· July, 2010

Stories about Economics & Business from July, 2010

Qatar: Expats Question Future Plans

If you are a long term resident in one of the GCC countries, what are your long-term plans? What will you do when you return home? At Qatar Living, expatriates attempt to answer the inevitable question: What will you do when you return home?

Philippines: Opposition to Rail Transit Fare Hikes

  31 July 2010

Metro Manila commuters of the Metro Rail Transit will be facing fare hikes as the Philippine government plans to abandon subsidies for the public transportation because of rising operation and maintenance costs. Bloggers react

Cuba: Economic Effects

  30 July 2010

“The unemployment phenomenon, which is vehemently denied by high officials in the government, is nothing new”: Iváns File Cabinet uses the example of Cuba's only telecommunications company to illustrate its effects.

Kenya: Mobile Payment Revolution

  30 July 2010

Erik looks at mobile payment services in Kenya: “Kenya is quickly gaining a competitive advantage in the mobile payments space. Led by mobile operator giant Safaricom with their Mpesa product, the market locally sees huge value in mobile money transactions.”

Taiwan: Threatened by Microsoft

  30 July 2010

Tetralet complains about his recent experience with Microsoft [zht] about how the software giant emailed and called to threaten that if Tetralet does not welcome Microsoft to “help his company on software property management“, Microsoft would report to superiors and “what's going to happen is not predicable“.

Dominica: Going Virtual

  29 July 2010

“The Commonwealth of Dominica has gone virtual with great alacrity” in order to promote tourism; Repeating Islands has the details.

Taiwan: Manhattan”s” in Taipei

  29 July 2010

Pomelo(鉑鎂鑼) criticizes the vacuum promises(zht) made by Taipei mayor Hau Lung-pin who promises to build one Manhattan in Shezi region, yet another Manhattan in the basin of Danshui river before the coming election.

Malaysia: Drop in Foreign Direct Investments

  29 July 2010

The recently released United Nations World Investment Report 2010 brought to light the shape of the Malaysian economy to its citizens: Foreign direct investment has dropped by 81 percent. Here are some online reactions.

Ecuador: Leader of Citizen's Revolution Has an Economics Blog

  29 July 2010

Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa has been known for promoting Open Source Software. To prove this, he has created a blog where he explains economic matters didactically, so that people can understand the economic analysis, charts and concepts. He has been posting since May 29, 2010 in the multimedia blog Economía en...

Bangladesh: Minimum Wages Raised In Garments Sector

  28 July 2010

After long protests and bargaining with the employers and the workers, the Bangladesh Government has decided to raise the minimum wages to Tk. 3000 per month ($44) which is approximately double of the current minimum wages. Bloggers discuss how this impacts the workers and the industry.

China: Explosion in Nanjing

  28 July 2010

A ruptured gas main is the reported cause of an explosion [zh] this morning at a plastics factory currently being torn down in NE Nanjing. Injuries are reportedly in the hundreds, while the number of deaths has yet to be confirmed. Free More News has been aggregating links to photos...

Taiwan: Film Festival of “Food and People”

  27 July 2010

Karen Yu announces on okogreen blog that the “2010 Food and People Film Festival”(zht)-co-hosted by fair-trade coffee shops and environmental NGOs-will be showing 4 documentaries on each friday through out September. The 4 documentaries are We Feed The World, Sustainable Table, Bullshit, and Black Gold.