RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE COMPETENCY AND BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY

The article reviewed the relationship between language competency and business opportunity in five global regional trading blocs. By having the language competency may facilitate the business opportunity but language differences may create frictions between the business partners and/or the workers. Besides for the purpose of communication, language use in the business world may enhance trust and loyalty between business partners and from the customers. Different linguistic landscapes are formed and dominated by different language communities in the global business world. Five important languages used in the global business world which are English, Mandarin, Spanish, German and Portuguese, are reviewed according to their regional trading blocs. Malaysian authority specifically the Malaysian Education Ministry is suggested to design and adapt more practical and relevant education language plan to produce graduates with different language competencies for the future human resource market. The authority is also suggested to create a favourable institutional environment for variant language use in the country.

Foreign aid and economic growth: Do energy consumption, trade openness and CO2 emissions matter? A DSUR heterogeneous evidence from Africa’s trading blocs

The paramount vision of every country or sub-regions is to attain economic growth and sustainable economic growth. The paradigm drift of studies into foreign aid and sustainable economic growth has shown conflicting results that play on researchers to fill the gap of knowledge void. The plurality of studies looked at economic growth and foreign aid in single countries. However, one of the major determinants of sustainable growth such as CO2 emissions and trade goes beyond the boundaries of a country. Deductively, grouped countries or sub-regional studies are needed to ascertain the heterogeneous relationship and cross-sectional dependency among panels grouping. We fill these gaps with the recent empirical methodology to unveil the impact of foreign aid, CO2 emissions, trade openness, and energy consumption on economic growth. Thus a percentage rise in foreign aid corresponds to different significant weights in all panel groupings with exception of Southern African Development Community, which unveiled a non-significant estimate. Whereas trade openness in all panel grouping indicated a significant weight on economic growth. An increase in CO2 emissions has a significant material effect on economic growth in Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, Economic Community of West African States, and Community of Sahel-Saharan States. The impact of energy consumption on economic growth across the panel groupings was statistically significant with Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa having the highest weight impact. These results obtained in this study indicate that foreign aid, energy consumption, trade openness, and CO2 emissions are positively correlated with economic growth. Based on the finding, the significant of the policy implications suggested. (a) The need for a paradigm shift from fossil fuel sources to renewables is encouraged in the various trading blocs (b) The need to embrace carbon storage and capturing techniques to decouple pollutant emissions from economic growth on the continent’s growth trajectory.

Nigeria’s development process, methodology and milestones planned for VISION 20:2020 - 13 years after

Regional and international economic integration Regional economic integration has helped many countries of the world to concentrate on issues that are essential to their development as well as encourage local, national, and international trade between countries and neighbors. In the past years, there has been increase in trading blocs with numerous agreements in place and more in the pipeline(s). These agreements provide more opportunities for countries to interact and trade with one another without barriers to investment and trade. This manuscript discusses regional and international economic integrations in line with VISION-20-20 and the Nigeria economy. Keywords: Trade, investment, money, economic goals, Africa

Impacts of regional integration and maritime transport on trade: with special reference to RCEP

Purpose The proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) will become a large trade agreement in Asia, which has brought together the ten members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and five of the neighbors’ countries. Under the trend of globalization, the progress of the transportation industry and regional integration will increase the volume of trade, therefore maritime performance is intrinsically linked to trade. In fact, few studies have examined regional integration in the context of seaborne. This paper aims to use the cluster analysis and Poisson quasi-maximum likelihood (PQML) gravity model to investigate the trading bloc phenomenon and relation between trade and marine transportation. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, hierarchical clustering analysis and tree diagrams are used to identify functional areas characterized by bilateral trade intensity and bilateral liner shipping connectivity indices. Regional reorganizations that have occurred within Asian countries were studied. This study illustrates that these trading blocs have a positive impact on trade when maritime transport, production and trading networks have developed between regions. A gravity model was constructed using worldwide trade data for 2007, 2010 and 2015. The study considered free trade agreement (FTA)/common market (CM) of EU, RCEP and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as regional dummies and designed a real trade bloc induction variable. In addition, the study did not use the commonly adopted ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation but used the PQML method to estimate the gravity equation to overcome the problem of a large number of zero trade observations. Preliminary results show that regional integration cannot guarantee the establishment of intraregional trade but depends on the stage of economic development and regional industrial characteristics. Findings The major findings are summarized as follows. Both liner shipping connectivity and logistics performance have significant advantages with positive coefficients in each regression results. The creation of intraregional trade is not guaranteed, depending on the characteristics of the trade and the stage of economic development of the region. For RCEP, the effect created by intra-regional trade is better than the EU. Instead, the “nominal” intra-RCEP trade was significantly below the “real” trading blocs. For RCEP, the effect created by intra-regional trade is better than that of the EU. Instead, “nominal” intra-RCEP trade is much lower than “real” trading blocs. The real trading bloc between East Asia and Taiwan clearly exists, and the bloc phenomenon is becoming more and more significant. This result shows that Taiwan’s trade flow with East Asia is higher than the normal level relationship implied by its corresponding economic and geographical conditions. Originality/value This paper focuses on new empirical work done for this study is on the potential impact on trade. Earlier studies that have discussed and/or provided estimates of the benefits to the RCEP plan from improved transport and supply chain connectivity are cited. Marine transportation performance inherently links to economies of commerce. Few studies have examined regional integration in the context of maritime transportation, which reflects the lack of a mix of trade economists and maritime logistics research in the existing literature. This paper attempts to investigate the trading bloc phenomenon formed by regional integration (such as RCEP) and the relation between trade and marine transportation. With the official entry into force of the RCEP in 2020, it will promote increased trade and demand for logistics and maritime transport services in East Asia.