This from Taipan Publishing:

In my last post, I noted that Krakow was “under construction.” Well, I’d like to extend that to more than just the city. There was barely a road I travelled on that wasn’t coned off and rerouted for some kind of improvement. And one of the reasons Poland is spending so much time updating its infrastructure and roads is to become more attractive to foreign investors.

On one stretch of highway, I saw two major manufacturing plants: BASF (BAS:Frankfurt) and Daewoo (004550:Korea).

Interestingly, the Slovak roads are in much better condition. Investment is still going strong, though, and one major private investor is expanding a huge resort here in the High Tatras, in the Pieniny National Park.

Now, that brings up an interesting point to growing so quickly…

And sometimes, fast growth comes at the cost of quality. Take the Czorsztyn-Niedzica-Sromowce Complex for example. This is the dam provides only half the electricity it could have had it been built right. It was finished in 1994 and has a capacity of 160 million kWh of generation a year. That’s less than what Rhode Island uses in a month…

But Slovakia is certainly breaking away from the past, and it’s financial markets are trying to do the same. The SAX Index on the Bratislava Stock Exchange (BSSE) has climbed 3.54% in August, year over year.

That said, investors considering the Slovak exchange need to be extra dilligent. The BSSE has three different markets: the main listed market, the parallel listed market, and the regulated free market. It gets a bit confusing, and to top it off, most investors aren’t looking at companies… They’re looking at debt.

Also, as the first half of the year has been extremely scary for the rest of the world, the same goes for Slovakia, too.

If you’re interested in looking further at how the market has performed, check out the Semi-Annual Fackbook 2008. Lots of great information there. I’ll be digging through it for the next few days to see if there are any gems worth taking a closer look.

As of now, a better bet might be to look at the international companies investing in the area. Of course, technology and electronics companies are flocking to this region, like Canon (NYSE:CAJ), Ericsson (Nasdaq:ERIC), and Motorola (NYSE:MOT), and automanufacturing is also a big sector. You’ll recognize names like Nissan (Nasdaq:NSANY), Renault (Paris:RNO), Volvo (OTC:VOLVY).

With the euro coming in January, 2009, this place is on the tip of a lot of people’s tongues, and investors already have their ears to the door.

Source: International Investing: Crossing Borders

As affordable digital camera make professional photographers of us all, photofinishing shops have been forced to adjust their services to cope with changing customer needs. Now, new technology can manage these transactions, providing customers with more choice and convenience when processing their digital images.

This offers a great opportunity for growth in an otherwise stagnant market. Here’s Greg with the details…

Film cameras are now museum pieces. In just a few short years, the popularity of digital cameras has exploded. In fact, most people who take pictures have gone digital. A commanding majority of consumers, 82%, use digital cameras. And get this — more than 75% of these same shutterbugs own two or more digital cameras, according to a 2006 Photography.com study.

It’s undeniable: Snapping digital images and sharing them on the Web isn’t going away anytime soon. Everyone is now a “professional” photographer — involved in every part of the process, from snapping the pics to uploading and editing shots.

The digital camera universe is crowded with big names. Canon (NYSE:CAJ), Sony (NYSE:SNE) and Kodak (NYSE:EK) all command hefty market share, and we don’t see any opportunity for a microcap to steal a significant chunk of this market.

However, there is another way to play this sector. We just found one company that has been an innovative force in digital photography for years. And more importantly, the company has been virtually invisible to investors and the general public…until now.

For you, that means an early opportunity to get in on digital photography’s last true moneymaking opportunity. It’s a company experiencing triple-digit growth that’s set to send share prices soaring. That’s growth you won’t get with Eastman Kodak or Canon Inc.

To find this true penny stock opportunity, you have to dig — all the way down to the OTC Bulletin Board…

**********************************

A Secret Way to Multiply a 39% Gain… Into Nearly 314%

Every $5,000 in just the shares would have churned out $1,950. Not bad.

