Establishing a business in Finland makes it easier for Russian companies to enter the European markets.

A Russian company that manufactures wind turbines is starting operations in Mikkeli, eastern Finland, according to Ville Paasanen who is a board member of the company and also the technology officer of the the Miktech innovation and technology center. The company is planning to focus on product development over the next year before entering the Finnish, European and North American markets.

According to Paasonen, locating a business in Finland makes it easier for Russian companies to enter the European market. Productivity is better in Finland than in Russia and the market value of products manufactured in Finland is also higher. The Russian wind turbine manufacturer will be using subcontractors in the Mikkeli region as much as possible.

Better productivity, higher value

“The cost of labour is higher in Finland but productivity is better. Also products with the label Made in Finland attract a better price even on the Russian markets than those with Made in Russia,” says Paasonen.

Finland also offers better logistics. “From Finland you can get to Germany in a day whereas in Russia it can take a week to get to Moscow,” says Paasonen.

Miktech provides business development services for technology companies and coordinates diverse projects mainly in its four focus areas: technology and wood product industry, digitization, bioenergy and environmental safety.

Source - Miktech

Online shopping in Russia is growing at an estimated annual rate of 30% but few Finnish companies are tapping into the huge market.

Finnish company Caima, based in Lappeenranta near the Russian border, has opened a web store selling tax-free sports and fashion goods which is targeting Russian tourists and consumers in addition to its Finnish clientele. Russian customers can either collect the goods in person or have them delivered tax-free to Russia. Caima is also aiming to provide an easy retail channel for other suppliers to the Russian market.

“We are marketing our web store actively in different media and the social media in Russia. The web store is receiving orders from the whole Russian-speaking area from the Baltic to the Barents Sea, and also from the Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakstan,” says Timo Miettinen, CEO of Caima. Miettinen used to work for Nokia and Vaisala and has set up the business with the help of a startup fund for former Nokia employees.

Huge growth in online shopping

Caima’s plan is also to offer an easy channel to the Russian markets for other suppliers and manufacturers. “We are actively looking for other suppliers that fit with our product selection, and we also provide consultancy to other retailers about online retail in Russia and tax-free web retail,” says Miettinen, who has a great deal of knowledge about ecommerce in Russia thanks to his previous work.

Online shopping is booming in Russia, with an estimated annual growth rate 30%. The total value of web purchases by Russians is estimated to reach EUR 36 billion by the year 2015. So far only a few Finnish companies have started to tap into the huge potential of the Russian market with their own Russian language web stores.

Source: Federation of Finnish Commerce

Thanks to relative political stability and strong oil and gas prices, Russia's retail turnover more than quintupled from 2001 to 2011 and now exceeds US$600 billion annually.

Data suggest that this sector is entering the steepest part of its growth curve.

How will Russia's retailers face the challenges of this critical period of expansion? Will foreign retailers manage to get a slice of this growing pie?

Read the full story - Retail Chains' Race for Russia

EU27 deficit in trade of goods with Russia down to 65 bn euro in the first nine months of 2012.

Read more at Eurostat

Deloitte Research’s Global Economic Outlook offers timely insights from Deloitte Research’s team of economists about the trends and events that are shaping the marketplace.

This edition offers economic outlooks for the Eurozone, the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Japan, India, Russia, and Brazil.

The Global Economic Outlook report is published quarterly by Deloitte Research in the United States (part of Deloitte Services LP).

Download the full Global Economic Outlook here – Deloitte

Asian emerging economies will contribute less to growth as China and India negotiate soft landings, while Latin American policymakers have scope to add fiscal and monetary stimulus.

Full Report Here

Finland's law-abiding reputation attracts Cytomed to invest in pharmaceutical and soya factories in Finland.

Russian-owned company Cytomed Oy has built a pharmaceutical factory in Joutseno, located near Lappeenranta in eastern Finland, close to the border with Russia.

Cytomed aims to benefit from the positive image of products “Made in Finland” that it is planning to export to Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Cytomed's EUR 12 million factory in Lappeenranta will be producing medicines mainly for skin diseases, urological complaints and children's diseases. Cytomed is also in the process of constructing a soya factory in Uusikaupunki on Finland's western coast.

According to Cytomed's managing director Julia Volkoff, the decision to invest in Finland was also influenced by the speed and price of construction work in Finland. The most important factor, however, was that in Finland laws work and they are respected.

Source: Talouselämä

Tokyo is the most expensive city in the world to live in, Karachi is the cheapest, reports the private institute Mercer.

