China’s Debt Trap in Pakistan? A Case Study of the CPEC Project

2021 ◽  
pp. 026272802110406
Author(s):  
Rizwan Shaikh ◽  
Chien-Kai Chen

Existing literature on China–Pakistan trade relations mainly deals with potential opportunities for Chinese investment, while no study has so far specifically analysed Chinese investment in light of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project by taking into account how Pakistan’s domestic factors shape foreign trade relations. This article argues that the weak economic indicators of Pakistan reveal a possibility of defaulting on debt repayments, as Chinese loans have relatively high-interest rates. Through a two-level analytical framework, this article demonstrates that, despite concerns about Chinese debt traps at the international level, the CPEC project is still largely intact due to strong domestic support of the Pakistani establishment. Further, the geostrategic importance of Pakistan for China is higher than merely trade relations. It is thus also not in the interest of China to see its investments in Pakistan become a debt trap, though the institutional arrangements in Pakistan are prone to mounting debts.

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-17
Author(s):  
Yakov Sukhodolov

China is traditionally a leading foreign trade partner of Russia. And its share in the total volume of foreign trade has a positive dynamics. At the same time, the dynamics of the Russo-Chinese investment cooperation sufficiently lags behind the dynamics of development of the Russo-Chinese foreign trade relations. At present, China considerably lags behind France, Germany, Great Britain and Italy in regard to direct investments in Russia’ economy. The major part of direct investments from China falls upon the mining and petrochemical industries, the wood and paper complex, the agriculture, and the real estate sphere. At the same time, the Chinese investors also implement several investment projects in the machine-building sphere. The Russo-Chinese cooperation has good prospects, especially in the sphere of implementing joint transport-logistic and infrastructural projects, as well as the projects in processing industry.


Author(s):  
Nguyen Thu Ha ◽  
Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen

The retail market in Vietnam continues to grow with the entry of foreign retail brands and the strong rise of domestic businesses in expanding distribution networks and conquering consumer confidence. The appearance of more retail brands has created a fiercely competitive market. Based on the outcomes of previous research results on brand choice intention combined with a customer survey, the paper proposes an analytical framework and scales to examine the relationship of five elements including store image, price perception, risk perception, brand attitudes, brand awareness and retail brand choice intention with a case study of the Hanoi-based Circle K convenience store chain. These five elements are the precondition for retail businesses to develop their brands so as to attract customers.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Eugen Musta ◽  
Elvin Meka

The last global crisis had it influence on Albanian economy as well. As the economy is still struggling to recover from the slowdown, a special attention is dedicated to lending which will in turn help investments pick up. Banks in Albania are currently flooding in excess deposits, but meanwhile the lending has hit its lowest score. What is refraining banks from lending? Is it really them to blame or maybe the demand is also part of the problem? Are businesses suffering from lack of funds to finance their activity or are they hesitating to invest and are waiting for better times to come along? The purpose of this study is to look into these questions and find the reasons behind them. This paper is focused on the demand side, analyzing some of the most important indicators influencing the demand for credit like enterprises growth, profits, planned investments, working capital needs, liquidity, etc. In order to get better understanding on the behavior of these variables the enterprises are divided in four groups by size criteria. The analysis is covering data for five-year timeframe, which is corresponding with the start of the economic slowdown. To help getting a prospect of the present and the future perceptions of the economic situation, a survey was conducted on a small sample of enterprises. This study comes to the conclusion that the demand for credit is growing, but what’s keeping businesses from applying for it, is mainly because of high interest rates and cost of credit, the study ends with some recommendations toward the solution.


2021 ◽  
pp. 102452942110154
Author(s):  
Mattia Tassinari

An industrial strategy emerges from possibilities for structural change, that depend on material constraints and opportunities afforded by economic structure, the distribution of power in society and the institutional arrangements organized at the political level. Building on a structural political economy perspective, this article develops a structure–power–institutions conceptual framework to describe how economic structure, the distribution of power, and institutions interact through a ‘circular process,’ which is useful for analysing the historical transformation of industrial strategy. In this framework, an industrial strategy refers to the institutional arrangements through which the government manages emerging conflicts or agreements between different powers and influences structural change. As an illustrative case study, the structure–power–institutions framework is applied to analyse the historical transformation of US industrial strategy from the era of Alexander Hamilton to that of Donald Trump.


