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"The Tunisian authorities and the IMF team reached a staff-level agreement on the policies needed to complete the fourth review of Tunisia’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF),” said head of IMF staff team Björn Rother.

Following a mission to Tunisia August 15-31, 2018, 31 to discuss the authorities’ policy plans under the Fourth Review of Tunisia’s economic reform program supported by a four-year IMF Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangement, the official recalled that “the Tunisian authorities emphasized their intention to continue to act decisively to contain the budget deficit, which would allow the IMF’s Executive Board to consider the Fourth Review at the end of September.”

In a press release on Friday, the IMF specified that the “completion of the review would make available SDR 177 million (about US$257 million), bringing total disbursements under the EFF to about US$1.5 billion.”

Rother pointed out in a statement that "there are some encouraging signs that economic activity is picking up. The Tunisian economy grew 2.6 percent (year-on-year) in the first half of this year, with robust performance in agriculture, tourism, and services. The number of tourists visiting Tunisia since the start of the year is the highest since 2010.”

He added that “the authorities’ commitment to reducing fiscal imbalances is also bearing fruit. The execution of the budget in the first six months of 2018 is consistent with achieving a significant deficit reduction this year. Containing deficits will help reduce Tunisia’s high public debt that burdens the economy and future generations.”

"Additional economic reforms, which include strengthening governance and enforcement in the government’s anti-corruption fight, are necessary to overcome investor reluctance and build confidence,” he affirmed, adding that “these efforts will help unleash the potential of private sector and generate more opportunity and jobs for all Tunisians.”

The official specified that "long-standing economic imbalances continue to pose significant risks to the Tunisian economy. Inflation declined marginally in July, but at 7.5 percent, it remains considerably higher than in previous years. Money and credit have continued to increase rapidly and the dinar has depreciated further, which will likely create new inflationary pressures in the months ahead,” underlining that the expected improvement in the current account deficit has been delayed.

"Staying the course on reducing the fiscal deficit this year and next is critical to stabilise debt and reduce excessive demand for imports given the recent increase in global oil prices. It will remain particularly important to pursue reforms of untargeted energy subsidies, manage carefully the public wage bill, and put the public and private pension funds on a sustainable basis,” Rother pointed out, specifying that “these steps will help contain expenditure that disproportionately benefits the better-off. They will also make more resources available for public investment, which will boost growth and jobs, to the benefit of the young and the unemployed.”

The IMF team welcomes the government’s intention to further increase social spending, which it views as critical to protect the poor and vulnerable in the period ahead.

"The Central Bank of Tunisia is right to remain vigilant, as the recent decline in inflation could be temporary. If inflation were to pick up again in the months ahead, additional increases in interest rates would be necessary to anchor inflation expectations and maintain economic stability.

Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign and Expatriates Minister Walid al-Moallem discussed with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov means to bolster cooperation relations between Syria and Russia at various fields and upgrade them to the level of high political ones ,aimed at achieving a strategic partnership between the two countries.

Governmental Committee for Economic, Commercial, Scientific and Technical Cooperation ,expressed Syria’s appreciation for Russia’s continuous support in the fight against terrorism.

He welcomed Russia’s contribution in reconstructing what has been destroyed by terrorism in Syria , which is an important opportunity for the Russian companies to invest in various sectors in the country.

For his part, Borisov, who chairs the Russian side in the committee, expressed the interest of the Russian government and companies to contribute in re-launching the production process  and achieving the economic recovery in Syria after the military victory overterrorism.

Argentina's peso began to recover on Friday as markets opened, making a tiny 0.68 percent gain after losing 20 percent of its value against the dollar over the previous two days.

The peso was trading at almost 40 to the dollar -- a record low -- at the end of Thursday as Argentina's central bank hiked interest rates to 60 percent in a desperate bid to stabilize a currency in freefall since President Mauricio Macri requested an acceleration to IMF-agreed funding a day earlier.

Argentina's currency has lost more than 50 percent of its value against the dollar since the start of 2018 as investor confidence in the South American giant has plummeted.

Inflation over the last 12 months is at around 30 percent.

A $50 billion three-year stand-by loan was agreed with the International Monetary Fund in June, with an initial $15 billion tranche released then and another $3 billion due next month.

Part of that first tranche was meant to help shore up the peso, but after Macri revealed Argentina had asked for early release of the remaining funds, the peso started to plunge.

That had a positive effect on the Merval index on the Buenos Aires stock market, though, as it jumped 5.34 percent by close on Thursday on the back of strong performances in the petroleum sector, notably by Brazilian giant Petrobras with a 13.5 percent rise in share price.

Finance Minister Nicolas Dujovne is heading to Washington next week to "continue to progress" talks with the IMF on "additional disbursements in 2019."

The IMF released a statement saying its "goal is to rapidly conclude these talks and submit the revised economic plan to the Executive Board."

Chief IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said: "Argentina has the full support of the Fund and we are confident that the strong commitment and determination of the Argentine authorities will help the country overcome the current difficulties."

- 'Transformation not failure' -

Macri's request had seen the peso lose almost 7.0 percent on Wednesday and when it opened on Thursday down another 4.0 percent, the Central Bank decided to intervene, pledging to keep interest rates at 60 percent until December at least.

But that measure didn't stop the fall as the peso ended the day down 13.5 percent.

Cabinet Chief Marcos Pena had tried to downplay the crash, saying: "We are not facing economic failure.

"This is a transformation, not failure. In that transformation there are difficult moments."

Macri's government has committed to reducing its budget deficit to 2.7 percent this year, from 3.9 percent in 2017, and to 1.3 percent of GDP next year in return for IMF support.

Speaking on Thursday at the opening of the Council of the Americas business chamber in Buenos Aires, Pena blamed Argentina's economic woes on the free-spending policies of Macri's predecessor Cristina Kirchner and her left-wing government.

"We are the country that has the most times violated its international contracts in the world, which has lied and cheated the rest of the time, and has shown again and again -- until now -- that it is not willing to seek fiscal balance and depend on its own resources," he said.

Europe-based Deutsche Bank analyst Jim Reid says Argentina is managing its "currency crisis in a more conventional manner" now with the central bank raising interest rates "to the highest in the world."

But he said IMF disbursements could lead to "a tighter fiscal deficit target," which could in turn provoke more currency fluctuations.

Minister of Trade Said Djellab examined Thursday, in Algiers, ways to strengthen commercial cooperation and promote investments between Algeria and Japan and between Algeria and Malawi in different talks with Japan’s State Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yoji Muto and the speaker of Malawi’s Parliament Richard Makowa Msowoya, said a ministerial communiqué.

 The overall cost of the energy bill in Tunisia reached 4,235 million dinars (MD) at the end of August 2018, the state budget ensures about 2,700 MD. The government had revised the cost of this bill up three times, in February, June and August, given the rise in the price of a barrel of oil internationally ($ 72 currently), and the depreciation of the Tunisian dinar (one dollar = 2.77 dinars), a government source told TAP on Thursday.

The 2018 Finance Law was based on two assumptions, the first of which concerns the price per barrel, which was set at 53 dollars, and the second concerns the price of the dollar's exchange rate against the Tunisian dinar (one dollar is exchanged at 2.5 dinars).

The government source who requested anonymity, said that the amount that was reserved for the energy subsidy in the budget 2018, amounted to 1500 MD, which represents 62% of the energy bill initially estimated in the 2018 budget at 2400 MD.

"The three adjustments on energy pricing decided by the government during the year 2018 have generated only 487 MD, to the benefit of the state budget," it said.

Since 2016, the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Renewable Energies has implemented the mechanism for automatic adjustment of hydrocarbon prices each quarter. After analyzing hydrocarbon prices, the decision is made to increase or lower their prices.

The latest decision to increase the price of hydrocarbons in Tunisia was taken on June 22, 2018, with an increase in the selling price to the public, some petroleum products, 75 millimes, per liter.

The International Monetary Fund estimated that the main priorities for Tunisia in 2018 are to increase fiscal resources, to freeze wage increases, unless the growth rate records an unexpected increase, and to adjust the prices of hydrocarbons, each quarter.

Argentina's Central Bank announced Thursday it has raised its benchmark interest rate from 45 to 60 percent in a bid to arrest a slide in the value of its currency.

Earlier Marcos Pena, President Mauricio Macri's cabinet chief, was forced to deny the government was facing an economic disaster.

