construction boom

Wary of Events in China, Foreign Investors Head to Cambodia

Some of Japan’s biggest manufacturers are also rushing to set up operations in Phnom Penh to make wiring harnesses for cars and touch screens and vibration motors for cellphones. European companies are not far behind, making dance shoes and microfiber sleeves for sunglasses.

Foreign companies are flocking to Cambodia for a simple reason. They want to limit their overwhelming reliance on factories in China.

Problems are multiplying fast for foreign investors in China. Blue-collar wages have surged, quadrupling in the last decade as a factory construction boom has coincided with waning numbers of young people interested in factory jobs. Starting last year, the labor force has actually begun shrinking because of the “one child” policy and an aging population.

“Every couple days, I’m getting calls from manufacturers who want to move their businesses here from China,” said Bradley Gordon, an American lawyer in Phnom Penh.

But multinationals are finding that they can run from China’s rising wages but cannot truly hide. The populations, economies and even electricity output of most Southeast Asian countries are smaller than in many Chinese provinces, and sometimes smaller than a single Chinese city. As companies shift south, they quickly use up local labor supplies and push wages up sharply.

While wages and benefits often remain below levels needed to provide proper housing and balanced diets, the manufacturing investment — foreign direct investment in Cambodia rose 70 percent last year from 2011 — is starting to raise millions of people out of destitution. “People along the Mekong River are being lifted out of poverty by foreign investment inflows driven by higher Chinese wages,” said Peter Brimble, the senior economist for Cambodia at the Asian Development Bank.

Only a smattering of companies, mostly in low-tech sectors like garment and shoe manufacturing, are seeking to leave China entirely. Many more companies are building new factories in Southeast Asia to supplement operations in China. China’s fast-growing domestic market, large population and huge industrial base still make it attractive for many companies, while productivity in China is rising almost as fast as wages in many industries.

Foreign investment in China nonetheless slipped 3.5 percent last year, after rising every year since 1980 except 1999, during the Asian financial crisis, and 2009, during the global financial crisis. Still, at $119.7 billion, foreign investment in China continues to dwarf investment elsewhere. By comparison, investment in Cambodia rose to $1.5 billion. “People are not looking for exit strategies from China, they’re looking to set up parallel operations to hedge their bets,” said Bretton Sciaroni, another American lawyer here. Among Japanese makers, Sumitomo is making wiring harnesses for cars, Minebea is assembling parts for cellphones and Denso is about to start production of motorcycle ignition components. Bloch, a European shoemaker, is here while Oakley is making sleeves for its sunglasses.

Foreign investment also increased sharply last year in Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and the Philippines.

As companies compete for employees, working conditions in the region are improving. Pactics, a Belgian-run company that is the world’s largest maker of microfiber sleeves for luxury sunglasses, has introduced employee benefits that were previously rare in Cambodia, like medical insurance, accident insurance, education allowances and free lunches.

Because costs are extremely low in Cambodia, where a visit to the doctor may cost only a couple of dollars, overall compensation for each worker is still less than $130 a month. At the company’s factory on the outskirts of Shanghai, workers doing the same tasks earn $560 to $640 a month, including government-mandated allowances, said Piet Holten, the company’s president.

Cambodian workers sew 15 to 30 percent fewer sleeves per day than their Shanghai counterparts, but productivity in Cambodia has been catching up. “I will never get it up to China, but the cost is less than a third of China’s, and China only gets more expensive,” Mr. Holten said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/business/global/wary-of-events-in-china-foreign-investors-head-to-cambodia.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Cypriots Feel Betrayed by European Union

As money flowed into the island’s banks after Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004, the country embarked on a construction boom. He landed a lucrative roofing job, at first for sleek homes and shops, and then for the mansions that took over olive groves and vineyards. The demand for his skills only accelerated after the country was admitted into the euro currency union in 2008.

But in the last two weeks, he has watched his finances slide as the foundations of his country crumble during the collapse of the banking system. The severe terms of the country’s 10 billion euro ($13 billion) international bailout have tied up everyone’s cash, forced huge losses on the strictest savers and are expected to hasten a deep recession that may take years to overcome.

Mr. Alexandrou, 30, says he understands that the crisis in Cyprus was brought on by bank mismanagement and even financial corruption.

What most pains him and many others here, though, is that central bankers and other international financial officials have, by letting their country’s 860,000 citizens suffer for the sins of a powerful few, shattered Cyprus’s solidarity with the European Union.

Cyprus is no poor cousin to the European Union, they say. Instead, it is a country with a small, but remarkably multilingual, solidly educated and until now comfortably middle-class population — people who consider themselves precisely the type of Europeans the rest of the union should be proud to have anchor its border with the Middle East.

Many Cypriots now feel great shock and anger at what they consider their economic excommunication.

“Not everyone here is Russian, or making money illegally, or laundering money,” Mr. Alexandrou said. “Most of us are normal people living normal lives.”

He sat, face grim, with his wife, Aliki, and their energetic 18-month-old son, Alexandros, in the living room of their modern white house on the outskirts of Nicosia. “Now we see that nothing good has come from European solidarity,” he said.

For Cypriots, joining the European Union and adopting the euro were significant achievements. After decades of internal strife and foreign occupation, Cyprus regarded acceptance into the European family as a promise of stability and the chance to forge a more modern economy.

During the boom times, Mr. Alexandrou acknowledged, Cyprus, like many European countries, lived beyond its means. But while it is time for the country to pay for its follies, he said, “there is the sense that no one in Europe really cares what happens to us.”

Some of his fellow Cypriots have vented their resentment in protests, shouting anti-German epithets and burning the European Union flag. Cypriots are relatively stoic compared with their more fiery brethren in bailed-out Greece, but there is deep-seated anger over the perception that Europe is kicking Cyprus while it is down.

“We made sacrifices to integrate Cyprus into the great European family,” Antigoni Papadopoulou, a member of Parliament, said last week as Cyprus tried to negotiate its bailout. But “there is a real lack of European solidarity,” she said.

With encouragement and subsidies from Brussels, Cyprus moved away from an agricultural economy toward an emphasis on services that support business, finance and communications. Manufacturing was also allowed to lapse, with locally made goods — whether shoes or pharmaceuticals — all but disappearing.

Cyprus’s leaders seized the opportunity to recast the island as a strategic hub at the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Their ambition was to emulate the wealthy, discreet European money havens of Luxembourg and Switzerland, thus securing a comfortable way of life for their people.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/business/global/cypriot-middle-class-feels-betrayed-by-europe-union.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Wary of Events in China, Foreign Investors Head to Cambodia

Cypriots Feel Betrayed by European Union

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