Chapter 215 Prosperity and Hidden Dangers
Hongsavadi.
Yangon, a commodity trading center.
Ahasi, president of Persian International Trading Company, has completed another purchase of 60,000 tons of palm oil.
He walked out of the office provided by the trade center.
Then I saw Lai Shengli, the business manager of COFCO Group in Hongsawadi, also walking out of the office.
"Hello, Manager Lai." Ahasi greeted in English with a smile.
Lai Shengli also had a smile on his face: "President Ahasi, do you want to have dinner together?"
"Oh? No problem."
The two sides left the trade center building together.
The Yangon Commodity Trade Center is a special agency officially established by Hongsawady, but this agency has currently been contracted to the Aoba Group.
All international bulk commodity import and export trade in Hongsawadi needs to be carried out in the Yangon Commodity Trading Center.
Here we have set up a price scrolling hall for domestic and foreign commodities (including a consultation front desk), a membership application and review office, an import procedures office, an export procedures office, a data management office, a member-only office, a member-only trading room, and business negotiation rooms (both exclusive and public).
Hundreds of large companies, including COFCO Group, Samsung Group, Mitsubishi Corporation, Temasek Investments, Charoen Pokphand Group, Hong Leong Group, Coca-Cola, Unilever ABCD, Roche Pharmaceuticals, Tata Group, and Aramco, have set up offices or branches here.
The reason they set up offices or branches in Yangon is naturally for profit.
Walking out of the member-only office area, you arrive at the trading hall.
The LID display screen, which consists of commodity sections, is hung on a bracket above the hall, scrolling the real-time prices of global commodities.
The hall is equipped with thousands of seats for temporary use by customers in need.
Lai Shengli took a look at the price scrolling information of the grain sector.
It was found that the soybean trading price remained high with no signs of decline, while the rice price was only 3,300 to 3,500 gold yuan per ton.
"Manager Lai, you imported a lot of food this year!"
"There are too many people, there is nothing we can do." Lai Shengli replied with a smile. The import quantity cannot be concealed at all. Even if COFCO does not disclose it, Hongsavadi will also disclose some transaction data.
Ahasi also showed a helpless expression: "It's the same in our country. We can only reserve more. Fortunately, Hongsavadi agreed to use natural gas and oil for settlement."
"I don't know if Hongsavadi can withstand the pressure." Lai Shengli sighed with some concern.
Ahasi is well aware of this. Although Hongsavadi's trade with other countries is booming, the gold standard currency, the Jinyuan, is itself a provocation to the hegemony of the US dollar.
If America had not been overwhelmed by other things, Hongsavadi would have been besieged by America and his followers long ago.
Even Persia was not so brave.
Many people previously thought that Hongsavadi’s gold standard currency was most likely just a small-scale operation in their home country.
The current situation has exceeded the expectations of many forces.
With more and more strong commodities in Hongsavadi and the gradual increase in gold reserves, the scale of gold yuan issued by Hongsavadi has officially exceeded 500 billion.
Among them, Luzon reserved about 73 billion gold yuan, the Bank of China reserved 27.3 billion gold yuan, and Siam also reserved 13.3 billion gold yuan.
If this trend continues, Hongsavadi's gold and silver will begin to threaten the hegemony of the US dollar.
This is also the reason why Lai Shengli is worried.
Once America has time, it will certainly suppress Hongsavadi with all its might, and even does not rule out the possibility of using force.
Now, much of Hongsavadi’s grain, soybean meal, and corn kernels are exported to China, greatly filling the soybean supply gap of ABCD.
Light industrial products, mechanical equipment and the like produced by Chinese enterprises are exported in large quantities to Hongsavadi. The total trade volume between the two sides in the first eight months of this year has reached 173.6 billion yuan.
Although Chinese companies did not gain much trade surplus due to Hongsavadi's trade balance strategy, at least both sides exchanged the materials they wanted.
Half a month ago, Lai Shengli also signed a soybean purchasing contract for next year on behalf of COFCO Group and the three major groups of Hongsavady.
At a price of 6,250 gold yuan per ton, equivalent to 4,500 Hua yuan per ton, 15 million tons of genetically modified soybeans were purchased from the three major groups in Hongsavady.
As for whether the three major groups can supply such a large amount of soybeans and how to expand production capacity, there is actually no problem at all.
After the integration and development of the three major groups, Hongsavadi currently has 20.34 million hectares of arable land, equivalent to about 300 million mu. In addition, there are 10 million hectares of wasteland, sparse woodland, and hillside land that can be developed.
Most of these 300 million mu of arable land are planted only once a year.
With the improvement of various water conservancy facilities and infrastructure, and the localization of pesticides and fertilizers, two or even three seasons a year may be possible in the future.
In other words, the total arable land potential of Hongsawadi, if based on the per-mu yield of the North China Plain as a reference base value, would be approximately equivalent to 1.35 billion mu under extreme development conditions.
Next year, the three major groups plan to adopt one season of corn and one season of soybeans to comprehensively integrate the current 40 million mu of corn fields and 20 million mu of soybean fields.
In addition, Qingye Group's genetically modified soybeans can currently reach a yield of about 360 kilograms per mu. Planting soybeans in one season on 60 million mu of arable land can produce about 21 million tons of soybeans.
Except for the 5 to 6 million tons of soybeans used by the three major groups themselves, the rest can be exported to COFCO Group.
Of course, this is the case when there are no natural disasters. The two parties have also agreed in the contract on production cuts due to extreme weather.
Fortunately, there is relatively little extreme weather in Hongsavadi, and typhoons rarely visit Hongsavadi. As long as the drought problem in the dry season is dealt with well, there will basically be no major problems.
Therefore, Lai Shengli is now worried about America.
There are no natural disasters in Hongsavadi, but that doesn't necessarily mean there are no man-made disasters.
The force most likely to cause trouble is none other than America.
Previously, ABCD suffered heavy losses on soybeans and rice, and had planned to take advantage of the surge in international food prices to make a comeback.
But now it’s really a bummer.
The long-term soybean contract signed with Luzon previously forced them to supply Luzon with five to six million tons of soybeans every year at a low price.
After the soybean producing areas in North America were affected by mildew, the soybean producing areas in South America could not escape the disaster. These two soybean producing areas are both controlled by ABCD. This year, the overall soybean production has decreased by more than 60-70%.
Many farms had to switch to growing corn, peanuts and wheat.
There was a massive reduction in soybean production and prices went up.
But ABCD was not happy because of the long-term contract with Luzon, which required them to supply 5 to 6 million tons of soybeans to Luzon every year at a price of US$425 per ton (equivalent to 3,800 gold yuan).
On the other hand, soybeans and other grains from Hongsavadi, as well as rice from Siam, have greatly filled the production capacity gap of ABCD.
The current situation is that global food prices are running high, but ABCD has only gained a small part of the benefits.
Obviously, the existence of Hongsavadi and Siam has affected the rapid recovery of ABCD.
Based on Lai Shengli's understanding of those pirates, ABCD will definitely not give up, nor will they look for problems within themselves. Instead, they will try to mess up Hongsavady and Siam, or other important food exporting countries.
As long as problems arise in these two important food exporting countries, global food prices will surge again, and ABCD will be able to make a strong .
It is precisely because of this potential crisis that COFCO Group has been forced to accelerate food purchases in Southeast Asia and increase its own reserve limit to cope with future emergencies.