"We are not facing economic failure," said Pena.

"This is a transformation, not failure. In that transformation there are difficult moments," he said.

The peso opened nearly 4.0 percent lower against the dollar on Thursday, having plummeted almost 7.0 percent the day before, despite explicit support from the International Monetary Fund for the government's policies.

The IMF's backing, however, failed to bolster the currency, which has lost more than 45 percent of its value against the dollar since the beginning of the year.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde said Wednesday she had agreed to Macri's request to speed up payments of a $50 billion loan in a bid to shore up Argentina's battered economy.

Speaking at the opening of the Council of the Americas business chamber in the capital, Pena attributed the market volatility to Argentina's recent history.

"We are the country that has the most times violated its international contracts in the world, which has lied and cheated the rest of the time, and has shown again and again -- until now -- that it is not willing to seek fiscal balance and depend on its own resources," he said.

He insisted the path taken by Macri since he took office in December 2015 is one "of fiscal balance, development and growth."

The current exchange turbulence was attributable to "structural vulnerabilities" following a massive drought that affected agricultural production, the main generator of foreign currency, and a "change in the financial and commercial context in the world, notably due to tensions between the United States and China," Pena said.

"There are no magic solutions, you have to go for the truth."

Macri had sought to soothe the turbulence in a statement before markets opened on Wednesday, assuring Argentines that help is on the way.

"Over the past week, we have had new expressions of lack of confidence in the markets, especially over our ability to obtain financing for 2019," Macri acknowledged.

He said the IMF would provide "all the funds necessary to guarantee the fulfillment of the financial program next year."

In return for IMF support, the government has committed to reducing its budget deficit to 2.7 percent this year, from 3.9 percent in 2017, and to 1.3 percent of GDP next year.

The benefits of fisheries and agricultural incomes for the population of the southern provinces were highlighted at the European Parliament during an exchange of views, Tuesday, with European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs, Pierre Moscovici.

At a meeting of the European Parliament's Committee on International Trade (INTA) on the renewal of the agricultural agreement between the European Union (EU) and Morocco, Moscovici noted that this text meets three goals, namely the obligation to comply with the judgment of the European Court of Justice of December 2016, the ambition to support local development by granting tariff preferences to products originating from the region and the imperative not to interfere with the ongoing settlement policy process at the United Nations.

For the European Commissioner, this issue is the exclusive responsibility of the UN, and the EU can only support this process by refraining from interfering.

He pointed out that throughout the consultation process which had been conducted in a broad and inclusive manner with all the actors concerned for the renewal of the agreement, "the European Commission had endeavored to avoid any interpretation which would amount to a change in the European Union's position or opinion" on this issue.

"We have adopted a neutral and depoliticized approach", stressed the European Commissioner, calling on MEPs to take this tack.

"You are not being asked to comment on the final status of the Sahara. What is called for is the creation of a legal basis to grant tariff preferences to products from the Sahara for the benefit of the population of the Sahara", the European official told the MEPs members of INTA Committee.

These tariff preferences, he went on, would contribute to the socio-economic development of the region and hence to its stability, noting that the agreement should significantly benefit the region's economy with expected positive impact in the main sectors of activity, namely agriculture, fisheries and potentially phosphates.

According to the European Commissioner, 45 000 local jobs depend directly or indirectly on the fisheries sector and 14 000 jobs depend directly on agricultural production.

For the local economy, these figures show the positive economic impact of European trade cooperation on the region, which should not be underestimated, he noted.

For him, refusing to grant tariff preferences to products from the region would significantly compromise the region's exports and would have an extremely negative impact on the population.

In this context, the European Commissioner recalled that the process of assessing the benefits for the population will be regularly monitored by a mechanism provided for in the agreement.

"The European Union will continue to monitor the impact and usefulness of these agreements on population and local development", he underlined, recalling that the mission of members of INTA Committee, which will visit Morocco in early September, will have the opportunity to see on the ground the impact and benefit of EU agreements on population and local development.

Speaking at the debate, chairman of the EU-Morocco friendship group, Gilles Pargneaux, said that in the absence of tariff preferences due to a trade agreement, exports from the region to Europe will be heavily impacted, which would directly penalize the economy and local population.

He also noted that trade with the EU is one of the levers that has enabled "the incredible development of cities like Laayoune, Dakhla or Boujdour".

Current US sanctions on Iran are unlikely to stop Iranian oil exports completely, a long-time adviser at Saudi Arabia’s Energy Ministry said on Tuesday, adding Iran would be unable to close the straits of Hormuz and Bab Al Mandeb even partially.
Speaking at an oil conference in the Norwegian city of Stavanger, Ebrahim Al Muhanna said Iran would be the first to lose out on a move to block those major shipping routes and that any such action would trigger further sanctions on Iran.

“Current sanctions are unlikely to stop Iranian oil exports completely, as almost all experts agree. I mean, they will continue to export 1 million (barrels per day) or so. So closing that Strait of Hormuz will damage the Iranians as much as damaging others,” he said.
Iran has said if it cannot sell its oil due to US pressure, then no other regional country will be allowed to do so either, threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz.
“The amount of oil going through the Strait of Hormuz is so large. There’s more than 18 million barrels a day, about two thirds of world maritime oil trade. Meaning, cutting oil from there will lead to an acute oil shortage and prices will skyrocket,” Al Muhanna said.
“Is Iran able or willing to close completely, or even partially, the Strait of Hormuz or Bab Al Mandeb, or both? The answer is no, and a really big no.”
US President Donald Trump pulled out of a 2015 pact between Iran and major world powers under which sanctions were lifted in return for Tehran accepting curbs on its nuclear programme. The Trump administration then announced unilateral plans to restore sanctions against Tehran.

 President Donald Trump has approved steep tariffs on imports of solar panels and washing machines to protect US producers, triggering an outcry in China and South Korea and even protests at home.

Seoul said Tuesday it planned to take the issue to the World Trade Organization while Beijing expressed "strong dissatisfaction".

France's Carrefour group said Tuesday it is overhauling its business in a transformation plan involving thousands of job cuts, a product revamp and new partnerships in China.

Carrefour, which was the world's second-biggest retailer at the start of the century after US giant Wal-Mart, has since slipped to ninth position, according to the Deloitte consultancy, having been overtaken by the likes of Amazon and Costco.

Some 2,400 jobs will be cut in Carrefour's French operations, which currently total 10,500 staff, via voluntary redundancies, the group announced.

The retailer's product mix is to be redirected towards more organic produce, with a target of increasing sales in that segment almost four-fold by 2022, it said.

"We must revamp our model, by simplifying our organization, opening ourselves up to partnerships, improving our operational efficiency, investing in our growth formats, building an efficient omnichannel model and developing our fresh and organic products offer, notably under the Carrefour brand," CEO Alexandre Bompard said in a statement.

The group said it will also accelerate its online development, aiming for a 20-percent market share in French online food sales, and open at least 2,000 new neighbourhood outlets in its French home market in coming years.

Carrefour is hoping for 2 billion euros ($2.45 billion) dollars of annual savings from 2020 onwards thanks to the restructuring as it streamlines logistics and overheads.

Separately, Carrefour also said it had signed a deal with Chinese internet giant Tencent and supermarket group Yonghui which will take a minority stake in Carrefour's Chinese subsidiary.

"The potential investment will leverage Carrefour's global retail knowledge with Tencent's technological excellence and Yonghui's operational knowhow and in particular its deep knowledge of fresh products," Carrefour said.

Stock market investors took an instant liking to Carrefour's announcements, pushing the retailer's shares more than three percent higher at the opening on the Paris bourse.

Source: AFP

A French appeals court on Monday dropped a case against JPMorgan Chase for allegedly aiding tax fraud at the Wendel investment group, citing clerical errors, sources at the prosecutors office said.

Prosecutors, suspecting the US bank of helping Wendel top managers to hide more than 300 million euros ($368 million at current rates) from the French taxman in 2007 and 2008, in 2016 ordered it to stand trial for "complicity in tax fraud", alongside current and former Wendel top brass.

The latter included former chairman Jean-Bernard Lafonta and Ernest-Antoine Seilliere, who for seven years also ran French employers lobby group Medef.

But appeals by JP Morgan prevented the trial from taking place until, on Monday, the Paris appeals court cancelled proceedings "because of problems with procedure and the notification of rights", a source close to the case said.

