1. INTRODUCTION

The Country Analysis Report constitutes a major part of the in-course assessments in the Global Business Environment module. It consists of one written report and one formal presentation, which account for a total of 30% of the total assessment.

Students shall work in groups of 4 or 5 members. Each group will conduct an in-depth analysis of a country assigned by their respective tutors.

The focus of this project is to engage in a feasibility study from a macro-environmental study perspective and highlight the various benefits and risks in two specific countries. The entire analysis requires organisation of data, critical data analysis, interpretation of data, drawing meaningful causal relationships among the variables/environmental forces and determining the level of attractiveness and competitiveness of the investment.

2. CASE STUDY

Gourmet Ateliar (Hong Kong) Ltd., founded in 1955 is one of the region’s primary and premium food manufacturers and distributors. Its clients range from international chain hotels to Michelin star restaurants to fast food chains and caterers.

The company carries only the best international brands of meat, poultry, seafood and dairy. Besides distributing international brands of gourmet fine foods, Gourmet Ateliar has its very own house brands of processed meat, frozen food and beverages. The company presently has 10 food processing plants in China and employs over 5,000 people.

In 2008, an investment company in South Africa, NetVest Group Limited saw the potential of Gourmet Ateliar and acquired 100% ownership with full voting rights of the company. The company’s cashflow and trades are in US$.

In recent years, costs have risen sharply across China. The Chinese government has implemented a slew of measures to counter inflation. One such measure is the re-valuation of the Chinese currency albeit slowly, but it has since strengthened against the US dollar to an all-time high.

Against the strengthening Chinese currency and rising labour costs in China, NetVest is increasingly concerned over the dwindling profits of Gourmet Ateliar in the past two years. In addition, to counter the recent food frauds happening in China, Gourmet Ateliar has been stepping up its quality checks and food processing plants audits, which in turn translates to an even higher operational costs.

These factors have added pressure to business operations in China and affected their competitiveness in exporting goods overseas. NetVest Group Limited wishes to engage in a feasibility project to examine the possibility of investing in a new food processing plant outside China in order to hedge against the predominant risks of rising costs in China. The company has identified two possible countries that they would like to explore in greater detail: Indonesia or Thailand.

NetVest Group wishes to seek your team’s help to determine whether it is feasible to invest in the two countries mentioned above. Your project team will analyse the macroeconomic attractiveness of these 2 countries, compare their country level indicators and recommend whether it is advisable to shift Gourmet Ateliar’s food processing plant to either of the 2 countries. As these two countries are huge, you should also recommend a suitable city within the country at the end of the report. This will make the analysis more meaningful (eg. Surabaya in Indonesia)

3. KEY LEARNING OBJECTIVES

The Country Analysis project aims to achieve the following key learning objectives:

1. Enhance your knowledge of the country under study.

2. Sharpen your critical thinking and analytical skills in evaluating the macro-environmental variables of the country through the use of various analytical methods, inter-country data comparison, use of international published reports such as BERI, PERC, EIU, etc.

3. Develop your research skills (both primary and secondary) and ability to identify useful resources on the target country. Exercise your judgement and decision making through identifying crucial factors and implication to the business.

4. Explore your creativity and improve your communication skills through the delivery of a professional presentation on your findings to your fellow classmates, who will learn from the lesson.

4. ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

There are TWO parts to this project, a written report and a formal presentation to your client. The purpose of both parts has been outlined previously in the learning objectives.

I) Country Analysis Report (Group Assessment- 65 marks)

Each group is required to conduct a country analysis from both primary and secondary sources for this project. The country analysis should include the following aspects:

A. Executive Summary – A one page summary on the key points of the report.

B. Introduction and Background information – State clearly the intent of the report. Provide a brief overview of the country’s demographic and geographic (e.g. characteristics, size and location) features.

C. Economic & Social Environment Analysis – Discuss and analyse the relevant key economic and social indicators in that country.

Note: When analysing the economic indicators, you should attempt to consider the implication of the trends. How would they impact the decision for NetVest Group Limited to invest in that country?

D. Political & Legal Environment Analysis – Discuss the political and legal environments and assess the relevant political policies and risks that will adversely affect businesses.