Most European cities drop in the ranking; Australian and New Zealand cities surge

London drops 7 places to rank 25

Read the full Global Overview

Worldwide top 50 cities: Cost of Living rankings here

Eurostat presents a range of statistics to compare the EU with Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Read more here

Liquidity squeeze as business debt write-offs escalate - Research by leading European credit management services company, Intrum Justitia, shows that European businesses are being severely squeezed by liquidity problems.

57% of businesses claim to have problems with liquidity due to late payments, an increase of 10% in the last twelve months. The Intrum Justitia European Payment Index 2012 (EPI 2012) also shows the debt written off by European businesses reaching a record high of €340 billion.

The EPI 2012 survey of more than 7,800 European businesses in 28 countries shows that the European economy is a mixed picture – both in relation to problems with liquidity and written-off debts. Germany and the Nordic countries show considerable strength, whereas other countries, primarily in South and East Europe, are facing great problems.

“The fragmented picture that appeared in last year’s EPI has even been reinforced this year. Alarmingly high shares of businesses in countries such as Greece, Portugal and Spain have problems with liquidity due to late payments. Written-off debts also continue to rise in several countries. In Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, more than one out of every €20 in sales is written off as bad debt. Larger economies such as the UK and Poland are also displaying surging debt write-offs,” comments Intrum Justitia CEO, Lars Wollung.

The prolonged economic and financial difficulties are starting to take a toll. 55 percent of businesses claim that the recession has lead to problems with liquidity, a 17 percent rise over the previous year.

The eighth edition of the EPI also shows that businesses are trying to handle the liquidity problems by decreasing the contracted days to payment. On average, the number of contracted days to payment in business-to-business payments has decreased from 36 to 32 days. The average number of days in payment delay remains at 20 days.

“Businesses in Europe are trying to cope but are caught in a vicious circle trying to pay their invoices as late as possible and trying to get paid as early as possible”, says Lars Wollung.

The measures taken by European and International bodies to stall the international financial crisis in general and the Euro crisis specifically have to a large extent focused on saving the banks and the financial system. The survey, however, shows that 47 percent of business in Europe claim to have less confidence in banks being able to support them, whilst only 5 percent claim to have more confidence. This indicates that only a small fraction of financial help actually reaches the businesses.

“A working financial system is vital for the economy as a whole, but if the vast sums spent on saving the banks never trickle down to the businesses that produce goods and services, the road to economic recovery will be a long and rough ride. Businesses’ low confidence in banks is very troubling. An even more striking insight is that only three out of ten businesses are confident that governments will be able to support them,” says Lars Wollung.

With low confidence in banks’ and governments’ ability to support them, businesses in Europe are left on their own. Nor does the situation appear to offer any hope of improvement in the near future – 94 percent of businesses see the risks from their debtors increasing or remaining at the same level in the next 12 months. Intrum Justitia therefore suggests the following ten steps to help businesses help themselves:

1. Create and implement a solid credit policy to manage your risks and increase revenue
2. Follow up on every step in your credit management process
3. Make sure you identified the customer you are doing business with
4. Make a clear agreement with your customer stating all conditions for your business
5. Integrate sales, marketing and financial department in avoiding defaults
6. Implement customer address checks regularly
7. Monitor economic & industry information, and the solvency of key customers
8. Implement swift reminders and possibly charge default interest
9. Always extend and balance your customer structure
10. Never, ever wait, always take immediate action to get paid

Download EPI 2012 Europe Map

Download EPI Tables 2012

About the European Payment Index
The survey was conducted simultaneously in 28 countries between January and March 2012. The survey was conducted in written form and more than 7,800 companies responded. This is the eighth year that Intrum Justitia has run the survey. 

The questionnaire was translated into the respective national languages. Dispatch and return of the questionnaires were carried out on a decentralized basis by the countries concerned, whereas the analysis was carried out centrally in accordance with predetermined guidelines. All information has been verified and uncertainties were not included in the evaluation. Furthermore, not all anonymously sent questionnaires were taken into account for the evaluation. Companies in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland were questioned online by a specialized company (BING Research). Bulgaria, Slovenia and Romania were researched by the countries and double checked against a separate on-line survey by a specialized company (BING Research).

The Internet economy is growing more than 10 percent per year in the G-20 nations.

No one—no individual, business, or government—can afford to ignore its ability to deliver more wealth to more people more broadly than any economic development since the Industrial Revolution.

This report quantifies the Internet’s economic impact. Read more at Boston Consulting Group – The Connected World

The proportion of women holding senior management roles in Europe is steadily increasing according to the latest research from Grant Thornton. However, the reverse is true in emerging markets, where businesses have historically employed more females in senior roles.

This leaves the global average at 21%, barely higher than the 2004 level.