This does not, however, necessarily mean the end of the case for JP Morgan, a judicial source said.

A higher Paris court could still ask the French financial crime squad to investigate further, possibly leading to a reopening of the case, the source said.

The investigation against JP Morgan was launched in June of 2012 after the French tax authorities discovered a financial instrument called Solfur which yielded a net 315 million euros for its shareholders -- including three Wendel board members and 11 top managers at the firm -- for an initial investment of just 996,250 euros.

The gain was "completely tax-free", according to a 2015 document by the financial fraud squad which suspected tax fraud.

Source: AFP

Europe's biggest software company SAP on Monday said it will spend up to two billion euros investing in and nurturing French start-ups as part of its push into cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence.

The move by the German firm comes as France is increasingly emerging as a leading hub for tech innovation, boosted by President Emmanuel Macron's efforts to promote the nation as open for business.

"There is a real sense of economic momentum in France," said SAP chief executive Bill McDermott after Macron hosted talks with some 140 business leaders at the Versailles chateau near Paris.

In a statement, SAP said it will spend 150 million euros ($180 million) annually over the next five years on research and development in France.

It plans to focus its efforts on emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain -- the technology that underpins bitcoin.

SAP also said it would open an incubator in France, its second in Europe after Berlin, that would nurture over 50 start-ups and give them access to SAP's software and cloud computing operations.

It also promised to invest in early-stage ventures looking for their first seed money, and said it had already acquired the young French venture Recast.AI that builds so-called "chatbots".

Without giving a breakdown of its planned investments in France, SAP said overall it "estimates a more than two-billion-euro spend over five years".

Other firms attending Macron's business summit in Versailles also unveiled new spending plans.

Facebook said it will pour an additional 10 million euros into artificial intelligence in France by 2022.

It also pledged to train 65,000 people in digital skills in free schemes to help women set up businesses and the long-term unemployed get back to work.

Source: AFP

 The global unemployment rate is expected to tick down in 2018, the United Nations said Monday, while warning that far too many workers still live in desperate poverty.

The International Labour Organisation forecast a worldwide unemployment rate of 5.5 percent this year, a marginal improvement on the 5.6 percent recorded in 2017, thanks to broad economic growth.

But in its flagship "World Employment and Social Outlook" trends report, the ILO also raised serious red flags about the health of the planet's labour market.

"Even though global unemployment has stabilised, decent work deficits remain widespread: the global economy is still not creating enough jobs", the organisation's director-general, Guy Ryder, said in a statement.

A key problem is the abundance of "vulnerable employment", a category that includes informal work arrangements with little or no social and contractual protections.

"The significant progress achieved in the past in reducing vulnerable employment has essentially stalled since 2012", the ILO said in a statement.

The problem is most acute in the developing world, where three out of every four workers have a "vulnerable" employment status, the report said.

The study's lead author, ILO economist Stephan Kuhn, pointed out that 40 percent of all employed people in the developing world still live in "extreme poverty".

Uneven economic growth and the huge concentration of global wealth in the hands of very few is expected to be a key topic at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, which opens on Tuesday.

The charity group Oxfam reported Monday that 82 percent of the wealth created in 2017 was controlled by the world's richest one percent.

For ILO chief Guy Ryder, broadening the benefits economic growth remains the key priority.

"Additional efforts need to be put in place to ensure that the gains of growth are shared equitably", he said.

Source: AFP

A record number of bosses are optimistic about global economic growth, according to a PwC study published on Monday at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

The data will be especially welcome for this year's star WEF attendee US President Donald Trump, with many respondents in the US praising his party's tax cuts for businesses.

According to the survey, conducted among 1,300 business leaders worldwide, 57 percent of top executives believe that global growth will strengthen in the next 12 months, a record figure since the survey started in 2012.

The annual poll helps set the tone for the conversation in Davos, where the world's business and political elite meet to discuss pressing global issues, but also to network and hash out deals.

The findings are significantly better than last year, when only 29 percent were bullish on the world economy, and match much of the optimism expressed by business leaders heading for the forum in Switzerland.

Optimism has particularly jumped in the United States, where 59 percent of bosses declared themselves confident.

But even in Japan, or Brexit-bound Britain, the situation has improved with optimism among CEOs in the UK at 36 percent, against 17 percent last year.

"With the boom in stock market and GDP growth around the world, it's no wonder that CEOs are so optimistic," said Bernard Gainnier, president of PwC France.

When it comes to the prospects of their own companies, business leaders are also confident, even if the increase over last year is less spectacular: 42 percent of respondents said they are "very confident" for the next 12 months, against 38 percent in 2017.

The United States remains the most promising market for non-US bosses, followed by China, Germany, Britain and India.

However, despite this general optimism, leaders say they are "extremely concerned" by terrorism, geopolitical uncertainties and cyber threats.

Source: AFP

 US authorities on Monday charged six accountants, including former partners from "big four" global auditor KPMG, with using stolen information to cheat on inspections for corporate audits.

The charges follow KPMG's decision last year to fire five former partners, including the head of its audit practice, after the company improperly learned which audits government regulators planned to review.

Federal prosecutors said the scheme was a fraudulent attempt to interfere with inspections by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a regulator created in the wake of Enron-era corporate accounting scandals in 2002.

US authorities charged the six with fraud and conspiracy. They include three former accountants in KPMG's national office and three former PCAOB employees.

Steve Peikin, of the Securities and Exchange Commission, told reporters the defendants' behavior was "shocking and serious."

"We allege that this misconduct was motivated by the fact that KPMG had experienced a high and increasing rate of PCAOB audit deficiency findings and had made it a priority to improve its results," he said.

Officials did not identify the company or companies under audit by KPMG but said the audits in question, while imperfect, did not pose a danger to the investing public.

KPMG is among a group of global accountancies, including Ernst & Young, PWC and Deloitte, which dominate the global auditing industry for major corporations.

Their audits act as assurance for investors that company financial results are accurate.

One of the defendants, Brian Sweet, a former PCAOB official later hired by KPMG, has pleaded guilty, the US Attorney's office in Manhattan told AFP.

Despite the charges, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said he believed companies and the investing public could continue to rely on KPMG.

"I do not expect that these actions will adversely affect the orderly flow of financial information to investors and the US capital markets, including the filing of audited financial statements with the Commission," he said in a statement.

In August, KPMG agreed to pay $6.2 million to settle SEC charges that its audit of the oil and gas company Miller Energy Resources had left investors "misinformed" about the company's value.

Source: AFP

Shares of crisis-hit commodities trader Noble Group soared by as much as 37 percent Monday after a report said that a Chinese conglomerate was interested in buying the company.

Swiss banking giant UBS reported Monday that its profits plummeted 63 per cent last year due to US tax reforms that hit fourth-quarter earnings.
It said annual net profit dropped to 1.16 billion Swiss francs (900 million euros, $1.01 billion) for the year.
During the last three months of 2017 the bank suffered a net loss of 2.2 billion Swiss francs as it took a charge of 2.87 billion Swiss francs due to changes in US tax laws.
Without the charge against earnings, the bank said it would have posted a net profit of 641 million Swiss francs for the fourth quarter, and annual profits would have climbed by 26 per cent.
Changes in US tax law have forced banks that operate in the United States to book considerable one-time losses in the final quarter of last year, but are expected to be mostly favourable to them going forward.
While the US tax reform reduces the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 per cent, UBS said it may find its tax bill in the United States rises by 60 million Swiss francs due to an alternate method to ensure firms pay a minimum amount of tax.
Despite the US-tax writedown "2017 was an excellent year for us. We delivered stronger financial results and met our net cost reduction target," chief executive Sergio Ermotti said in a statement.
"Greater regulatory clarity means we can open a new chapter for UBS, allowing us to sharpen our focus on growth across our businesses, make further investments in technology and deliver attractive returns to shareholders."
UBS, the largest Swiss bank, said it meet its target to cut costs by 2.1 billion Swiss francs.
It said profit before taxes at its wealth management business rose by 15 per cent to 2.7 billion Swiss francs. At the wealth management unit for the Americas, which is separate, pre-tax earnings fors by 12 per cent to $1.3 billion.
UBS shares dropped 2.9 per cent to 18.77 Swiss francs in morning trading on a Swiss market which was down 0.1 per cent overall

Source: AFP

With the World Economic Forum kicking off in earnest on Tuesday, AFP presents a guide to the week-long event in the Swiss Alps.

