reflecting ...

Last week, Arrium, one of the two dominant steel manufacturers in Australia went into voluntary administration with debts of over $AU 3 billion ($US 2.3 billion). With the failing of the company having the potential to affect up to 8,000 jobs nationwide, there have been calls for the federal government to bail out Arrium. The opposition Labor Party wants to ...

  Jonathan Dove SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS China’s foreign policy is evolving, and Africa may be both its proving ground and litmus test. As Beijing is seeking to expand its global role, its national interests, citizens, and assets need to be protected abroad, and nowhere else is this need as acute as it is in Africa. Consequently, China seems to ...