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To: TobagoJack who wrote (129024)1/26/2017 1:11:19 PM
From: elmatador  Respond to of 218633
 
Elmat is here...



To: TobagoJack who wrote (129024)1/26/2017 7:22:51 PM
From: Pogeu Mahone  Respond to of 218633
 
SINO

Sino-Global Enters Into Strategic Cooperation Agreement with China Ocean Shipping Agency Qingdao Co., Ltd.

PR NewswireJanuary 12, 2017

ROSLYN, N.Y., Jan. 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Sino-Global Shipping America, Ltd. ( SINO) ("Sino-Global", the "Company" or "we"), a non-asset based global shipping and freight logistic integrated solution provider, today announced the signing of a Strategic Cooperation Agreement (the "Agreement") with China Ocean Shipping Agency Qingdao Co., Ltd. ("COSCO Qingdao") in which COSCO Qingdao will utilize the Company's full-service logistics platform to arrange for the transport of its container shipments into US ports. The agreement with COSCO Qingdao is a continuation of the Company's ongoing partnership with China Ocean Shipping Company ("COSCO") and will expand the Company's presence in the Shandong province as well as in other regions such as Ningbo, Xiamen and Guangzhou through COSCO Qingdao's relationship with local subsidiaries in the area.

Pursuant to the Agreement with COSCO Qingdao, and similar to that of the Company's previously announced inland transportation agreement with COSFRE Beijing (December 2016), Sino-Global will receive a percentage of the total amount of each transportation fee in exchange for the arrangement of inland transportation services for COSCO Qingdao's container shipments into US ports.

The Company continues to work to expand its business to provide logistics services to customers who ship goods into the US. COSCO Qingdao will receive a percentage of the Company's profits for any additional customers the Company obtained through referral business.

COSCO Qingdao is a part of COSCO International Freight Co., Ltd., a subsidiary that operates under China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company and China COSCO Holdings Company Limited ("China COSCO Holdings") and that specializes in international freight forwarding, shipping agency and full supply-chain services.

Mr. Lei Cao, Chief Executive Officer of Sino-Global, stated, "We continue to seek strategic partnerships and joint venture opportunities that will expand the Company's reach and reinforce our long-term strategic vision of becoming a global logistics services provider. We look forward to growing our cooperative efforts with COSCO and to entering into similar partnerships with other local subsidiaries."


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China’s state-controlled China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) acquired ownership of Greece’s largest seaport in August 2016. The Pireaus seaport, on Greece’s Mediterranean coast, is on target to become one of the main European outlet points for China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR), a China-to-Europe commercial transportation corridor consisting of a cluster of Chinese-built overland rail and road routes extending westward and southward from Central Asia known as the Silk Road Economic Belt (the “one belt”) and a series of Chinese- built port installations extending westward across the Indian Ocean called the 21st Maritime Silk Road (the “one road”).

Culminating a process China initiated in 2009 when it heavily invested in the renovation and management of Piraeus to transform it into one of the world’s state-of-the-art container ports, Beijing now owns and operates one of the European Union’s major seaports as a hub for Chinese goods to enter European markets. Having registered a 14.4% surge in traffic in 2016, Piraeus is emerging as Europe’s fastest-growing and most dynamic port. With China’s securing Pireaus as its western maritime outlet for the OBOR, Israel and its neighbors, from Egypt to Iran, are now situated in the middle of Beijing’s ambitious project to create a combined land-sea commercial superhighway extending from Southeast Asia to southeastern Europe. In short, Chinese economic interests in creating and preserving the reliable and cost-efficient flow of commerce across the region will become a dominant organizing principle in the international relations in the Middle East.

China has already invested well over $250 billion infrastructure projects in Central Asia, many of which are designed to create overland connectivity with Europe. To create a highspeed overland route that does not have to pass through Russian territory, China is building a high-speed railway across the length of Turkey that will reduce travel time by half.

This “middle route” would currently involve a ferry transshipment across the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan. However, in its drive to ensure resiliency and the reliability of commercial flows by maintaining multiple supply lines, Beijing is experimenting with a variety of combined land-sea routes.

