Most of the world is vaccinating itself and reopening, boosting expectations that growing economies would help trigger a bump in oil demand that was viscerally hit last year, but India – one of the world’s biggest importers – remains a cause of concern. The Organization of Oil Producing Countries (OPEC) said earlier this week that […]
China’s huge appetite for steel, as its economy begins to grow again after a Covid-19-triggered slowdown last year, is making its efforts to reduce its carbon footprint difficult. As the world marches towards a net-zero carbon emissions, China is getting stuck between its desire for a greener future and an economic turnaround that has sent […]
Forecasts tell you a lot about the forecaster, but they don’t tell you anything about the future or in the case of commodities the grammatically weird plural futures. When they do come true, it is usually a mixture of deep intelligence meeting immense luck. The July 1995 released film The Net, starring Sandra Bullock as […]
Plant-based diets have been recommended for better planetary health also as it would be more sustainable with lower environmental impacts and improving food and nutritional security of the generations. There is an urgent need to transform current diets for improving health of the population and to achieve equity in benefits at social, economic and environmental […]
The principal mode for transport for dry, non-bulk cargoes is containers, transported by dedicated Container-ships. Containers carry around 90 percent of the world’s non-bulk cargo. They are usually of a standard size, either 20-foot or 40-foot containers. This helps not only in standardizing shipping requirements and optimizing freight costs but also in unloading to various […]
After gold’s weakest quarterly performance in around five years at the end of March, there are encouraging signs that it may have reached close to bottom. By the end of the first quarter, gold was down 10% year-to-date and 18% below its record level of $2,067/ounce reached in early August. The catalyst for the slide was […]
Prof. Joshy Jacob, IIM Ahmedabad The Chinese commodities derivatives market has grown at a rapid pace in the recent past. Today, the Chinese commodities derivative exchanges are among the top-five globally. Out of the top-15 futures contracts in the world, nine are traded at the Chinese exchanges. Our recent field study on the Chinese markets […]
Last March, as the world economy shut down, commodity producers knew they were in for a harrowing time. Demand fell off a cliff and producers scrambled to cut capacity. Mines shut shop, rolling mills ground to a halt and oil transporters had to pay buyers to take delivery. A year later, the speed of the […]
New Delhi would without doubt be cheering Beijing’s crackdown on polluting steel mills towards the end of this week. The single action by China’s government has sent skyrocketing iron-ore prices crashing, which will translate into lower prices of the most important steel-making ingredient for Indian steel mills as well. New Delhi has been so troubled […]
While the Covid-19 outbreak disrupted crop plantings and raised the spectre of hunger in poorer nations including parts of India, the year ahead is looking brighter because of a stronger global outlook for cereals. The most important food staple, their consumption in 2020/21 is expected to rise by 2% above the level of 2019-20 to […]
