Good morning and welcome to the Friday Brief.
This week we’d like to remind you that our annual member’s golf day will take place on Wednesday 16th September 2015 which will be held at the prestigious Warwickshire Golf & Country Club. It is set to be another fantastic day of golf and network and one of the real highlights of our events calendar. So don’t delay, book your place today over at the MTA website www.mta.org.uk/annual-mta-members-golf-day-2015.
Kawasaki Robotics (UK) Ltd are hosting an Open House on Tuesday 15th and Wednesday 16th of September to launch 4 new robot ranges and our new space saving Universal Controller. If you are interested in attending please contact Susan Capper on 01925 713000 or email susancapper@kawasakirobotuk.com.
Following the success of the GREAT Energy Summit Prague 2014 to High Growth Europe, UKTI will be organising the GREAT Low Carbon Business Exchange, a trade delegation of British companies to Romania – with a particular focus on the Low Carbon sector in Central and Eastern Europe. For more details please see the story below.
Our main item this week is a special piece looking at the economic events of the past week in China and their likely impact on the rest of the world. To some extent, this is the markets, especially those outside of China, catching-up with the reality of how the Chinese authorities have been progressing in their attempts to re-balance their economy, but it has also become mixed up with a classic stock-market bubble which has been going on in China for a year or so. We will get a clearer picture of the implications for the global manufacturing sector over the next couple of weeks as we start work on the next round of our forecasts, but the picture is going to be mixed with some economies benefiting from the lower oil and commodity prices that the reduced demand from China is generating, but balanced by the effect of lower world trade levels that come as an inevitable consequence.
There was good news this week with the US GDP numbers being revised up, although this had the effect of further strengthening the US Dollar which won’t encourage export growth for the US - ironically this was part of the growth story for the latest quarter. We also have updates on the GDP figures for the UK and Europe and the CBI Industrial Trends which points to steady, if not spectacular, growth for the UK manufacturing sector.
And that’s all for this week, have a great bank holiday weekend and we’ll be back next Friday.