For years, Sri Lanka has looked West for a big part of its revenues. Exports of garments to Europe and North America have been, and will continue to be, essential to its economy, as will Western tourists and remittances from Sri Lankan workers in the Middle East, Europe and North America. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has hit all of these revenue streams hard, and the nation’s economy contracted sharply in 2020. A further effect that Covid-19 has had on Sri Lanka, has been to add impetus to changes that were already taking place – not least a realisation that she cannot rely so much on the Western fashion industry, and that other important opportunities exist - to the East…
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As anyone who has visited China recently will know, WeChat is enormous, with over 1- billion users, it is the largest App in the Country. WeChat is best described as an ‘eco-system’ rather than as traditional social media or a ‘WhatsApp of China’. Describing WeChat as an eco-system captures the fact that it is all things in daily life in China.
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At the close of 2020, the leaders of China and the European Union announced the completion of the negotiation of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI).
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Over recent years, sustainability has become an increasingly important issue, with brands and consumers seeking ways to become more sustainable. As a result, product packaging has come under increasing scrutiny, particularly within the beauty and cosmetics industries where significant amounts of packaging are produced. In fact, more than 120 billion units of packaging are produced globally by the cosmetics industry every year.
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While much of the world has been reeling from the impact of Covid19, and focussed on dramas like the US presidential elections and Brexit, a remarkable success story has been written in southeast Asia. Vietnam’s GDP was up by a remarkable 2.91% in 2020, according to its own government figures (NB. China grew by 2.3%), making it one of the few countries in the world to see positive economic growth despite the pandemic.
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