But anyone who moved on the LEAPS call option we recommended could have hauled in $15,700 over exactly the same time period. That’s eight times the gains.

Here’s how you can jump on the next one…

**********************************

Back in the old days, we would take our film to be processed at a one-hour film shop, drugstore or big-box retailer. These stores managed the entire film developing process, known as photofinishing.

As the industry has grown to include digital image files in place of film, these photofinishing centers have been expanded and upgraded to handle the new technology — both to process the digital images and to offer pictures to customers in CD form.

This is where our company comes in. It sees itself as a gateway for transactions, bringing together retailers and digital content to offer potential customers smarter, easier options when it comes to processing their digital images.

This tiny microcap’s technology allows retailers to receive digital image orders online, which can then be processed and either shipped or remain at the store for the customer to pick up. The company manages the entire process, from the nuts and bolts of the retailer’s Web site to the actual monitoring and pre-emptive maintenance of the digital equipment.

The company is the industry standard, attracting blue chip clientele across the globe. Its photo and digital media platforms are at work in more than 8,000 retail locations worldwide. Its customer list is a virtual who’s who in retail sector. Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT), Costco (NASDAQ:COST) and CVS (NYSE:CVS) are all customers.

That’s not all…the company has also announced deals with Kodak China, Kodak Australia and Sam’s Club here in the U.S. The opportunity in these deals is very real… These new contracts should help the company continue its incredible growth.

Here is when I would have told you this company if only I could. Unfortunately, it is so small, even if 5% of the Penny Sleuth’s readership buys stock, we’d really push the share price too high. So, I gave it to my Bulletin Board Elite readers. But, you aren’t out of luck just yet…

I also talked my publisher into a half-off deal, as you are probably already familiar. If you sign up for my OTC stock advisory by midnight tonight, you’ll receive a full six months for free. Just click here to see how it all works…

Source: Digital Photography’s Last Hidden Opportunity

Canon (NYSE: CAJ), Nissan(NASDAQ: NSANY), Hanes, Texhong Textile Group of China. Why are companies no longer building or expanding factories in China.

With $83 billion in 2007, China still is the most attractive destination for industrial investment in the world. But multinational companies have started hedging their bets in the face of soaring labor cost, inflation, and a strong yuan.

Caravan capitalists are diversifying out of China, establishing bases elsewhere in Asia.

Factory investments in low-skill, low-wage industries will migrate from China to Vietnam, which still offer foreign investors a corporate tax rate of zero for the first four years, and half the usual rate of 10 percent for the next four years.

And Cambodia, which has even lower labor cost, is already positioning itself as a lower-cost alternative to Vietnam.

None of this is good news for the American or European manufacturing sector as politicians seek to re-establish a 1970s utopia by raising labor cost. But once energy prices stabilize as the speculation-based oil bubble implodes, we’re looking at continued low prices for Asian imports as a long-term check on U.S. inflation.

Source: The Next China: Vietnam Is Set to Grow

But China is coping with a number of growing pains that include higher wages and a strengthening currency. That has left a void for other emerging markets to step up and take the place of a multinational corporation’s best friend.

China used to be thought of as the world’s factory floor – a haven of cheap labor and minimal regulatory oversight for large multinational companies. The result was a massive influx of foreign investment and rapid gross domestic product (GDP) growth. But the country has outgrown this model and is shifting from low-skill, labor-intensive industries to a higher standard of living.

A recent study by the Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. consulting firm found that wages in China rose 9.1% for white-collar managers and 7.6% for blue-collar workers over the past year, the San Diego Tribune reported.

“The days of massive labor oversupply are over,” Cai Fang from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said at a recent economic forum. “According to my research and relevant surveys, the wages of China’s migrant workers rose 2.8% in 2004, 6.5% in 2005, 11.5% in 2006 and 20% in 2007.”

Part of the reason is that China’s notorious one-child family planning policy is beginning to cause a labor shortage.

