Ikea Signs Agreement To Enter Indonesia

Swedish housewares chain IKEA plans to enter Indonesia, the latest attempt by an international company to tap the country’s growing middle class.

Indonesia’s PT Hero Supermarket, one of the country’s three largest retailers by sales, said Monday that it had signed a franchise agreement with Inter IKEA Systems BV.

The agreement will run from 2014 through 2021, Hero said. The company didn’t elaborate on the number or location of the stores. Hero has nearly 500 stores across the Indonesian archipelago, including Giant Hypermarkets, Hero Supermarkets, Starmart convenience stores and Guardian drugstores.

Within Southeast Asia, IKEA already sells its inexpensive, assemble-it-yourself furniture in Malaysia and Singapore.

Indonesia’s booming middle class, which is spending like never before on products as diverse as cellphones and cars, is one of the reasons the country’s economy has been relatively sheltered from the global slowdown.

With domestic private consumption—rather than exports—contributing to more than half of the country’s gross domestic product, the Indonesian economy expanded 6.5% last year and is expected to grow more than 6% this year. Indonesia’s population of 240 million makes it the world’s fourth-largest country, after China, India and the U.S. Economists expect the archipelago’s percapita consumption to double over the next three years to $ 3,000 a year.

IKEA isn’t the only company targeting growth from Indonesia’s middle class. Japan’s Honda Motor Co., Nissan Motor Co. and electronics maker Sharp Corp. this month announced plans to expand in Indonesia, investing more than $1 billion in total. Foreign direct investment in the country, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, stood at a record $20 billion last year.

IKEA has done well in other emerging markets. Its sales in China rose 20% in the fiscal year ended Aug. 31 and are up a further 20% so far this year, said the firm’s China retail manager, Gillian Drakeford.

The Wall Street Journal March 2012

Translate the text into Russian: № 13

Chinese Prospects for Stimulus Rise

AFTER running huge trade surpluses for more than a decade, which powered growth at home and complaints abroad of unfair trading practices, China’s trade sector fell deeply into the red last month, raising questions about whether China’s economy is tailing off more rapidly than anticipated.

The weekend report of a $ 31.5 billion trade deficit for February was substantially larger than most analysts expected and followed a string of other disappointing economic data, including weak growth in car sales, industrial production and retail sales, and the continuation of a steep fall in property sales. The only bright economic star was that inflation slackened more rapidly than expected.

The overall results prompted analysts to predict that China would ease monetary policy over the coming months to bolster growth, but few expected a package remotely on the scale of the stimulus spending and lending that occurred in 2009 and 2010 in response to the global financial crisis.

Indeed, early last week Premier Wen Jiabao reduced the country’s growth target to 7.5% from the 8% annual target he has used since 2005

On the trade front, China’s $31.5 billion deficit is the largest monthly deficit since at least 2000, when the Chinese economy was much smaller, and is likely China’s largest monthly deficit ever. China posted a $ 27.3 billion surplus in January, according to data released by the General Administration of Customs. Weak growth in exports for China, the world’s factory and second largest economy after the U. S., suggests that global demand remains weak.

China doesn’t rely as much on foreign trade for growth as it did during the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, when the slowdown in exports cost at least 20 million jobs, according to Chinese surveys. Even so, the weak trade figures are likely to stiffen the resolve of Chinese leaders to greatly reduce the pace of appreciation of the yuan against the dollar from the 4.7% gain of 2011.

The Wall Street Journal March 2012

Translate the text into Russian: № 14