By Kellisha Wells, Khadija McKay, Safiyya Mohammed and Zachary Subran-Ganesh
(CTT’s 2014 D&I Summer Interns)
The IDB is absolutely the best place anyone could wish to be a summer intern. The staff was extremely friendly and willing to share their knowledge with us. The environment made it possible for us to express ourselves without inhibition. They encouraged active participation in the daily operations of the Bank. We were given the opportunity to attend internal and external meetings which provided us with very valuable insight into the way projects and subsequent development activities are developed and undertaken.
We also had the opportunity to learn Spanish which gave us a chance to expand our skill-set and make ourselves marketable. It encouraged us to look beyond our local context and consider cultures outside of our own.
The experience overall was very good and we are all very grateful that we were granted this opportunity.
The process of moivng city centres isn’t unique to Guiyang. Many cities are experiencing a rapid increase in housing and commercial property stock, which seems tied to plans for a large amount of rural-urban migration, and cross-city urban migration.I am mainly based in the Northeast, and see this policy across several cities here. Popular incentives help in driving this, and also drive an increasing proportion of dormant property, incentives include offers such as Buy a home at a minimum price of XXX Yuan, and you’ll have a local hukou. In addition, local residential prices in the Northeast have boomed over the past H1, while commercial prices have remained stagnant, and industrial prices have decreased slightly, from the more reliable anecdotal sources I’m in contact with, a strange end-of-cycle pattern for real estate, suggesting we’re not end of cycle, or this cycle bears atypical characteristics.I would agree with your general point on NPLs, and would add that slower growth affectstax revenues significantly. Reports earlier this month suggested a significant fall in tax revenues in early 2009 drove the tax office increase inspections substantially. Revenues from income tax and value added taxes (of which value added tax is more substantial) would be affected by a sustained lack of growth.