Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Coltan Mining in the DRC

The 2007 Import and Export Market for Tantalum Fixed Capacitors in Hong Kong
Coltan Mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo: How Tantalum-Using Industries Can Commit to the Reconstruction of the DRC
On the demand side, exporters and strategic planners focusing on tantalum fixed capacitors in Sweden face a number of questions. Which countries are supplying tantalum fixed capacitors to Sweden? How important is Sweden compared to others in terms of the entire global and regional market? How much do the imports of tantalum fixed capacitors vary from one country of origin to another in Sweden? On the supply side, Sweden also exports tantalum fixed capacitors. Which countries receive the most exports from Sweden? How are these exports concentrated across buyers? What is the value of these exports and which countries are the largest buyers? This report was created for strategic planners, international marketing executives and import/export managers who are concerned with the market for tantalum fixed capacitors in Sweden. With the globalization of this market, managers can no longer be contented with a local view. Nor can managers be contented with out-of-date statistics which appear several years after the fact. I have developed a methodology, based on macroeconomic and trade models, to estimate the market for tantalum fixed capacitors for those countries serving Sweden via exports, or supplying from Sweden via imports. It does so for the current year based on a variety of key historical indicators and econometric models. In what follows, Chapter 2 begins by summarizing where Sweden fits into the world market for imported and exported tantalum fixed capacitors. The total level of imports and exports on a worldwide basis, and those for Sweden in particular, is estimated using a model which aggregates across over 150 key country markets and projects these to the current year. From there, each country represents a percent of the world market. This market is served from a number of competitive countries of origin. Based on both demand- and supply-side dynamics, market shares by country of origin are then calculated across each country market destination. These shares lead to a volume of import and export values for each country and are aggregated to regional and world totals. In doing so, we are able to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of both the value of each market and the share that Sweden is likely to receive this year. From these figures, rankings are calculated to allow managers to prioritize Sweden compared to other major country markets. In this way, all the figures provided in this report are forecasts that can be combined with internal information sources for strategic planning purposes.