During the past few weeks, our team has travelled through the East to strengthen our business network in the Asia-Pacific region, stopping by Dubai and Singapore on the way to Australia.
But what was the purpose of this trip? The desire to adapt to the major trends of our time: the main economic hub of the world is shifting towards the Pacific. The Atlantic hub, where Europe has a leading role, is gradually being transferred to the Pacific and Asia. Although Europe still maintains its dominance offering markets with a high degree of purchasing power, some sense a slow depletion of the current models, with high levels of debt, rigidities and absence of innovation, driving a necessity for radical transformation.
The new business hub in the Asia-Pacific region
Despite this occurring in Europe, Asia still continues to grow. China and India are no longer the countries we need to watch: other economies, which were before isolated from major global flows, are now growing. Capital investments are turning towards countries with high rates of population growth; like the enormous and still little-known Indonesia, the fourth most populated country — with more than 250 million people. As Professor Iliana Olivié comments on the Elcano Global Presence Index:
“The 2012 IEPG shows that the ‘deWesternisation’ process under way is becoming deeper. The 20 countries that are currently heading the list are more or less the same since the early 90s. China now ranks 4th and Brazil is 19th. Two emerging Asian countries, China and Singapore, have climbed up nine places. South Korea has risen five steps and India and Brazil four each. Belgium has dropped four also. Italy, Switzerland and Sweden have gone down three. While the United States remains the country with the highest global presence, emerging economies –particularly Asian countries– have replaced several European countries.
However, if the European Union were to count as a single country, it would top the world in terms of global presence.”
We can only rejoice and welcome the fact that this loss of western dominance is occurring because regions with major demographic importance are now reaching new levels of economic power, that is to say, that poverty is being reduced.
Of course, there is still much change required in those countries: improvements in security conditions, greater legal and institutional stability, more progressive conditions for doing business, hence the importance of certain platforms in Asia-Pacific which are more advanced for business development like Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong.
For these reasons, we are strengthening Gedeth’s network in the East. Through agreements with local partners, we are now in a position to offer the ‘know-how’ and market opening services in key countries such as Malaysia or Indonesia, among others, and therefore support firms with their businesses in Asia-Pacific.
What does Gedeth provide?
Gedeth is in an excellent position, due to our deep market knowledge and contacts in Latin America, to foster business activities between Latam, Spain and the Asia-Pacific.
We have seen an increasing number of Australian companies doing business in Latin-America in sectors such as the mining industry in Chile and food commodities in Ecuador. Singapore’s interest in the region is also clear, for example in the cocoa sector, which we saw first-hand in one of our trips to Ecuador.
Join us in a few days for the second part of this article, which will highlight the characteristics and opportunities of three key markets Asia Pacific: Australia, Dubai and Singapore.
