Guidebook Economist Style: Doing business in Sydney

The Economist is a regular podcast listen of mine. This week "Doing Business in Sydney" by the Economist appeared in my iTunes podcast feed. Is a ten minute Sydney guide by the Economist (odeo player with audio below) covering airport practicalities, business culture, restaurant and hotel recommendations and side trips if you have a moment. Interesting that the Economist is getting into the very crowded guidebook space. As to the content itself as a Sydney native I agreed with most of the recommendations except the comments on the airport.

Comments like

1. "by and large waiting times at immigration are not that onerous"; and
2. '"usually no wait for taxi's" [at the airport].

....are scandalous untruths. A business or leisure traveller to Sydney can be practically 100% guaranteed of great weather, amazing views, entertaining people and a relaxed but serious business environment. Hopefully all that will be enough to help the traveller recover from the endless queues, scans and form checkers of Sydney Airport Immigration, Customs and Quarantine and the most inefficient taxi rank system this side of the sub-continent.

M-Pesa and the Special Report on Telecoms in Emerging Markets

An interesting special report from The Economist Sep 26th 2009, on Telecoms in the emerging markets on how information makes markets more efficient and how mobild phone penetration in developing countries affect GDP. Examples of mobile money from Kenya where half of the population have phones, and 20% of the population uses phones for mobile money with M-Pesa which is different from buying air time.

M-Pesa replaces bank accounts with mobile bank accounts that are free of charge. Transactions (not free of charge) are performed with SMS which are sent by a little application on the SIM card developed by Sagentia (later transferring to IBM) for Vodafone. The concept was created to allow microfinance borrowers to receive and repay loans and has evolved into banking services enabling users to deposit and withdraw money, transfer money to other users and non-users, pay bills, and purchase airtime.

"If I want to send $20 to my mother back at home in a village, I go to the guy on the corner where I buy my scratch cards and I give him the money and he types a few things into his handset and i get a message saying that my money has gone into my mobile account and I can then by sending another little text message send a message to my mum that says here is the $20 and then she takes that message to the phone operator in her village who gives her the cash. Much cheaper, faster and more reliable than the alternatives."

More reading:

A summary of the report and the full report.

Related post:

Microfinance - Providing capital and services in new ways

The Airline Industry - Economist Style

Interesting little podcast here from the Economist speaking to Paul Markillie the author of their recent report on the aviation industry.

Couple of points from the interview

• On the whole the industry is carrying $200 billion dollars in debt;
• It was a fantastic year for turnover with more than $473 billion in revenues however this generated only a a profit of $5billion for a net margin <1%;
• Continues the hype build up on the Beoing Dreamliner on fuel efficiency and the supposed increased consumer comfort from the carbon fibre hull;
• Asian aviation market will be bigger than US domestic by 2010; and
  
• The airline industry is unique in that it is a mature industry but no one carrier owns more than a few percentage points of the market. This is of course caused by the the obsession of nations to restrict ownership and consolidation. As Markville notes

"as the result you have an industry that brought the world globalisation but has been unable to globalise".

What a staggering industry. Such a critical part of the model world, employs so many people, pays such high salaries for executives and generates so much for the media industry through advertising revenues, yet is such an inefficient and poorly structured industry.

Worth eight and half minutes of your time if you enjoy tracking the airline industry