2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franklin Obeng-Odoom

This Viewpoint article draws on the doctrine of eminent domain (or compulsory purchase) as an analytical framework to analyse the regional and local impacts of a new source of oil. Sekondi-Takoradi, an oil city located in Ghana, West Africa, is used as a case study to explore the differentiated experiences of local people. The article shows that, although there are complex distributional issues that require different levels of compensation and betterment to be assessed and paid for, it is unlikely that they will, in fact, even be considered.


Humanomics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Issa Salim Moh’d ◽  
Mustafa Omar Mohammed ◽  
Buerhan Saiti

Purpose This paper aims to identify the appropriate model to address the financial challenges in agricultural sector in Zanzibar. Since the middle of 1960, clove production has continually and significantly decreased because of some problems and challenges that include financial ones. The financial intermediaries such as banks, cooperatives and micro-enterprises provide micro-financing to the farmers with high interest rates along with collateral requirements. The numerous programmes, measures and policies adopted by the relevant parties to find out the solutions to the dwindling clove production have failed. Design/methodology/approach The authors will review and examine several existing financial models, identify the issues and challenges of the current financial models and propose an appropriate Islamic financing model. Findings The numerous programmes, measures and policies adopted by the relevant parties to find out the solutions to the dwindling clove production have failed. This study, therefore, proposed a Waqf-Muzara’ah-supply chain model to address the financial challenge. Partnership arrangement is also suggested in the model to mitigate the issues of high interest rates and collateral that constrains the financial ability of the farmers and their agricultural output. Originality/value The contribution of the agricultural sector to the economic development of Zanzibar Islands is considerable. As one of the important agricultural sectors, the clove industry was the economic backbone of the government of Zanzibar. This study is believed to be a pioneering work; hence, it is the first study that investigates empirically the challenges facing the clove industry in Zanzibar.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3323
Author(s):  
Nishtman Karimi ◽  
Hossein Azadi ◽  
Kobe Boussauw

Continuously changing conditions of sociotechnical systems are the basis of structural changes in communities. Relationships between transition contexts and regime transformation processes and their driving factors in sociotechnical regimes are poorly understood. Moreover, not all changes in multilevel governance regimes are geared towards sustainability, as demonstrated by the case of the water management regime in Sanandaj county in the west of Iran between 1962 and 2018. The current study shows how the management regime of water resources in the case study has changed over time and identifies the institutional arrangements through a retrospective analysis. The analysis is based on three stages of data collection which included a discussion group, a Delphi survey, and a focus group survey among various types of stakeholders. The “Hybrid Transitions” framework is introduced in order to denote processes of regime change that take place in a range of different transition contexts. The findings do not identify a single transition pathway but show that a number of parallel transition pathways have occurred in the context of groundwater and surface water management and their respective institutional arrangements. The study provides a better understanding of the complexity of transition pathways that were devised at the management regime level.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Radka MacGregor Pelikanova ◽  
Eva Daniela Cvik ◽  
Robert Kenyon MacGregor

Purpose Emerging economies have to address positive challenges such as sustainability, digitalization, entrepreneurial readiness and planning and behavioral strategies and negative challenges, such as corruption and bureaucracy. The COVID-19 pandemic hit all economies and arguably made hotel businesses that are from less typical emerging economies, such as the Czech Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to deal with similar challenges to that of their counterparts from typical emerging economies. How do Czech hotel SMEs address the COVID-19 challenges and what sustainability message can be extracted from that with the relevance for not only businesses from emerging economies? The purpose of this paper is to explore how Czech hotel SMEs address the COVID-19 challenges and what sustainability. Design/methodology/approach A consolidated parsing of the literature, legislative and analytical framework, along with an investigative case study of 11 Czech hotel SMEs was performed, based on the questionnaire survey and semi-structured in-depth direct interviews. The holistic thematic analysis processed this fresh data and allowed Socratic questioning and glossing while addressing both research questions. Findings The performed case study reveals that typical challenges faced by entrepreneurs in emerging economies became, via COVID-19, universal challenges, these challenges are a valuable impulse for digitalization and changes of entrepreneurial strategies, but not so much for sustainability, and the omnipresent negative impact of corruption and bureaucracy. Originality/value This paper presents a pioneering study regarding the addressing COVID-19 and sustainability concerns by SMEs in a less typical emerging economy and offering a universal, partially comparative and sadly not so sustainable, message which is not just limited to emerging economies.


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