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Hello International Traders! John McDonnell here, with best wishes for the holiday season and more sites to help you succeed in global trade.
Switzerland is a small country with a big economy, and I have a site in this issue that will help you get a foothold in this prosperous market. Plus, I found a database of with information about millions of companies that you can search. Want detailed profiles about the daily life of countries around the world? I have just the site for you. Finally, if you like "Top 10" lists, I have a site with dozens of these lists, and it's bound to spark discussion among you and your friends.
And don't forget -- if you'd like more information about international trade, go to FITA's Really Useful Links ( http://fita.org/webindex/ ), which has a link library of more than 8,000 sites related to international trade.
| SWITZERLAND
Our Featured Country
For a country that is ranked 141st in the world in terms of size, Switzerland is an economic powerhouse. It ranked 21st in both imports and exports in 2007, and was second in the world in competitiveness in the most recent Global Competitiveness Report from the World Economic Forum. Switzerland has very low unemployment, and a per capita GDP that is larger than the big Western European economies. If this sounds like a country you'd like to do business with, here are two good sites to visit.
- Swiss Statistics (http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/en/index.html). This is a solid research site with lots of useful statistics about the Swiss economy, population, and industries. There are also links to statistics sites for Europe and the world. Click on "Topics" and you'll see what's available.
- Infonautics Directory of Switzerland (http://www.swissdir.ch/swissdir/index/index_e.htm). This site is a good place to visit if you want information about Swiss companies. You can search by industry, product, or alphabetical listing. You'll find contact information, including the chief executive's name, for each listing. There is also a search function for Swiss hotels, and a page with useful links.
You'll also find plenty of good research at the Switzerland Mini Portal (http://fita.org/countries/ch.html), a feature of the FITA Web site. The Switzerland Mini Portal has an overview of Switzerland, with facts about the language, currency, climate, etc., plus more specific information about the economy, markets, taxes, labor market indicators, and tips on doing business in Switzerland.
Click on "Useful Links" and you'll find a variety of sources for market research, trade leads, business directories, logistics, government contacts, travel, financing, and lots more.
The Switzerland Mini Portal is one of many research gateways at the FITA site. To find Mini Portals for other regions or countries, just click on "Country Profiles" from within a Mini Portal, or at the FITA home page (http://www.fita.org/).
NEED COMPANY INFO? SEARCH THE KOMPASS DATABASE
2.3 million companies in 70 countries
Whether its for marketing, competitive research, brainstorming, trade contacts, or any of dozens of other reasons, there are times when companies need to get information about other companies. If you need to do that, an excellent site to visit is Kompass (http://www.kompass.com). Kompass has a database of 2.3 million companies in 70 countries. The database has 860,000 trade names and 4.6 million executive names. That's a pretty comprehensive list of company details. It's easy to use -- you can either type in a keyword, or click on the categories on the home page. You can specify which country, State, or region you want to search, and you can search by products/services or companies. Your search results will give you the company name, a brief profile of the company, its products or services, plus lots of contact information (in most cases this includes executives' names and a link to its Web site). This is invaluable information, and the basic data is free. Kompass has subscription and advertising plans available which entitle you to more detailed information, including a Requests for Quotation service and Public Tenders from the European Union Publications Office.
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COUNTRY PROFILES AT "DOING BUSINESS IN" SITE
49 Country Profiles (also in Spanish and other languages)
If you're looking for in-depth country research, there are a series of very useful reports at HLB International's "Doing Business In" site (http://www.hlbi.com/DBI_list.asp# ). These multi-page files are full of information about each country, with sections about taxes, intellectual property, labor, foreign investment, culture, history, geography, holidays, political institutions, language, and currency. There are reports here on dozens of countries, from Argentina to Vietnam, and in various languages. These reports will give you a good overview of a country, and they're a good addition to your research arsenal.
TOP 10 LISTS FROM TIME MAGAZINE
Best of Everything
This is the time of year when the news media compiles Top 10 lists, and they're fun to read. You'll find a very entertaining one from Time Magazine at The Top 10 Everything Of 2008 (http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10). There are Top 10 lists in all sorts of categories, including: Best Performances, Breakups, Campaign Gaffes, Children's Books, Editorial Cartoons, Fiction Books, Financial Collapses, Late Night Jokes, Olympic Moments, Scandals, Underreported Stories, Video Games, and more. It's fun to read these lists and see if you agree with them.
FITA CAREER HEADQUARTERS - FEATURED JOB
Global Compliance Officer
In the FITA Career Headquarters job seekers can now apply for jobs online
and post their resume--free of charge--in an exclusive database that will be searched
by hundreds of industry employers seeking employees with international degrees
and/or related work experience. Featured job this week is for a Global Compliance Officer for Entegris, Inc. in Decatur, TX. Click
here to browse more than 700 other positions!
Employers -
Click
here to advertise your job openings on FITA's Career HQ.
Let the jobs come to you! Employers are looking for people with international skills. Post your resume TODAY and reap the rewards of the FITA Career HQ! And with a FITA Career HQ job agent, you can decide what kind of job you are looking for and let the system do the searching for you. Simply set up specific search parameters in a Job Agent, and whenever a job is posted that matches your criteria, you'll be notified automatically via email. It's that easy!
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