Business

BEIJING, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping's first major reform plans a decade ago were also his boldest, envisaging a transition to a Western-style free market economy driven by services and consumption by 2020.

The 60-point agenda was meant to fix an obsolete growth model better suited to less developed countries - however, most of those reforms have gone nowhere leaving the economy largely reliant on older policies that have only added to China's massive debt pile and industrial overcapacity.

02 September 2023; MEMO: Russian President, Vladimir Putin, will hold talks with Turkish President, Tayyip Erdogan, on Monday in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, the Kremlin said on Friday, Reuters reports.

30 August 2023; MEMO: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said that the world with its different blocs and powers “will not be the same after the expansion of the BRICS group” during the recent South African summit. President da Silva, otherwise known simply as Lula, made his comment in a weekly video presenting the most prominent local developments, Anadolu has reported. 

31 August 2023; MEMO: The European Commission is looking “very closely” at whether the terms of a controversial gas deal between Bulgaria and Turkiye breach the EU’s competition rules, Energy Intelligence reports.

According to the report, Bulgaria wants to book capacity of about one bcm of gas per year at Turkish LNG terminals and seal import deals with European and United States LNG producers.

31 August 2023; MEMO: Domestic, Asian and European companies, Thursday, signed seven major mining contracts worth around $6.5 billion with the interim Taliban administration in Afghanistan, Anadolu Agency reports.

31 August 2023; MEMO: Electricity generation from Turkiye’s first nuclear power plant could be sooner than initially planned, Akkuyu Nuclear Deputy Construction Director, Dmitry Romanets, told Anadolu at the country’s largest technology and aerospace event, TEKNOFEST, on Thursday.

31 August 2023; MEMO: Russia sees no sign that it will receive the guarantees that will allow it to resume a deal permitting Ukraine, one of the world’s main exporters, to ship grain through the Black Sea, Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on Thursday, Reuters reports.

01 September 2023; MEMO: The first aircraft of Turkiye’s indigenous fighter program, the TF-X, sits in a hangar ahead of its maiden flight at the end of the year. But fiscal problems could stand in the way of its success, according to an analyst, even as the country’s President seeks partners for the program, Defence News reports.

01 September 2023; MEMO: Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, said on Friday that “the practical work” on supply of Russian grain to six African countries has already begun, Anadolu Agency reports.

Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Eritrea, Mali, Somalia and Zimbabwe will each get 50,000 tons of grain free of charge in the coming months, he said at an event in Moscow.

29 August 2023; MEMO: Egypt plans to drill 35 gas wells by mid-2025, according to the country’s Petroleum Minister on Tuesday, Anadolu Agency reports.

“The drilling of the 35 wells will cost over $1.5 billion in investments, and aims to increase the country’s production and reserves,” Tarek El-Molla said in a statement.

The drilling of the new well is part of a plan worth $1.9 billion to explore for gas in the Mediterranean and the Delta.