- WHAT IS ‘DAVOS‘? -

Davos is shorthand for the World Economic Forum (WEF), which in its original guise was founded in 1971 by German business professor Klaus Schwab as a way for European corporate leaders to learn from their US counterparts.

Political leaders started attending later in the 1970s, and since then it has morphed into an annual jamboree where the global elite – joined by intellectuals, activists, celebrities and sometimes protestors -- debate the world’s problems.

- WHO’S COMING? -

Who isn’t coming, more like. Among the 2,500 delegates and 70 world leaders, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be the first of the week's keynote speakers on Tuesday.

Every European leader of note will be in attendance – including Emmanuel Macron of France, Germany’s Angela Merkel, Britain’s Theresa May and Paolo Gentiloni of Italy.

A large contingent is coming from Africa, including Emmerson Mnangagwa, the successor to Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, plus a smattering from Latin America such as the presidents of Brazil and Argentina.

Influential thinkers such as Israeli “Homo Deus” author Yuval Noah Harari and Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker will be on hand along with Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai and celebrities Elton John, Cate Blanchett and the Bollywood baddie Shah Rukh Khan.

But top billing has to go to US President Donald Trump, who is due to close the conference with a speech on Friday – provided he is not held back by a US government shutdown.

His mantra of "America First" is the antithesis of the liberal world order cherished by the Davos crowd – free trade, open borders and respect for cultural diversity.

- WHAT’S ON THE AGENDA? -

The overarching theme this year is “Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World”.

From breakfast seminars to midnight drinks, via film screenings and morning sessions of meditation and yoga, every day is packed.

Panel discussions feature leaders from the worlds of business, finance, science and the arts. Many of the panels will revolve around the theme of the "Fourth Industrial Revolution", how to equip today’s workers to survive the advent of automation and artificial intelligence.

Others will look at geostrategic challenges in the era of Trump, Brexit and identity politics; how to decipher fact from fiction in the age of "fake news"; exploiting machine intelligence in health, and combatting "the next pandemic"; risks to high-flying financial markets; making economic growth inclusive; and the future of food.

And those are all just on the first day.

While only one-fifth of attendees are women, the organisers are keen to harness discussion about the #MeToo movement with an array of panels looking at gender equality.

It would be a surprise to find Trump at one of the WEF’s sessions illustrating “A Day in the Life of a Refugee” or joining a Thursday night panel on climate change with former vice president Al Gore.

Gore is showing a special screening of the sequel to his global-warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth". The follow-up is called "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power".

- HOW TO CHILL? -

Chilling in a literal sense is not hard in Davos, Switzerland’s highest alpine village where the snowfall has been even heavier than usual this winter.

The bad weather has disrupted train and road links from the nearest big city of Zurich. Not that that should unduly bother the VIPs, who routinely take helicopters to access the WEF.

If you’re a delegate and want to hit the shops, you’ll probably be out of luck. Many retail outlets and even a church are handing over their premises – for hefty rents – to corporate clients to use as their base for the week. Other residents are happy to lease out their homes to the visiting jet-set, and hotel rates are astronomical.

But for downtime and networking, the WEF is unsurpassed for the breadth of opportunities it gives attendees to rub shoulders with the great, the good and the obscenely (as some would say) wealthy.

They can tramp through the snow (or take chauffer-driven limos) to national-themed buffets, followed by corporate-sponsored cocktails with canapés catered by celebrity chefs, followed by nightcaps touting other companies and countries.

Global economies are recovering simultaneously and at a stronger pace, and will get at least a short-term boost from the US tax cuts, the International Monetary Fund said Monday.

In the latest update to the IMF's World Economic Outlook, nearly all the forecasts for 2018 and 2019 were revised upward compared to the October edition.

However, the fund warns that exuberant financial markets could be due for a reversal.

The global economy is now expected to grow 3.9 percent this year and next, two-tenths higher than the previous estimate, and up from 3.7 percent in 2017.

Advanced economies are seeing solid simultaneous growth, and the US tax reform passed just before Christmas will have a measurable effect, at least for a couple of years.

"The revision reflects increased global growth momentum and the expected impact of the recently approved US tax policy changes," the IMF said.

"Some 120 economies, accounting for three quarters of world GDP, have seen a pickup in growth in year-on-year terms in 2017, the broadest synchronized global growth upsurge since 2010."

The WEO upgraded the US GDP forecast by a surprising four-tenths of a point this year to 2.7 percent, compared to the expected 2.3 percent in 2017.

And for 2019, the IMF increased its US growth forecast a whopping 0.6 points from October to 2.5 percent.

The corporate tax cuts are seen driving investment, which could add growth of 1.2 percent to the US economy through 2020, while also contributing to the faster expansion in US trading partners like Mexico

Source: AFP

It's that time when I dust off the snow boots, get the overcoat back from the dry cleaner, and try to find the scarf and gloves that are used only once a year. The annual trek up the Swiss Alps beckons, to mingle with the glitterati, movers and shakers, and masters of the universe at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Some cynics dismiss the Davos bash as an irrelevant talking shop — all hot air in a cold climate — that’s little more than an excuse for some fun in the snow and some time on the piste.
But I always find it an intellectually stimulating occasion, an opportunity to take an early-year sounding of the state of the world. All that sub-zero Alpine air blows away the festive cobwebs and gets you thinking straight again.
And, of course, for a journalist it’s the best networking event in the world. WEF 2018 promises to be the best for many years. Here — in rough order of priority — are the questions I’m hoping to get answered at the event:
1. How will President Trump go down among the global elite that he affects to despise? Having the “America First” populist in the midst of the “swamp” he wants to drain should be fascinating. WEF plenary sessions — the big set pieces that world leaders use to tell their message — are usually indulgent places, but the mood among the audience is transmitted almost by osmosis. Theresa May, the British prime minister, drew some “tut-tuts” from the crowd with her pro-Brexit declarations last year. Will the US president win them over to his anti-globalist ways? Or will they react more noisily to his message? I’m betting he will make some friends, but also confirm his enemies’ worst fears.
2. What will be the global judgment on Saudi Arabia’s dramatic year of change? The Davos constituency of business leaders and financiers have a keen interest in the economic transformation underway in the Kingdom, while the proponents of greater liberalization will applaud moves toward gender equality and cultural change. But there is also likely to be a significant portion critical of Saudi Arabia’s assertive moves in regional foreign policy. Which will prevail in the overall assessment of the Kingdom by its global peers?
3. Will “sustainability” remain the WEF buzzword? The idea of promoting a sustainable planet amid all the private jets, helicopters and Cadillacs might seem bizarre, but environmentally aware policies and initiatives have been the central themes of recent WEF events. Serious business leaders are increasingly factoring in these issues in their strategic plans, and environmental concerns are top of the WEF’s global risks. Will anything concrete emerge in this respect from WEF 2018?
4. Will women make further progress at Davos? Gender equality is another of the WEF’s long-held policy stances. It makes economic sense, as much as being transparently more just in a social and cultural sense, as the Arab world is increasingly convinced. For the first time at WEF 2018, all of the meeting’s seven co-chairs are women. But the event remains a predominantly male affair, in terms of the gender of attendees. “Spouses and partners” are welcomed, but Davos Man still rules, though he is a little less assertive about it in the MeToo age. Will there be a significant change at this Davos? I suspect not much.
5. What is the mood among the “masters of the universe,” the financial and economic titans who run the world and traditionally dominate Davos? They are in a good place at the moment, with global economic growth forecast strong in 2018, world stock markets at record highs and several big “liquidity events” expected this year, not least the record-breaking initial public offering of Saudi Aramco. On the other hand, valuations are at all-time highs, and some are expecting the “Trump boom” to give way to bust later this year. Has the world learned from the global financial crisis? Davos is the place to find out.
6. What does Elton John make of it all? The aging rocker is one of the celebrity attendees at this year’s WEF, along with Hollywood actress Cate Blanchett, rapper-with-a-brain will.i.am, and Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan. If I get close enough, I want to ask Cate about the making of the moving refugee poem “What They Took With Them,” will.i.am about urban infrastructure investment patterns in the US rust-belt, and Shah about the initiatives of his Prime Minister Modi (also present at Davos) to cut through bureaucratic red tape in Indian business. I will ask Elton, who is giving a talk on leadership, what he thinks of the other “rocket man,” Kim Jong-un, leader of North Korea.

