By John Richardson Everything is still going to plan. As the chart above shows, China’s official bank lending is down by 16% in the year to date as the government rations credit to the big state-owned enterprises. The last thing that China needs right now is even more unneeded industrial capacity and infrastructure. But, of […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China PE Recovery Lacks Firm Foundation
By John Richardson DESPITE a slight pick-up in China’s polyethylene (PE) prices over the last two weeks (see above chart), producers and traders remain gloomy about the immediate outlook. “What has driven prices up is that new supply hasn’t hit the June market in volumes that people expected,” said a source with a global producer. […]
China Labour Supply Threatens Productivity Growth
Chart compiled by the China Real Time Report blog. By John Richardson NOBODY should be surprised about what is happening in China’s petrochemicals markets, as the signs have been there for many months that economic rebalancing would have to accelerate. This could be marvellous news in the long term for domestic consumption growth, but […]
China Demand Worse Than Just Before CNY
By John Richardson CHINA’S demand for polyethylene (PE) is lower than immediately ahead of the February Chinese New Year (CNY) break, said a Singapore-based polyolefins trader. “For demand to be less than just before the New Year, when most traders had already pulled out of the market to avoid cargoes being stranded at ports during […]
Less Bling, Please
Source of picture: Luxepost.com By John Richardson CHINA’S industrial output has had the weakest start to a year since 2009 and retail sales growth has slowed, according to this article from Bloomberg. New local-currency loans for February were also lower than the estimates of 27 out of 28 analysts in a Bloomberg News survey. […]
China NPC Underlines Inflation Focus
The course of true love never runs smooth…..Happy China couples get divorced and then plan to remarry in order to avoid new property tax Source of picture: Quirky China News/Rex Features By John Richardson China will see “large inflation pressure in the second half of the year,” said a People’s Bank of China official on the […]
China Credit, Commodities Bubble
By John Richardson China announced last week that its state-owned banks had lent Rmb1.07 trillion ($172m) in January, which was more than double the amount in December. Financial markets have taken as evidence that the economic recovery has gained momentum. But when you combine January-February lending for 2012 in order to get rid of the […]
China Stimulus Confusion
By John Richardson THERE was much talk last week about $158bn worth of new infrastructure projects in China that have received fast-track approval from the central government. But is this just a lot of noise to boost financial and commodity markets? Can anybody be 100 per cent certain that these projects are genuinely new, and that […]
Not “Business As Usual”
By John Richardson THE notion that Asian polyethylene (PE) markets would soon bottom out, which was widely expressed at the Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference (APIC) last month, seems to have been discredited. There was a slight recovery for the week ending 1 June, when prices had crept up by $10-20/tonne on improved confidence amongst […]
PE Middle East Offers Keep Falling
By John Richardson POLYOLEFIN markets are not going to bottom out until August-September at the earliest, according to several producers and traders who the blog spoke to yesterday. And even if prices do eventually stop declining, confidence has all but disappeared that there will be any substantial recovery in either pricing or demand for the […]
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