Andrew commented ahead of Transit Jam’s 2020 Forum “Rethinking Vehicles First” in HK on 17 September that, at some point in the future, the role of the car will have been transformed from private ownership where the car spends most of its time sitting unused in a car park – to a service from the […]

Commenting on a report in the Financial Times, Andrew pointed out that, even armed with GBP100 billion, a public sector investment bank cannot fund everything itself so needs to catalyse the private sector. First, this requires Properly Preparing Projects (the “other PPP”) which the private sector tends to take more care over. Second, the govt […]

Commenting on a report in the Financial Times, Andrew pointed out that after Indramayu in Indonesia, Vung Ang 2 in Vietnam and Matarbari 2 in Bangladesh which are already in planning, sponsors will have only one place to go … China (Koizumi jnr is pictured).

Amidst the enormous uncertainty – both short and long term – now facing the aviation industry comes welcome news of heroes – or at least of heroic thinking. Last month, the BBS joint venture of Bangkok Airways, BTS Group and Sino – Thai Engineering signed a PPP contract with the government’s Eastern Economic Corridor Office […]

We commented last week on Refinitiv’s latest report on aggregate numbers for China’s Belt & Road Initiative. Now comes news from Islamabad that a Prime Ministerial committee has accused two IPPs built and financed under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor of overcharging for power sold to the state. The committee considers that set-up costs of […]

A shout out to Refinitiv and the fourth edition of their BRI Connect: An Initiative in Numbers report released this month. Our thoughts thereon: Refinitiv calculate that there are now 1,590 BRI projects (i.e. an MOU or a joint statement of cooperation has been signed between China and the host country; the map shows which) […]

Finally, one of the World’s greatest harbours is to get a water taxi service. Except that it isn’t. According to plans submitted by the Transport Dept to LegCo this week, State-owned Chu Kong Shipping was awarded a contract last month to start the service next month. (Chu Kong has also just agreed to buy 60% […]

Continuing Logie Group’s programme of collaborating with fellow experts, we recently teamed up with John Cleese’s character from the iconic 1970s sitcom to suggest how to sort out his wife Sybil. He saw this as a first. The government’s Coronavirus Business Interruption Loans Scheme promises loans of up to GBP5 million to SMEs from its […]

All infrastructure investing involves balancing costs with benefits, some of which are hugely subjective – is an hour saved by not sitting in a traffic jam worth an hour at work or an hour at leisure? Why are these often valued differently? Does the fact that the UK has built more infrastructure in the south […]

When life returns to normal, it will be a new normal. Whilst waiting patiently for that new normal to arrive, Logie Group has collaborated with Mystic Meg to predict how infrastructure finance will have been permanently changed by the World’s response to the Covid 19 virus.  If we’re right, you heard it here first. If […]

And now for something completely different … Relationship banking, name lending, call it what you will, “lifts the corporate veil” which draws a legal distinction between a company and its owners in that banks place some reliance on whoever owns or controls the borrower. More generous terms are perhaps extended, margins reduced or the loan […]

Bloomberg reports data from Boston University’s Global Development Policy Centre which tracks lending by China’s two main policy banks. This shows that BRI lending to energy projects fell 71% to $3.2 billion in 2019, the lowest lending by the two banks since 2008 (well before BRI launched) and compares to an aggregate to the sector […]

This from Visual Capitalist’s plotting of every coal power plant in the World 1927 – 2019, ten lines of script down. It underlines how Global CO2 emissions from coal took off in the early noughties Mainly as China and India invested Whilst European sponsors and lenders have since moved to renewables The US eastern seaboard […]

It’s been dubbed the JJJ. When the Dutch founded Batavia in 1619, they didn’t give much thought to how, four hundred years later, it might cope with 10 million inhabitants. (Greater Jakarta includes 20 million more.) Infrastructure planning didn’t even start well in that it was the communal fountain in Fatahillah Square which gave the […]

The old joke is that you wait ages for a bus in London then three come along at once. In not dissimilar fashion, Manila’s one airport has long lagged almost every other Asian capital city’s but the Duterte administration is now progressing four. Named after Ninoy Aquino who was assassinated there in 1983 and whose […]