The rebound of global growth is sounding the death knell for easy money, so debt markets should see the backs of central banks in 2018, although a gradual withdrawal should help avoid a new tantrum sending interest rates spiking.

The colossal sums that central banks injected into the financial systems to ward off economic cataclysm went primarily into the debt markets, which will have the biggest adjustment to make as part of the so-called normalisation of monetary policy by central banks.

As central banks slow down their purchases of debt and then reduce their holdings the interest rates that governments and companies pay to borrow money are expected to climb higher.

While everyone expects borrowing costs to rise in 2018, the key question is whether it will happen smoothly or not. Any disruptions in the credit markets can have a severe impact on the overall economy.

In Europe, where the European Central Bank (ECB) is set to continue buying 30 billion euros of assets each month until September, ultra low or even negative on certain maturities, there is a not of optimism in the air.

"We don't see a strong break with 2017" said Felix Orsini, who handles government debt issues for Societe Generale's commercial and investment bank.

"There is a deep resilience of the market, and there is still plenty of appetite for risk and there is a large margin for manoeuvre before the level of dissuasive rates," he told AFP.

HSBC's Frederic Gabizon shares that view. He foresees "a moderate increase in rates paid by companies and European states in 2018".

- US rates in spotlight -

Most bond market experts see the greatest risk as sharp readjustment of the market where interest rates spike higher, as happened in the 2013 "taper tantrum" when investors panicked in reaction to news that the US Federal Reserve would reduce, or taper, its purchase of bonds, thus sending rates of return surging higher.

With the US Fed taking the lead in the normalisation, cutting its holdings of bonds along with raising interest rates, investors and experts are looking at how borrowing costs evolve there.

There have been a few voices of caution, such as S&P Global Ratings and the International Monetary Fund's chief economist, Maurice Obstfeld.

"If you look around the world, there is a lot debt," Obstfeld said recently. "If there were a sudden rise in US interest rates, that could put a lot of debtors under stress."

But Rene Defossez, a London-based debt analyst at French investment bank Natixis, said "central banks aren't taking any risks, they are normalising their policies on tiptoes and with inflation still extremely weak they don't have any reason to rush."

Eric Vanraes, head of fixed income investments at the Swiss-based Sturdza Banking Group said "it is difficult to imagine the Fed losing its bearings and making too quick an exit. It has learned its lesson."

- Lessons learned -

In the United States, the Fed did not include corporate bonds in its buying programme, whereas the ECB did.

But even if European firms will have "live with this exit, without the ECB, the balance between supply and demand is in their favour," said Orsini at Societe Generale.

Moreover, "since 2008, and that is one of the big lessons of the crisis, companies are preparing for periods" when debt markets are unaccessible and are managing their liquidity prudently, he said.

On the political level, the situation appears to be calmer in 2018 as only Italy has elections, whereas the previous two years had a heavy electoral calendar.

For debt market analysts, there is a good chance that 2018 will turn out to be a good year, much as 2017 was.

"The ultra low interest rate environment allowed big groups to at once reinforce their financial structures in favourable conditions, but also finance very important" mergers and acquisitions in 2017, said Gabizon at HSBC.

For Sturdza's Vanraes, what is most likely to change in 2018 is volatility.

"After years where the monetary programmes drowned out volatility on all the markets, investors will have to get used again to erratic movements" both in amplitude and duration.

Source: AFP

President Trump early Wednesday morning lashed out at the father of one of the three UCLA basketball players arrested in China for shoplifting earlier this month, referring to LaVar Ball as a "poor man's version of Don King" and an "ungrateful fool."

"It wasn’t the White House, it wasn’t the State Department, it wasn’t father LaVar’s so-called people on the ground in China that got his son out of a long term prison sentence — IT WAS ME. Too bad! LaVar is just a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair," the president tweeted."LaVar, you could have spent the next 5 to 10 years during Thanksgiving with your son in China, but no NBA contract to support you," Trump added. "But remember LaVar, shoplifting is NOT a little thing. It’s a really big deal, especially in China. Ungrateful fool!"Trump and Ball have gone back and forth through the media since Ball's son, LiAngelo Ball, and two other UCLA players were released from China after being detained for shoplifting earlier this month.

In a news conference held shortly after their return last week, the UCLA players apologized for their actions in China and thanked the president and the U.S. government for helping to secure their release.

"I'm grateful for this UCLA team that stood strong beside us and made it possible for me to be sitting here in front of you all today," Ball said last week. "I respect the amount of hard work they put in to get us back to the United States."

"I would also like to thank President Trump and the United States government for the help that they provided, as well," he added. 

On Monday night, LaVar Ball fired at Trump for his role in the students' release.

“If you help, you shouldn’t have to say anything,” Ball said in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “Somebody told me about the tweet a couple days ago. … Why is that on your mind? All this stuff going on, and that’s on your mind, that a father didn’t say thank you? And you’re the head of the U.S.? Come on.”

Ball also told Trump to “stay in [his] lane.”

“Let him do his political affairs and let me handle my son, and let's just stay in our lane,” Ball said.

This followed criticism from Trump on Sunday, when the president said he should have waited until "his next trip" there to negotiate for the player's release.

"Shoplifting is a very big deal in China, as it should be (5-10 years in jail), but not to father LaVar," Trump tweeted. "Should have gotten his son out during my next trip to China instead. China told them why they were released. Very ungrateful!"

Source: AFP

Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia called Sunday for extending cooperation between OPEC and non-OPEC producers beyond 2018, after a deal to cut output succeeded in shoring up prices.

The call, the first explicit invitation by Riyadh for long-term cooperation between oil producers, came with oil prices topping $70 a barrel thanks to the deal, after they dove below $30 a barrel in early 2016.

"We should not limit our efforts to 2018. We need to be talking about a longer framework for our cooperation," Saudi Energy Minister Khaled al-Faleh told reporters before a meeting between ministers of OPEC and non-OPEC countries in the Omani capital Muscat.

At the end of the meeting, attended by several OPEC and non-OPEC countries including the world's top producer Russia, Faleh said conformity levels were excellent.

He said that compliance level was 129 percent in December and was 107 percent for the whole of 2017.

The production cuts deal has removed two-thirds of the 330 million barrels of extra stocks that were on the market before the agreement, Faleh said.

He said improvement in the oil market will continue throughout this year and expected that "beyond 2018, we will continue to cooperate through these joint action mechanisms ... to avoid strong fluctuations that led to the oversupply glut".

Oil producers from inside and outside the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries signed a landmark agreement in November 2016 to cut output by 1.8 million barrels per day to fight oversupply and lift sagging prices.

That deal was initially for six months, but the 14-member cartel and 10 independent producers have since extended it until the end of this year.

- 'We must not relax' -

Amid talk of exiting the deal at the end of the year, the Saudi minister said the agreement should be extended for an unspecified duration.

"I am talking about extending the framework that we started –- which is the declaration of cooperation... beyond 2018," Faleh told reporters.

Faleh however said the new framework for cooperation might differ from the current agreement and its production quotas.

"It does not necessarily mean sticking barrel by barrel" to the same agreement.

It would mean "assuring stakeholders, investors, consumers and the global community that (the agreement) is here to stay".

It would send the message that "we are going to work together not only with the 24 countries, but inviting more and more participants," he said.

Faleh said oil producers had not yet achieved their target of reducing world stocks to normal levels and striking a balance between supply and demand.

"That objective has not been achieved. We are not close to achieving it," said Faleh, adding that a rebalance is unlikely in the first half of 2018.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said oil producers should not ease off on their efforts despite the rebound.

"Despite the fact that progress is obvious, we must not relax. We are determined to carry through the rebalancing," Novak, whose country is the world's top crude producer, told reporters.

Novak held separate talks with Faleh on the sidelines of the Muscat meeting.

The Russian minister praised the outcome of the cuts deal.

"The market got on the way towards balancing and we jointly managed to reduce the surplus in stocks by more than half," Novak said.

- 'Consultations' -

But Novak but appeared less committed to the idea of establishing a permanent framework.

"As for efforts to coordinate joint actions on the oil market, the last year showed that this is a successful experiment," he told reporters, according to Russia's RIA Novosti news agency.

"I think that if necessary it can be used in the future too."

