Regional Updates MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST/NORTH AFRICA After the problem with the Ever Given in the Suez Canal, the Egyptian government is said to be looking at the possibility of expanding the canal. There has also been some talk of a new canal from the Gulf of Aqaba, through Israel, to the Mediterranean. Officials in Egypt have been quoted as saying that the grounding was the result of an error by the ship’s captain and not due to the high winds and the dust storm. Egypt has started a new system of import pre-clearance that it says will “modernize and automate customs administration, simplify procedures and reduce clearance times”. The system started on 1 April on a test basis with ful...
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.