E. Financial Environment Analysis – Discuss and analyse the country’s financial system and financial indicators such as inflation rate, interest rate movements and exchange rate fluctuations pertaining to NetVest’s cash flow in USD. The analysis can include historical trend and any future projections over the next 3 years (2015 to 2017) of relevant financial statistics.

F. Government regulations and initiatives – Discuss any government regulations such as trade promotion or intervention initiatives that would affect the client’s decisions to set up the food processing plant in that country (e.g. tax incentives and/or other programs to promote FDI).

G. Risk Analysis and Conclusion - You should now “draw together” all the information you have researched in the preceding sections and assess the overall risk of the country. You may wish to reference the techniques/reports published by international organisations such as the Business Environmental Risk Index (BERI), PERC, EIU, etc.

Finally, make a recommendation to NetVest Group Limited on your choice of country and a city within the country.

General Note on Written Report: Your report should not only be reporting factual information. You are expected to evaluate and comment on the trends and their impact on investment and trade opportunities. Your research materials must be relevant to the development of your report. Moreover, it should demonstrate your ability to interpret and analyse your research findings. If possible, all interpretations and analysis must have supporting data. In addition, bibliography and proper citation are essential for a good report. Marks will be deducted for incorrect citation format.

II) Delivery of your findings in the form of a presentation (Group Assessment - 35 marks)

A. Presentation – Conduct a formal presentation to your Client as well as other unexpected guests who will sit in for the presentation. It should not be a mere repeat of everything in your written report. In fact there is no requirement to cover everything in your report. Rather, you should concentrate on those areas which you deem to be the most important to your client.

The main objective is that by the end of the presentation, NetVest Group Limited must be able to make a decision based on you findings. Hence, you will need to capture and hold their interest. You are encouraged to be original and creative in your delivery approach.

Your group will be duly rewarded on your ability to capture the attention of your audience without compromising on their understanding of the subject matter you are delivering. Lesson delivery should not be more than 30 minutes

B. Q & A – the presentation will be followed by a discussion with your audience. You will be assessed on your knowledge of the subject matter as well as your ability to facilitate class participation and discussions. The duration of this session will be 20 minutes.

5. LAYOUT AND SUBMISSION OF REPORTS - no more than 20 A4-sized pages (excluding cover page, one-page executive summary, spreadsheets, citation and appendices). - formal, typewritten and 1.5 line spacing (with proper cover page). - font size 12. - to be submitted on: - Term 2, Week 14, Monday 12 pm, 20 Jul 2014

Please submit both the HARDCOPY and SOFTCOPY of the report to your tutor by the deadline indicated above.

NB:- There will be a penalty of 10% per day on an accumulative basis for all late submissions.

6. WARNING AGAINST “ACADEMIC MALPRACTICE”

1. Collusion

No two or more groups of students from different classes should attempt to combine their efforts to conduct the analysis on the same country and industry.

2. Plagiarism

Students should not copy or steal the language, ideas or thoughts, phrases, diagrams and other forms of work from another person and represent them as one’s own original work without acknowledging the sources of reference. See non-Plagarism declaration form attached.

PRESENTATION SCHEDULE

Your presentation shall be conducted during your GBE tutorials. Presentation schedule is based on rotational basis.

Groups which went first in CA1 would present in week 15 and groups which went later in CA1, in week 14.

You are not required to be present for other group’s presentations.

7. CITATION

Important : Refer to the handout “Cite It Right” which is available in the library and on the library’s (ELISER) website. This handout has been prepared by the Singapore Polytechnic library, and the citation format should be followed. Marks are involved – so, if in doubt, consult your tutor.

9. AREAS OF ASSESSMENT

WRITTEN COUNTRY REPORTS

• Breadth of coverage • Depth of analysis • Relevance • Ability to integrate concepts learned in GBE, to the project • Logical sequence • Organisation and presentation of the report • Language competency and bibliography - sentence structure, grammar, spelling, tenses and correct form of bibliography index

PRESENTATION

Presenters

• Content - Relevance, coverage, accuracy, depth of analysis • Communication Skills - Articulation, voice projection, audience rapport, pacing, time keeping, visual aids

Q & A Team

• Knowledge - Analysis of issues, reasoning, clarity of answers

SINGAPORE POLYTECHNIC

SP BUSINESS SCHOOL
BA 0176 GLOBAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT 2015/2016
CA2 COUNTRY ANALYSIS REPORT

Plagiarism

Plagiarism occurs when you take sentences or paragraphs or even the whole article written by another person and pass it off as your own work without acknowledging the author or the original source. This is actually cheating and is a breach of examination rules that will not be condoned by the Polytechnic.

