Today, unashamedly, I will be plugging two trade missions we’re taking to Asia in the coming months. But first, have you heard of CIVETS?
Well, the Oxford English Dictionary definition is a genus of carnivorous musk producing quadrupeds, and if you got that, well done! It’s not what I had in mind though. It has been a few years now since Goldman Sachs came up with the acronym BRICs for Brazil, Russia, India and China and now the Economist Intelligence Unit has coined the phrase CIVETS for Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa.
Having been to all these countries over the years, I can fully understand why the Economist thinks that they are the next economies to watch for trends in global growth. They all have tremendous growth prospects, are politically stable and have relatively large and young populations. I urge business to keep an eye on them for their future growth strategies.
I will be leading a trade delegation to Indonesia from November 29th to coincide with an exhibition called Manufacturing Indonesia starting at the Jakarta International Expo on December 1st. You should cast an eye over my blog of 3rd August for the reasons why I think Indonesia is a fascinating market for many UK firms but, in a nutshell, you should not be ignoring a market that has doubled in size over the last five years and is expected to grow by at least 6% per annum for the next few years. If you are interested in joining our trade mission, get in touch with my team on 0845 603 7053 and they’ll be pleased to give you the details.
In all things, however, it’s about getting the right balance and whilst we need to have a strategy looking to emerging markets for growth we also need to make sure that we are not overlooking traditional markets that still offer fantastic opportunities. Japan is a case in point. Recently overtaken by China as the world’s second biggest economy and following a long period of little or no growth, you’d be forgiven for wondering why (other than to highlight a trade mission) I would be drawing your attention to it as a potential market. Well, Japan is the UK’s largest export market after Europe and USA but, when you consider that it accounts for 20% of all the R&D undertaken in the world despite having just 2% of global population, you realise that it’s a very sophisticated, hi-tech market and with opportunities for British firms in all sorts of areas. We will be taking our trade mission in February/March 2011 and if you’d like to see what those opportunities are for your firm, contact the team and they will talk you through them.