TPT May 2010

G lobal M arketplace

Unquestionably Russia holds the best hand in the continental energy stakes, and will for some time to come. But the proliferation of interested parties, both as contractual purchasers of Russian oil and partners in transport systems, increases the number of influences on Moscow. If, as seems probable, Ukraine continues to be a thorn in its side, Russia now must consider other factors (eg the extension to 2037 of the contract under which Gazprom will supply gas to Poland’s PGNiG gas monopoly, to an expanded maximum of 359 bcf a year) before weighing interruption of the flow of fuel westward. Money matters › The rise in the number of Indian billionaires – to 49 last year, up from 24 in 2008 – on Forbes magazine’s latest “rich list” reflects the growing prosperity of India and the entrepreneurial skills of its nationals. One of the billionaires, Mukesh Ambani, whose petrochemicals fortune makes him the richest person in the Asia-Pacific region, ranks fourth among wealthy individuals worldwide, behind only Carlos Slim Helu (of Mexico) and the Americans Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Mr Ambani’s fellow-Indian Lakshmi Mittal, the steel magnate, came fifth. The Indian showing on Forbes ’s “World’s Billionaires” is the more remarkable vis-à-vis the Chinese. While China can boast more billionaires than India (and every other country besides the US), the Indian billionaires have more billions. According again to Forbes , in a local edition from November 2009, the wealthiest 100 Indians are collectively worth $276 billion. Their Chinese counterparts in the Top 100 are worth $170 billion.

Trade › China on 10 March announced that its exports climbed 46% in February from a year earlier, marking the third consecutive month of increases and the fastest export growth in three years. Economists attributed the results to a rebound in consumer demand from the US, the European Union, and Japan, which together accounted for almost half the growth after a two-month period of higher demand for Chinese wares from emerging markets. Signalling a revival in trade after the financial crisis last year, the pickup in Chinese exports could move Beijing closer to letting its currency, the renminbi, appreciate against the US dollar. While China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, still publicly rejects the contention of Western governments that the yoking of the two currencies keeps Chinese exports artificially cheap and therefore hyper-competitive, a close China-watcher might have picked up an early hint of a shift. On 6 March, the governor of the central People’s Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, said that pegging the renminbi to the US dollar was a “special foreign exchange mechanism” that would be abandoned “sooner or later.” › Last time in this space, China’s edging-out of Germany as the world’s No. 1 exporter was termed “largely symbolic” – and so it is. According to the European Union’s statistics office Eurostat, the German trade surplus reached $184.9 billion in 2009, by far the largest in Europe. Germany’s surplus was more than triple that of the Netherlands, in second place. But Germany does not relinquish first-place positions gladly, even when the displacement is both inevitable and years in the making. As early

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