Europe stumbled in the second quarter, highlighting that economic conditions in the region remain fragile. Meanwhile, our forecasts in Asiahave been revised down. In Japan, the impetus from aweaker yen on chemical production is not expected to be asstrong as we had previously forecast and, so, we havedowngraded our output projections. And, in China, we havedowngraded medium-term forecasts given that theauthorities appear to be struggling to shift the economy tobeing more consumer-driven whilst maintaining financialstability. Overall, we expect global chemical output to expand by 3%and 4½% in 2014 and 2015, respectively, after 3.1% in 2013.
