China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) could speed up economic development and reduce poverty for dozens of developing nations, the World Bank said on Tuesday in a report that called for deep policy reforms and more transparency for the initiative.
The long-delayed report said that the initiative — a string of ports, railways, roads, bridges and other investments connecting China to Europe via central and southern Asia — could lift 32 million people out of moderate poverty conditions if implemented fully, the World Bank said.
Still, there are “significant risks,” it added.
“Achieving the ambitions of the Belt and Road Initiative will require equally ambitious reforms from participating countries,” World Bank vice president for equitable growth Ceyla Pazarbasioglu said in a statement.
“Improvements in data reporting and transparency — especially around debt — open government procurement, and adherence to the highest social and environmental standards will help significantly,” she added.
New World Bank president David Malpass in April skipped China’s second Belt and Road summit in Beijing to take his first foreign trip to Africa instead.
Malpass was a critic of the initiative when he was an official at the US Department of the Treasury, saying that it was saddling some nations with unsustainable debts.
The report found that for some countries, the costs of new infrastructure could outweigh potential economic gains and the benefits would be unevenly distributed among participating countries.
Real income gains in the Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan and Thailand could be higher than 8 percent, but Azerbaijan, Mongolia and Tajikistan could experience negative welfare gains due to high infrastructure costs, the analysis showed.
Real income for Belt and Road corridor economies could be two to four times larger if they ease trade restrictions and institute reforms to reduce border delays, the World Bank said.
Increased private-sector participation in the project, now dominated by China’s state-owned banks and enterprises, could help sustain the initiative in the long run, but participating nations would need to institute reforms to improve their investment climates, including stronger legal protections and regulations, the report said.
“Little is known about the processes for selecting firms” for Belt and Road projects, the report said. “Moving toward international good practices such as open and transparent public procurement would increase the likelihood that BRI projects are allocated to the firms best placed to implement them.”
There was also a need to increase transparency of debt terms and conditions for projects to allow governments to assess the risks to their ability to sustain debt, the report said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six