All Countries and All Sectors

The government of Malaysia recently agreed to allow an Australian company to build a new rare earths processing plant in the country – the first such plant to be constructed outside of China in decades.

The need to relax rigid labour restrictions that enforce high severance pay and make it hard to fire staff is becoming a priority for Indonesia. With outdated employment laws affecting investor confidence and benefitting neither employers nor staff, the country is accelerating moves to update employment regulations.

Having posted sales increases of up to 15%, Thailand’s retailers are looking to build on the strong performance of the past year as they look ahead into 2011. Concerns over lingering political tensions and instability in the global economy, however, could tone down the ringing of cash registers in 2010.

With the government and international agencies alike predicting GDP to expand by almost 20% this year, and a budget surplus in the double-digit billions, Qatar’s economy is set to outstrip nearly all others around the world in 2011. Just about the only cloud on the horizon is the return of demand-driven inflation, though even this concern seems likely to dissipate in the face of sustained growth.

The conservative approaches to money management employed by for four Sharjah-based lenders have paid off judging by their year-end financial statements for 2010, which have recently been released.

With demand for domestic hardware and software recovering and renewed interest in the potential of high-value outsourcing operations, the outlook for Bulgaria’s information and communications technology (ICT) sector appears to be considerably brighter.