Trust

WHAT'S NEXT?: Trust in politicians and experts is falling fast. Privacy is under threat and may lead to a collapse of confidence in technology as the world is increasingly networked. Unless reliability, integrity, and surety can keep pace with accelerating change trust in anything but oneself may disappear.

• [New] Sub-Saharan Africa's growth is expected to improve to 2.9% this year, assuming investor confidence improves in some large economies, energy bottlenecks ease, a pick up in oil production contributes to a recovery in oil exporters and robust growth continues among agricultural commodity exporters.
• [New] If such a rollback of trade war did occur, it might provide a significant boost to business confidence, economic activity, and EPS.
• Increased reliability at US PDH plants in recent years has resulted in sharp increases in propylene stocks in 2019, pressuring down prices, and some market participants expect high inventories to persist into 2020.
• The continued reliance of global financial markets on Libor poses risks to financial stability that can be reduced only through a transition to alternative benchmark rates by end-2021.
• The main risks to Oman's economic outlook arise from a delay in fiscal adjustment, which will impede debt reduction and negatively affect business confidence and external financing costs in an adverse global environment.
• Gartner predicts that by 2023, over 75% of large organizations will hire AI behavior forensic, privacy, and customer trust specialists to reduce brand and reputation risk.
• Central banks in Canada and the U.S. are expected to continue raising rates in 2019 in order to start the long process of returning to more normal conditions.
• The OECD now expects a slowing in the world economy to 2.9% this year and 3.0% in 2020, in response to the escalating trade policy tensions that affect confidence and investment and create policy uncertainty.
• Additional financial commitments at COP25 would build trust and empower more countries to strengthen their climate commitments in 2020.
• Asian airlines are cautious about the outlook for 2020 after trade disputes undermined confidence and led to economic growth below initial forecasts this year.
• The Australian economy continued to remain weak in Q2 2019 with gross domestic product (GDP) growth falling to 1.4 percent year on year: Consumer and business confidence did not improve despite recent stimulus, but is expected to lift over the outlook period.
• Confidence in a 2020 growth rebound, in the wake of fading geopolitical tail risks and the effective transmission of central bank easing to global financial markets, has gained momentum among market participants.
• The increased VRET will create around 24,000 jobs by 2030 in Australia and provides certainty and investor confidence for the renewable energy industry, which is expected to drive an additional $5.8 billion in economic activity in Victoria.
• As oil and gas producers meet the challenge of reducing carbon emissions in coming years, challenges in reliability of production and issues with integrating renewable sources into the existing energy grid will ensure that oil and gas remain indispensable sources of energy worldwide.
• Despite global economic concerns and a string of restructuring announcements, investments were made around the globe in electric vehicles and related parts, anticipating an increasing demand in coming years.
• The global reliance on petroleum as a share of world energy use will decline in the coming decades, as more governments impose restrictions on carbon emissions and as consumers, especially in the developed world, switch from oil-powered to electric vehicles.
• 53 percent of companies have placed blockchain as one of their top five priorities, and Gartner reported that blockchain technology will create more than $176 billion worth of business value by 2025 and $3.1 trillion by 2030.
• Jio will target over 1 billion IoT connections to create an additional annual revenue of US$2.8 billion over the next two years.
• In the last five years, Reliance Industries invested nearly US$42 billion into Reliance Jio Infocomm to operate national LTE networks and will now be laying fiber networks in 1600 cities.
• Power reliability will get a $1 billion boost as part of the Liberal National Government's plan to ensure Australian households, businesses and industries get a fair deal on energy.
• By 2022, 30 percent of companies will use explainable AI models in order to build trust with their clients.

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Last updated: 19 January 2020