But "mutual action between OPEC and non-OPEC countries" could also continue after the end of the agreement in the form of "consultations", Novak added.

Omani Oil Minister Mohamed al-Rumhi said different arrangements could be discussed.

"By the end of this year, the stock level will be very small and it will be time to discuss different arrangements or agreements," he said.

Gulf states as well as many oil-producing nations have posted huge budget shortfalls since oil prices plummeted in mid-2014.

Source: AFP

Egypt is looking to offer shares in eight to 10 state companies on the stock exchange over the next 18 months, Finance Minister Amr El-Garhy told Reuters on Sunday, as part of a drive to attract foreign investors.

The flotations will be the first batch in a program to float stakes in dozens of state-owned companies over the next three to five years in areas including oil, services, chemicals, shipping and real estate.

“The companies will include companies listed on the exchange and those not listed,” Garhy told Reuters by phone, referring to the first batch.
He did not specify the sectors or sizes of the companies under consideration.

The government said previously that it expected the first share offering would be in oil company ENPPI, in the first quarter of 2018.

Egypt’s stock market has taken off since the country floated its pound currency in November 2016, with the Egyptian blue-chip index gaining about 80 percent since then.

The government has said previously it plans to offer 20 percent of state-owned Banque du Caire as well as a 40 percent stake in the Arab African International Bank (AAIB), in which the central bank owns a stake.

The state owns vast swathes of Egypt’s economy, including three of its largest banks — National Bank of Egypt, Banque Du Caire, the United Bank of Egypt — along with much of its oil industry and real estate sector.

The last time state-owned companies were listed on the exchange was in 2005 when shares of Telecom Egypt, the state’s landline monopoly, and oil companies Sidi Kerir Petrochemicals and AMOC were floated.

Source: arabnews

Saudi Arabia plans to build nine desalination plants for more than 2 billion riyals ($530 million) on the Red Sea coast, its environment minister said on Sunday.
The plants will have capacity of 240,000 cubic meters of water per day and will be completed in less than 18 months, Abdulrahman Al-Fadhli wrote in a Twitter post.
The project, which the minister said was ordered by King Salman in a royal decree, will help government-owned Saudi Saline Water Conversion Corp. (SWCC) raise production efficiency and cut operating and capital costs, Fadhli added.
He gave no details on funding.
Saudi Arabia said in 2016 it planned to use public-private partnerships (PPP) with local and foreign companies to fund infrastructure projects.
In August, it said it would develop resorts on about 50 Red Sea islands, completing the first phase of that project — which is backed by its Public Investment Fund (PIF) — in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Source: arabnews

Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Khaled Al-Falih on Sunday called for extending cooperation between OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers beyond 2018 after a deal to shore up crude prices.
“We should not limit our efforts to 2018. We need to be talking about a longer framework for our cooperation,” Falih said before a meeting between OPEC and non-OPEC countries in Muscat.
This is the first time Saudi Arabia has explicitly called for extending a deal between oil producers to cut back production to combat a global oil glut.

Source: arabnews

A compelling clash of cultures will unfold in the vertiginous Swiss Alps this week as Donald Trump, just over 12 months into his high-wire presidency, confronts the cheerleaders of globalisation in Davos.

Having whipped up working-class resentment of the global elite to devastating effect en route to the White House, the US president's "America First" vision will run headlong into the haughty ambition of the World Economic Forum (WEF) to map out "a shared future in a fractured world".

The 2017 gathering ended on the same day as Trump was inaugurated, and many of the discussions during the week dwelt anxiously on what his presidency would portend.

China's President Xi Jinping, the star turn in Davos last year, exploited such misgivings to stake out an alternative vision for the international economy with China playing a lead role in both trade and fighting climate change.

A year on, Trump will be closing the conference with a speech next Friday.

He faced a budget mess at home, where the US government officially shut down on Saturday after lawmakers failed to agree a stop-gap spending deal.

The president is relishing his role as apostate-in-chief bent on demolishing the pieties held dear by the WEF, which is drawing some 70 other leaders along with thousands of delegates from the worlds of industry, finance and show business, plus protesters opposed to the US president.

The property mogul's final election campaign advertisement of November 2016 made the distinction brutally clear, casting himself as the defender of hard-working Americans against "global special interests", over images of Davos perennials such as financier George Soros and Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein.

Both are Jewish, and the ad was assailed as anti-semitic by critics.

- Best behaviour? -

So why consort in the Swiss Alps with people who are hate figures to his political base?

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump said part of his motivation in becoming the first US president to attend Davos since Bill Clinton in 2000 was to be an unabashed "cheerleader for the country".

Trump also pointed to quickening US economic growth and a roaring stock market as reasons to cheer when he and a large part of his cabinet join leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Brazilian President Michel Temer in Switzerland.

On Monday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will present in Davos an updated overview of the global economy, which is indeed expanding at a broad and healthy clip.

But ahead of the meetings, a WEF survey of nearly 1,000 experts and decision-makers underlined growing anxiety about the risks of environmental disaster and armed conflict -- not least involving North Korea and the United States, after months of bellicose rhetoric from Trump.

Douglas Rediker, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington who was appointed by Trump's predecessor Barack Obama to the IMF's executive board, said there was no way to reconcile the WEF's globalist outlook and the Trump dogma.

"It will be a jarring visit even if the president is on his best diplomatic behaviour. And that's a big if," Rediker said.

- Davos Woman -

Trump will be running up against internationalist foils in Davos this week such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Macron, who has subverted one of the US president's signature lines with his own motto of "Make our planet great again".

The White House said he plans to meet Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May, days after he cancelled a planned trip to London that had cast further doubt on the strength of the vaunted trans-Atlantic "special relationship".

The organisers, mindful of the globe-trotting but all-male caricature of "Davos Man", are also keen to extol their efforts to promote representation by women, as sexual harassment and the gender pay gap move up the political agenda worldwide.

"Davos Women" will account for 21 percent of the total number of delegates this year, the highest ever proportion, if still relatively meagre. They include IMF chief Christine Lagarde, IBM head Ginni Rometty and screen star Cate Blanchett.

Cue another clash of visions given the presence of Trump, whose election campaign in 2016 was nearly upended late on by a leaked recording in which he boasted of groping women.

President Rodrigo Duterte has banned Philippine citizens from travelling to Kuwait to work following reports of widespread abuse and exploitation, his spokesman said Saturday.

Duterte ordered the ban after reports emerged about the deaths of several Filipina women in the Gulf state, his spokesman Harry Roque said.

"In line with his presidential pronouncement, Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello has ordered the suspension of the deployment of workers to Kuwait," Roque told reporters.

"There is really excessive suffering over there," Roque said, adding that the ban was "long overdue".

An estimated 10 million Filipinos work overseas and the money they send home is a major pillar of the Philippine economy.

It was not immediately clear how long the ban, which does not affect workers already in Kuwait, would last.

In his speech before overseas workers on Thursday, Duterte said he would urge the Kuwaiti government to act against the abuses.

"My advice is, we talk to them, state the truth and just tell them that it's not acceptable anymore. Either we impose a total ban or we can have (disagreements)," Duterte said.

"I do not want a quarrel with Kuwait. I respect their leaders, but they have to do something about this," he added.

Spokesmen for the Kuwaiti embassy in Manila could not be reached for comment.

Kuwait has faced criticism in the past over its "kafala" system for foreign workers which has been likened to a form of bonded labour or even slavery.

The kafala system prevents workers from moving to a new job before their contracts end without their boss's consent, resulting in a wide range of abuses.

The Gulf state is a major destination for migrant workers with the Kuwaiti government estimating that more than 170,000 Philippine nationals live there. Other groups have far higher estimates.

Source: AFP

Paris's public cycle hire company said Friday it would hit its contractor with a one-million-euro bill for a chaotic rollout of new bikes that has infuriated cyclists.

The grey Velib bikes -- usually ubiquitous across the French capital -- have been virtually absent for weeks because of the botched handover from previous contractor JCDecaux to Franco-Spanish firm Smovengo.

Autolib' Velib' Metropole, the public-private consortium that runs the scheme, pronounced itself "dissatisfied" and said it would penalise Smovengo a million euros ($1.22 million) as set out in its contract.

Velib will also refund its roughly 300,000 subscribers for the month of January as a "gesture of compensation" for the delays, the consortium's chief Catherine Baratti-Elbaz said.

