Business skills beyond borders

The fast growing People’s Republic of China
Wang Kiuhli, Economic Attaché, and Guo Zhihui, Third Secretary, from the Embassy of People’s Republic of China visited the class at the University of Nicosia. Mrs. Zhihui made an interesting presentation about China with information about the country’s economy, culture and lifestyle.
While China is the fastest growing economy today, with 9.2% GDP increase for 2011, the per capita income for 2011 was $8,400. For Cyprus, the same year, the GDP growth rate was 0% and the per capita was $29,100. After their presentation, Kiuhli and Wang answered several questions, concluding with the phrase “Welcome to China!”
“Fifty years ago the most Chinese bathed three times in their lifetime. Once when they were born, once when they married and when they died,” Zhihui said, making an impression on the students and showed how many radical changes have occurred in China in the last decades. The visit triggered an interest to visit that wonderful country.
“For the moment we have the opportunity to travel mentally in China with the interesting books that we received as gift from the embassy,” said one of the students.

Israel: a memorable and authentic Shabbat Dinner
The Israel Embassy’s Deputy Head of Mission, Shani Cooper- Zubida, hosted a business meal for the students. The meeting was held at the Curveball offices in Strovolos where the students had the opportunity to learn about the culture of Israel their ability to train and get highly educated inhabitants, also because as a country it aims to be innovative.
At the presentation Mrs. Cooper provided with important information about the economy of Israel showing how the country manages to utilize its people and capabilities and get the best possible outcome not only for the state but for the inhabitants as well. Israel is a diversified country, with various ethnicities being represented. A lot of religious groups exist in the country and the State of Israel makes it possible to accommodate every single one.
Israel has been an excellent example of economic entrepreneurship, innovation and growth since its formation in 1948. At the moment the rating agencies have rated the Israel economy at the top (Moody’s A1, Standard and Poor’s A+ and Fitch A). The real GDP and the per capita GDP has grown steadily in the last few years, whereas unemployment has decreased significantly with the latest figure at 5.5% of the population. What was quite impressive was that Israel had a positive figure of 0,8% in 2009 whereas the rest of the world had a stagnation of 3.4%.
Another key point was the entrepreneurship that Israel has achieved during the last 20 years. In the 1950s their key industry was agriculture and in the 1980s this has shifted to the high-tech industry. Nowadays, Israel has occupied itself with telecommunications, software, data security, electronics, Internet, agro-technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, etc.
After the presentation, and since it was Friday evening after sundown, an original Shabbat dinner was laid out to commemorate the beginning of the Sabbath. Mrs. Cooper blessed in the traditional way the bread and the wine. Afterwards she passed the same wine glass for everyone to drink from the oldest to the youngest as is the tradition, and after dipping it in salt, shared the bread with everybody before commencing a rich dinner with a variety of delicious traditional dishes of Israel and a lot of Israeli wine.

A culinary journey to Incredible India
The High Commissioner of India, Ashok Kumar, provided an excellent presentation and showed a video entitled ‘’The India Show”. The presentation concentrated on India’s economy that was expected to register a growth rate of 6.9% in 2011-2012. The GDP growth decreased by 2.1% in 2011 in relation to what they expected and this is a result of the economic crisis in 2008, which affected exports.
India has a good investment sector, good banking sector, good real estate, outsourcing engineering projects, invest in R&D, high quality fast innovation on luxury car market — they are selling the cheapest car in the world by a company named TATA. Also, India is third in the word in the medical sector, because of their competitive prices and quality, which is their competitive strength. India is considered to be the second faster growing country and has the fourth largest economy after China and the USA, and it is expected to overtake China’s economy by 2050.
After the presentation, the High Commissioner and Mrs. Kumar hosted the students who had the chance to network with key Indian business people and other guests.
“We also had a delicious and a rich buffet cuisine from the New Delhi region prepared especially for us by Mrs. Kumar. It was a unique and an unforgettable experience for us to taste the Indian traditional food and experience the warm Indian hospitality,” said one of the students.