The figures from Grant Thornton’s International Business Report (IBR) reveal that just over one in five (22%) senior management positions in businesses surveyed in Latin America are held by women, down from 28% in 2009. Similar falls have been recorded in the Asia Pacific economies (25% in 2009 down to 19% in 2012), South East Asia (36% in 2009 down to 32% in 2012) and the BRIC economies (30% in 2009 down to 26% in 2012).

Despite rising unemployment, the proportion of women in senior management in Europe has continued to rise steadily from 17% in 2004 to 20% in 2009 to 24% in 2012, catching up with peers in emerging markets.

April Mackenzie, global head - governance and public policy at Grant Thornton International, said:

“Across Europe, getting more women into senior management positions has been high on the political agenda for quite some time. Governments have been vocal about addressing the imbalance and as a result businesses have been under real scrutiny. This encouraging rise in senior women shows the effect this attention is starting to have.

“The steady drop-off we are seeing in the emerging markets is a real concern though. The worry is that we may be reaching the point where women are underrepresented in senior management the world over.”

There are a myriad of cultural, economic and social barriers which prevent women from reaching the top jobs, but rapid urbanisation, which has accompanied rapid economic growth in emerging markets, could help explain why the proportion of women in senior management is falling away. 

Since 1978, China has experienced the largest internal migration in human history, with nearly 160m people moving from the countryside into cities.  The proportion of people living in urban areas passed 50% in 2011, and is projected to hit 55% by 2020. Similarly in Mexico, the proportion of the population living in urban areas is projected to rise from 74% in 2000 to 80% by 2020.  This is putting a huge strain on traditional family models.

April Mackenzie explained: “The movement into cities has begun to break down traditional models of extended families. The in-built childcare infrastructure which allowed children to be raised by grandparents, enabled women to work full-time. This is being replaced by ‘Western-style’ nuclear families which rely on one parent looking after the children or the prospect of expensive childcare.

“Urbanisation presents more opportunities for more people, including women, in many different ways. But the challenges it places on the family model appear to be having a disproportionately large effect on the ability of women to break the glass ceiling and occupy senior management roles.

“Governments and business leaders in emerging markets need to start working now to address this decline. The last thing we want to see is a race to mediocrity where the proportion of women in senior roles in these countries bottoms out and stagnates for a number of years. Or indeed that these high growth economies lose talent because women in the burgeoning rising middle classes opt out of the workforce altogether.

“There needs to be a public discussion now about the policies and practices that will enable and encourage women to continue to progress in the workplace.”

The IBR suggests that offering flexible working could help reverse this trend in emerging markets. Nearly two thirds of businesses in the EU (65%), where the proportion of women in senior management roles is increasing, currently offer flexible working. This is well ahead of Latin America (49%), the BRIC economies (36%) and Asia Pacific (32%).

April Mackenzie said: “Businesses in the emerging economies are lagging behind on the flexible working front. Greater adoption of this might allow a greater proportion of women to make senior positions in the future, reversing the current decline.”

Biggest winners and losers

Of the 40 economies surveyed, businesses in Russia employ the most women in senior management (46%), ahead of Botswana, Thailand and the Philippines (all 39%), whilst Italy ranks highest in Europe (36%).

Bottom of the table is Japan, where only 5% of senior management positions are filled by women, below Germany (13%), India (14%) and Denmark (15%).

The biggest risers over the past 12 months include Turkey (25% to 31%), and the United Arab Emirates (8% to 15%), results that suggest that the wave of economic liberalisation in the Middle East as a result of the Arab Spring could have boosted the chances of women in the region reaching the top.

Flera av världens viktigaste ekonomier har just lyckats komma överens om ett överraskande positivt avtal för öppnare marknader.

Det var i samband med överläggningar inom Världshandelsorganisation WTO som bland andra EU, Japan, USA och Sydkorea kom överens om att öka transparensen och konkurrensen i deras offentliga upphandling.

Handelsminister Ewa Björling deltar på plats i Genève:
- Det är ytterst glädjande att en överenskommelse nu nåtts om offentlig upphandling, något som kommer att generera vinster för tusentals miljarder kronor. För svenska företag är det verkligen jackpot eftersom vi är starka inom många områden som öppnas upp, till exempel telekommunikation och infrastruktur, säger Ewa Björling.

Många av världens länder handlar varje år offentligt upp varor och tjänster för stora summor pengar. Men på grund av bristande transparens och öppenhet missgynnas ofta utländska företag, inklusive svenska, från att konkurrera på lika villkor. Överenskommelsen om avtalet om offentlig upphandling (GPA) innebär ökad transparens och bättre konkurrens.

Marknadsöppningen beräknas motsvara mellan 560-700 miljarder kronor.

Källa – Svenska Ambassaden i Moskva