Further discounts may be offered if the problems are not fixed next month, she added.

In October, Paris city hall announced a snazzy redesign of the bikes that would result in a third of them going electric, with the grand re-launch taking place on January 1.

But as of Friday, only 113 of the bike system's docking stations were working -- well short of the 600 that had been promised by the New Year, with 1,400 supposed to be working by the end of March.

The disruption began before Christmas and the delays have enraged cyclists, many of whom rely on the hire bikes for their commute.

Source: AFP

A possible shutdown of the US federal government at midnight Friday amid a congressional deadlock on spending would have no immediate effect on America's sovereign debt rating, ratings agency Fitch said.

The prospect of a partial shutdown of US government operations, the first in more than four years, grew increasingly likely on Friday afternoon as Senate Republicans and Democrats remained at loggerheads over legislation to authorize funding to keep the government open.

In a statement on Friday, Fitch said partial shutdowns had occurred in the past and the one looming at midnight on Friday "does not have a direct impact" on the top-notch AAA/stable rating for US sovereign debt.

"Its main implication for the US's sovereign creditworthiness would depend on whether it foreshadowed a further destabilization of US budget policymaking, or brinkmanship over the federal debt limit," Fitch said.

The agency cited Congressional Budget Office findings, according to which the federal government is not likely to exhaust its borrowing ability until late March or early April.

Markets appeared unconcerned by the possible shutdown on Friday, with Wall Street and the US dollar relatively stable -- although US currency has weakened in recent weeks against the euro.

Source: AFP

 China and Russia have shown no intention of living up to World Trade Organization rules and Washington should not have supported their membership in the global trade body, the Trump administration said Friday.

In strongly worded reports to Congress, the US Trade Representative delivered a laundry list of grievances over unfair trade practices by Beijing and Moscow it says runs counter to global free trade rules.

USTR Robert Lighthizer said the reports show "the global trading system is threatened by major economies who do not intend to open their markets to trade and participate fairly."

"This practice is incompatible with the market-based approach expressly envisioned by WTO members and contrary to the fundamental principles of the WTO," Lighthizer said in a statement.

President Donald Trump has ratcheted up retaliatory measures against foreign trading partners, notably China, as part of his America First economic agenda which lifted him to power a year ago. That included an aggressive new trade probe into possible dumping of aluminum and steel.

The US had a $309 billion trade deficit in goods and services with China in 2016, and that was on track to expand by $10 billion last year.

USTR report said after joining the WTO in 2001, Beijing effectively abandoned efforts to adopt market-friendly reforms and instead increased central government control over commerce while erecting barriers to foreign competition.

But WTO rules are insufficient to correct Beijing's interventionist policies, and the United States "erred" in supporting China's membership in 2001, the report said.

US dialogue with Beijing since Trump took office yielded some results, such as renewed access to Chinese markets for US beef, but these were piecemeal changes, the report said.

"China is determined to maintain the state's leading role in the economy and to continue to pursue industrial policies that promote, guide and support domestic industries while simultaneously and actively seeking to impede, disadvantage and harm their foreign counterparts," the China report said.

Chinese authorities also continue to pressure American companies into sharing valuable intellectual property, the report said.

The USTR likewise accused Moscow of an "accelerating withdrawal" from the open market system demanded by WTO membership since joining in 2012, citing burdensome import licensing, opaque customs regimes, and barriers to agricultural imports.

"It was a mistake to allow Russia to join the WTO if it is not fully prepared to live by WTO rules," the report said.

Source: AFP

British financial giant HSBC has agreed to pay more than $100 million to US authorities after admitting to defrauding clients during multi-billion-dollar foreign exchange transactions, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

The settlement follows an indictment handed down Wednesday against a former Barclays trader similarly accused of defrauding the former California computing giant Hewlett-Packard by manipulating foreign exchange markets.

Under the terms of the agreement, which is under review by a federal judge in Brooklyn, HSBC will pay a $63.1 million fine and an additional $38.4 million in restitution and disgorgement -- or the return of ill-gotten gains, the Justice Department said.

"HSBC's admissions in connection with this resolution confirm that the company misused confidential client information for its own profit on more than one occasion," John Cronan, the acting head of the department's criminal division, said in a statement.

"This sort of misconduct not only harmed their clients, costing the victims money, but it also ran a serious risk of undermining the public's confidence in our financial markets."

Prosecutors say that in 2010 and 2011, traders on HSBC's foreign exchange desk used confidential client information to conduct trades in British currency that deliberately drove the price of sterling in a direction benefitting the bank and harming the clients.

US officials only identified one of the two clients: the British oil and gas explorer Cairn Energy.

HSBC has agreed to continue cooperating with investigators and foreign authorities in any related investigations, including cases brought against individuals and to enhance its internal safeguards against misconduct.

The Justice Department said HSBC received no leniency for voluntarily disclosing the matter, adding that initially the bank's cooperation with investigators was also "deficient in certain respects."

But that HSBC soon "changed course" after prodding from the government, earning "substantial cooperation credit."

The bank faces charges of wire fraud but these are likely to be dropped once HSBC fulfills its obligations under the settlement.

Thursday's settlement comes barely a month after the lapse of a landmark five-year, $1.9-billion deal between US authorities and HSBC in which the British lender avoided prosecution after admitting in 2012 to widespread money-laundering and sanctions violations.

In October, HSBC's former head of foreign exchange cash trading, Mark Johnson, was convicted of eight counts of conspiracy and one count of wire fraud after a four-week trial. He is due to be sentenced next month.

HSBC was one of six major US and European banks that were fined a total $4.2 billion by global regulators in a November 2014 crackdown for attempted manipulation of the foreign exchange market.

Source: AFP

Dutch insurers said Friday that fierce storms that whipped across The Netherlands caused 90 million euros ($111 million) in devastation, as the country's train service slowly creaked back into gear.

"The January storm that raged across our country yesterday caused considerable damage," the Dutch Association of Insurers said.

"According to our first estimates, the damage to homes and cars is at least 90 million euros," it said, cautioning that it had not yet added in the cost of any havoc to businesses, government buildings and the agriculture sector.

The Netherlands bore the early brunt of Thursday's severe winter storms which blew in with winds of up to 140 kilometres (86 miles) an hour off the North Sea.

It then barrelled across northern Europe, leaving nine people, including two firefighters, dead in its wake.

The Dutch railway service, NS, had cancelled all trains on Thursday, stranding thousands of commuters and travellers.

On Friday morning, many trains were running again although railway staff were still busy clearing away fallen trees from the tracks, and fixing overhead lines.

There were still no trains serving the busy route between Schiphol airport and Leiden Central "due to a defective overhead line", although buses had been laid on, NS said. The problem should be fixed by midday, it added.

Schiphol airport, one of Europe's busiest flight hubs, was forced to cancel all flights in or out for about two hours on Thursday.

In a Tweet Friday, it said it "expects a normal day but it can be busier at the airport due to cancellations and rebooking of yesterday's flights".

Resourceful travellers late Thursday had turned to Twitter to get to their destinations, setting up a hashtag #StormPoolen (storm carpool).

"My lovely boyfriend is trying to get from Leiden Central to Delft. He’s very nice and there’s a bottle of wine in it for whoever can return him unharmed. #StormPoolen," wrote Twitter user Molly Quell.

Puk van de Lagemaat promised "mad Dj-ing and Karaoke skills to accompany you in the traficjam (sic)" if anyone could give her a ride from Amsterdam central station to The Hague.

Source: AFP

British shop sales slid by much more than expected in December, capping off the weakest year for retail since 2013 as consumers squeezed by the Brexit hit to prices continued to keep a tight grip on spending.

Retail sales volumes dropped 1.5 percent from November, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, well below economists' forecasts of a monthly dip of 0.6 percent in a Reuters poll, and more than reversing a 1.0 percent rise in November.

That marked the biggest month-on-month fall since June 2016, the month Britons voted to leave the European Union, as well as the weakest December performance for seven years.

Britain's economy slowed in 2017 as higher inflation - caused by the post-referendum fall in the pound - hurt the spending power of consumers, although forecasts of a bigger hit to growth were confounded.

Friday's data pushed the pound down against the dollar and British government bond prices hit a session high.

The Bank of England, which is considering when to follow up on November's first rate hike in a decade, expects the squeeze will ease in 2018 as inflation cools and wage growth ticks higher. Recent surveys of consumers suggest they do not share the central bank's optimism right now.