Last year, Zhang Yi from the Institute of Population and Labor Economics, told Asia News that the one-child policy has produced an effect where fewer rural workers are going into cities to work.

“In the beginning, it was believed that our big population would be a hindrance to our economic development. But over the past decades, experience has told us otherwise,” Zhang said. “Japan, for instance, has little in the way of resources and boasts one of the highest population densities in the world, but it is a thriving economy and one of the richest nations. Labor is the most important source of wealth.”

By 2025, China’s labor force will have been shrinking in total size for more than a decade, according to Zhang.

Another problem is inflation, as high consumer and producer prices are spilling over into wages. Consumer prices rose 7.7% in May after inflation reached a 12-year high of 8.7% in February. China’s producer price index rose 8.2% in May, the highest in more than three years.

Inflation also makes exports more expensive for foreign nations, particularly the United States. The Labor Department said last week that prices for Chinese-made goods were 4.6% higher in May than a year earlier.

Meanwhile, the dollar has fallen 20% versus the yuan since 2005. Yesterday (Thursday), The yuan rose to its strongest position ever, trading at 6.8762 against the U.S. currency as of 11:53 a.m. in Shanghai, Bloomberg News reported.

Companies used to avoid higher wages by moving further inland, but even rural villages are finding it difficult to muster up enough manpower to furnish factories. And now new government regulations and labor laws have companies retreating beyond the country’s borders.

Earlier this year, revisions to China’s labor laws greatly expanded the rights of workers and increased their bargaining power. A loophole that had allowed companies to layoff employees hired on temporary or fixed-term basis without compensation has been closed. Workers employed by a company for 10 years are now entitled to one month’s severance pay for every year worked. And employers are required to consult an “employee representative congress” with regard to changes in hours, benefits and compensation.

Willy Lin, managing director of Milo’s Knitwear (International) Group, told the Financial Times that the new labor law could increase costs by as much as 8% in 2008. However, in collusion with a higher minimum wage, increased social security payments and outside factors such as the appreciation of the yuan, Lin thinks the price paid by Chinese employers could be much greater.

“We estimate that, added together, labor costs [in mainland China] will be close to 40% higher for this year,” he said.

China is also phasing out its practice of charging lower corporate tax rates for foreign companies. And while it does so, other Asian countries are beginning to look more appealing to foreign companies.

Here are a few:

The Next China

Vietnam had a banner year in 2007, attracting $20.3 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI). But the country already expects to have accumulated another $23 billion in FDI in just the first half of 2008.

Canon Inc. (ADR: CAJ), for instance, is no longer expanding its operations in China, but it is doubling its Vietnamese workforce to 8,000 at a printer factory outside Hanoi, the New York Times reported. Both Nissan Motor Co. (ADR: NSANY) and Hanesbrands Inc. (HBI) and China’s own Texhong Textile Group Ltd. are also reportedly expanding their operations nearby.

“We found more ready availability of both land and labor in both Vietnam and Thailand,” Gerald Evans, president of Asia business development at Hanesbrands, told The Times.

Where as unskilled Chinese workers now earn $120 a month for a standard 40-hour workweek, factory workers in Vietnam make as little as $50 a month for a 48-hour workweek that includes a full day on Saturdays, the paper said.

Other facts to consider about Vietnam:

• More than half its population is under 25-years old.
• At 2%, Vietnam’s unemployment rate is among the world’s lowest, trailing only Azerbaijan, Cuba, Iceland, Andorra and Liechtenstein.
• Its labor and production costs are roughly one-third of China’s, making Vietnam a worthy contestant in the contest for new production sites.
• Its economy was able to shrug off the 1997 “Asian Contagion” financial crisis and averaged 5.5% growth for each of the next two years – while other nations in the region saw their own economies contract.
• Since January 2007, it’s been member of the World Trade Organization.
  ]]> http://www.contrarianprofits.com/articles/multinational-corporations-step-up-the-search-for-the-next-china/3108/feed 0