China has also spent billions constructing deep-sea ports in Myanmar and Pakistan, which through planned railway and highway links across these countries to the Chinese border will give China’s land-locked Yunan and Xinjiang provinces, respectively, access to the Indian Ocean and ultimately the Suez Canal.



To: TobagoJack who wrote (129024)1/27/2017 12:05:25 AM
From: elmatador1 Recommendation

Recommended By
Snowshoe

  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 218633
 
China warned of risk to banks from One Belt, One Road initiative
Experts concerned about political factors driving $900bn road and rail projects

Beijing’s plan to invest almost $1tn in infrastructure in some of the world’s poorest countries is raising concerns of risks for the Chinese banks backing the projects.

Turmoil in countries such as Venezuela, where China has lent $65bn during the past decade, has led to a recalibration of the level of risk facing the One Belt, One Road project in emerging markets, experts say.

President Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy initiative envisions a new wave of global growth spurred by roads and rail links spanning some of the poor regions such as east India, Africa and Central Asia. It has been likened to the US Marshall Plan of the 1950s and interpreted as China’s first concerted effort to lead global development as the US, under the presidency of Donald Trump, retreats from its global role.

The Chinese government has announced more than $900bn in projects, some already under way, with most of the funding set to come from China’s policy banks and commercial lenders.

But the investments have been driven more by China’s desire to exert global influence than focusing on real demand for infrastructure, Fitch Ratings warned in a report on Thursday.

Related article Map: Key projects on the new Silk Road Transport and energy projects connecting Central Asia That means banks risk becoming entangled in projects where commercial logic and demand for roads and bridges are subordinate to political considerations.

“The lack of commercial imperatives behind Obor projects means that it is highly uncertain whether future project returns will be sufficient to fully cover repayments to Chinese creditors,” Fitch said on Thursday.

Credit ratings for countries where China has big infrastructure plans provide a gauge for the projects’ underlying creditworthiness, Fitch said. Most of the countries are of speculative sovereign-rating grade but several, such as Laos, are not rated at all.

Laos will be the recipient of a high-speed railway expected to cost about $7bn — or more than half the impoverished Southeast Asian country’s gross domestic product.

Banks’ rapid expansion into such infrastructure lending could expose China to overseas asset quality problems at a time when they are already burdened with non-performing loans at home.

“If the infrastructure is paid out of the government, it may not be a big issue but if it involves the publicly listed banks, it will have great impact on the asset quality if the infrastructure turns out to be not economically feasible,” said Simon Lee, assistant dean at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Business School.

Such problems materialised in earlier Chinese investments in emerging markets. Last year China was forced to renegotiate billions of dollars of loans to Venezuela as the South American economy bordered on collapse following the oil price plunge.

“Venezuela has exposed the risks to the plan. After that case, there has been a period of rethinking these deals,” said Shen Jianguang, Mizuho’s chief economist for China, noting that announcements of new projects have since slowed. “Even though the deals are signed with countries, what happens if the country has a crisis?”

High-speed rail projects in Indonesia and Thailand have also stalled because of political issues and disagreement on financing, according to a note from Standard Chartered.

The Fitch report on Obor was a rare dissenting voice among global institutions, the majority of which have praised the initiative.

The Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, which launched in 2013 and will help fund Obor, announced this week it had attracted 25 new members including Ireland, Canada, Ethiopia and Sudan to the group of 57 founding members. While the UK has been a staunch supporter of the initiative, the US has sought to press some countries not to join.

China has been adamant that projects are evaluated on a commercial basis and that Obor was not an aid programme.

Zhang Ying, a professor at Erasmus University’s Rotterdam School of Management, said Fitch may underestimate the true demand for infrastructure where China plans to invest.

“Rapid expansion in overseas infrastructure lending is driven by Chinese firms’ rapid growth and the large demand from local markets stimulated by China’s Obor initiative, not decided by China’s bank itself,” Prof Zhang said, noting that shareholders have approached the projects cautiously.

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