A credit rating agency's decision to downgrade the outlook for China's rating has no impact on Dow Chemical's development plan in China, the company's CEO said Friday.
Standard & Poor's Ratings Services on Thursday cut its outlook for the Chinese government's credit rating to negative.
However, Andrew Liveris, global CEO and president of Dow Chemical Company, said in a lecture in the China Business Conference held by Columbia Business School that his company "believed in investing in people, and opportunities based on the Chinese government's emphasis on boosting domestic consumption."
"So no changes to our plans," said Liveris.
He added that the near-term fluctuation caused by the downgrading is probably inevitable, yet it's not the fault of China but of the pullout of liquidity.
Over time, China's real economy will create a demand for consumption, he said.
Liveris said he was very optimistic about China's economy, explaining that China was undergoing a transition phase from reliance on the manufacturing sector and exports to more emphasis on domestic consumption.
This will lead China, the world's second-largest economy, to more sustainable growth and success, he said.
Despite China's slower growth, Liveris said, its 6.5-percent increase rate on 10 trillion U.S. dollars is "fundamentally adding a G20 economy every year," and would unleash a lot of opportunities.
Dow Chemical chose "to be a partner of China, to be there for China, to share technology development with China, to invest in China with technology and R&D; to be there at the time matters most when you need it most," he said.
Dow Chemical is an American material, polymers, chemicals and biological sciences company. Its annual sales in 2015 reached nearly 49 billion dollars.