Students should be informed that even with referencing, a similarity of 15% and above of their report would indicate a lack of originality and understanding of the content. Students would be penalised if the similarity report shows a similarity of over 15%.

To cross check your report for plagiarism and obtain a similarity percentage report of your assignment, you can search for Plagarism detector links on the web. Alternatively, you can make use of this website http://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker/. Copy and paste your report (without any tables, graphs or charts) into the box provided and scan for plagiarism.

Non-Plagiarism Declaration by Students

I declare that all material in this assignment is my own / my group’s work and any reference material used is cited according to the format on “Cite It Right”.

Assignment: __________________________________________

Class: __________________________________________

Similarity Report %: __________________________________________

Date: __________________________________________

All group members are required to sign and submit this form together with your assignment (place it at the end of the report and before the reference list)

|Name: |Name: |
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|Admin no.: |Admin no.: |
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|Signature: |Signature: |
|Name: |Name: |
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|Admin no.: |Admin no.: |
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|Signature: |Signature: |
|Name: |Name: |
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|Admin no.: |Admin no.: |
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|Signature: |Signature: |

SINGAPORE POLYTECHNIC
SP BUSINESS SCHOOL
BA 0176 GLOBAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT 2015/2016

COUNTRY ANALYSIS
ASSESSMENT FORM (1 of 2 pages)

Class: __________________ Tutor: __________________

COUNTRY: _________________________________________________

Name: 1. ___________________________ 4 ____________________________

2. ___________________________ 5. ____________________________

3. ___________________________ 6. ____________________________

| |WRITTEN REPORT |Total |Group |
|A |Areas of Assessment |Marks |Score |
|1 |Executive Summary, introduction and background |5 | |
|2 |Economic & Social Environment Analysis |10 | |
|3 |Political & Legal Environment Analysis |10 | |
|4 |Financial Analysis |10 | |
|5 |Government Initiatives |10 | |
|6 |Risk Analysis and Conclusion |10 | |
|7 |Language Competency and Formatting of report - sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, |10 | |
| |spelling, readability | | |
| | Total |65 | |
| |Penalty | | |
| |Citation and Plagiarism – Incorrect in-text and end-text citation, similarity report over |- 15 | |
| |15%. | | |

| B |PRESENTATION |Total Marks |Name |Name |Name |Name |Name |Name |
| |Areas of Assessment | | | | | | | |
|2 |DELIVERY & PRESENTATION SKILLS |15 | | | | | | |
| |Eye contact, rapport, clarity, pace, diction, | | | | | | | |
| |appropriate gestures, visual aids, evidence of | | | | | | | |
| |practice, confidence/control and time | | | | | | | |
| |management. Includes level of professionalism | | | | | | | |
|3 |Q & A |10 | | | | | | |
| |Logical explanation, ability to grasp issues | | | | | | | |
| |related to country, | | | | | | | |
| |TOTAL |35 | | | | | | |
SINGAPORE POLYTECHNIC
SP BUSINESS SCHOOL
BA 0176 GLOBAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT 2015/2016

COUNTRY ANALYSIS
ASSESSMENT FORM (2 of 2 pages)

Class: __________________ Tutor: _______________

COUNTRY: _________________________________________________

| | |Column A |Column B |Final Overall marks |
| | |Written Report Group|Presentation |for entry into SAS |
| | |Marks |Individual Marks |mark sheet |
| | | |35 marks | |
| | |65 marks | |100 % |
| | | | | |
| |Student’s Name | | | |
|1 | | | | |
|2 | | | | |
|3 | | | | |
|4 | | | | |
|5 | | | | |
|6 | | | | |
| | | | | |

Remarks:_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

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