"The longer-term picture is one of slowing growth, with increased prices squeezing people's spending," ONS statistician Rhian Murphy said about Friday's data.

Many shoppers brought forward their Christmas spending into November to take advantage of Black Friday sales promotions, the ONS said.

Black Friday promotions have become commonplace in Britain only in the last few years, making it difficult for the ONS to adjust its data so figures for November and December can be compared easily from year to year.

But whatever distortions were caused by Black Friday sales, analysts were doubtful it did retailers any good.

"All of this discounting is likely to have decimated profit margins and retailers will be counting the cost," said Richard Lim, chief executive at consultancy Retail Economics.

On Friday, Britain's biggest floor coverings retailer Carpetright (L:CPRC) lost almost half of its stock market value after it warned on its full-year profits, blaming a drop in consumer confidence.

Retailers have reported mixed fortunes over the Christmas period.

Last week Britain's biggest retailer Tesco (L:TSCO) missed forecasts for Christmas trading as strong food sales were undermined by weak demand for general goods such as DVDs and computer games. Discount supermarkets saw strong growth.

Looking at the fourth quarter as a whole, which smooths out monthly volatility in the data, the ONS said sales growth slowed to 0.4 percent, compared with 0.8 percent in the third quarter.

As a result, retail sales will contribute almost nothing to economic growth in the last three months of 2017.

Retail sales volumes for 2017 as a whole grew by 1.9 percent, a far cry from the 4.7 percent increase in 2016 and marking the weakest full-year performance since 2013.

Source: AFP

Dirty money from eastern Europe is flowing through companies registered to nondescript properties across Scotland in a practice that has alarmed global campaigners and policymakers, experts say.

The first Scottish Limited Partnerships (SLPs) were set up a century ago when they were widely used to register contracts for tenant farmers, but today organised crime gangs and corrupt politicians are exploiting the system with them.

A tiny flat in the crime-ridden Edinburgh suburb of Pilton was found to be home to hundreds of SLPs including Fortuna United, part of a $1 billion (824 million euro) theft that crippled the economy of Moldova in 2014.

"It's kind of crazy," Ben Cowdock, an SLP expert at anti-corruption campaign group Transparency International, told AFP.

"There were over 100 SLPs in the Moldova scheme, and some were used to own shares in banks, allow individuals to take over banks and then make dodgy loans to companies that they also controlled."

SLPs can own assets and borrow money, just like a person. They can register as a partnership of two parent companies with no obligation to reveal the people behind them -- until last year.

Such companies also cleaned money for Russian and Azerbaijani "laundromats" exposed by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

More recently, a joint investigation by Al Jazeera and Scottish daily The Herald this month linked SLPs to $1.5 billion of assets seized from associates of ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

On paper, their registered address looked like an office suite a few minutes walk from Queen Elizabeth II's Scottish palace -- but it is actually a run-down apartment with a broken window.

"We are aware that SLPs are a feature of some money laundering typologies and are working with partner agencies to tackle the practice," a spokesman for the UK National Crime Agency said.

- 'Attractive for illegitimate uses' -

SLPs were established in 1907 and widely used as a loose tenancy agreement but they are now primarily used for private equity and venture capital investments.

"What seems to make them attractive for legitimate use in the fund industry also makes them attractive for illegitimate uses," Stephen Chan, a partner specialising in SLPs at Scottish law firm Harper Macleod, told AFP.

Cowdock said there were 612 SLPs registered in 2009, a figure that rose to more than 5,000 by 2015.

Over 70 percent of SLPs registered in 2016 were controlled by anonymous companies based in jurisdictions such as Belize, Seychelles and Dominica, Transparency International found.

The British government changed the rules last year to compel SLPs to identify "persons of significant control", but some have simply ignored the regulation.

"If you're hell-bent on laundering money it's still quite an attractive tool, because it's cheap and disposable," Cowdock said. "You can submit false information, and then launder your money before anyone notices."

Companies House, a government agency, said the government was "considering whether any further action is required to prevent limited partnerships from being used for unlawful activities".

- 'Clearly not enough' -

Alison Thewliss, a Scottish National Party politician fighting to change the law, said dodgy SLPs were "damaging Scotland's good name".

But Scotland's semi-autonomous government is powerless to regulate them directly as company law is controlled from London.

"The UK government has agreed to close some of the loopholes but it's clearly not enough," Thewliss told AFP.

But David Young, a partner at law firm Pinsent Masons, cautioned that the controversy should not tarnish the reputation of legitimate SLPs.

He said the ability to register companies, rather than people, as partners enables firms to create subsidiaries that ring-fence parts of the business to ensure their assets are not overexposed.

"Anti-money laundering and other checks should be carried out, but there is nothing wrong with the vehicle itself," he told AFP.

Iraq signed a contract Thursday with British energy giant BP aimed at more than doubling production from oil fields in the northern province of Kirkuk that were retaken from the Kurds last year.

The agreement was signed by Iraqi Oil Minister Jabbar al-Luaybi in Kirkuk, north of Baghdad, where the North Oil Company has its headquarters, AFP reporters said.

Iraqi forces reclaimed a string of major oil fields in Kirkuk after Iraqi Kurds in September voted for independence in a controversial referendum opposed by Baghdad.

The Kurds had taken over the fields in 2014 during the chaos of the Islamic State group's rampage across the country and exported oil to Turkey through their own pipeline.

Experts say work to renovate a parallel Iraqi pipeline could take up to two years.

Kirkuk province now has a production capacity of 420,000 barrels a day (bpd), according to Baghdad, but only 120,000 barrels a day are being pumped and exports from the region are at a halt.

The oil ministry said Thursday's deal aims "to increase production by 750,000 barrels per day".

Luaybi added that he would visit Turkey "soon, to study ways of reaching a deal on the pipeline from Kirkuk to the Turkish port of Ceyhan".

Iraq, the second largest producer in the OPEC cartel after Saudi Arabia, signed a consultancy contract with BP in 2013 to help the state-owned North Oil Company to develop the Havana and Baba Gurgur fields in Kirkuk province.

But it was never implemented as Baghdad lost control of the fields to Kurdish forces the following year.

Iraq reported its oil exports hit 109.6 million barrels a day in December, the same month that the government announced victory over IS.

Iraq in 2017 earned around $6.5 billion (5.3 billion euros) from crude sales, at $59.3 per barrel.

Rolls-Royce, the British maker of engines, announced further restructuring Wednesday that could result in the sale of its commercial marine business.

"Building on our actions over the past two years, this further simplification of our business means Rolls-Royce will be tightly focused into three operating businesses," chief executive Warren East said in a statement.

The company that makes power systems for use on land, at sea and in the air said it would study strategic options for its commercial marine operation, while reducing Rolls' businesses from five to three core units based around civil aerospace, defence and power systems.

East added: "This is the right time to be evaluating the strategic options for our commercial marine operation.

"The team there has responded admirably to a significant downturn in the offshore oil and gas market to reduce its cost base," said East, adding that the time was right to "consider whether its future may be better served under new ownership".

Rolls has shown signs of recovery since slumping to a record loss in 2016, when it was ravaged by a Brexit-fuelled collapse in the pound and a corruption fine.

But it powered back into profit during the first half of last year, propelled by strong deliveries for its Trent aircraft engines.

East is meanwhile shedding thousands of jobs as part of a restructuring programme that he implemented since becoming chief executive in 2015.

Investors welcomed Wednesday's announcement, with Rolls-Royce shares jumping almost six percent to 904 pence in late London trading.

On Monday, Rolls said it was considering whether to sell L'Orange, its German subsidiary.

Source: AFP

Economic growth in Africa picked up steam last year and is set to accelerate strongly in 2018, but "massive investments" are needed in infrastructure, the African Development Bank (ADB) said Wednesday.

Growth in Africa rose from 2.2 percent in 2016 to 3.6 percent in 2017 and is likely to rise to 4.1 percent in 2018 and 2019, the ADB said in its annual report, African Economic Outlook.

"Overall, the recovery in growth has been faster than envisaged, especially among non-resource–intensive economies, underscoring Africa’s resilience," it said.

"The recovery in growth could mark a turning point in net commodity-exporting countries," it added.

Last year's spurt has a range of explanations, including a recovery in prices for oil, which helped petroleum exporter Nigeria, Africa's most populous country.

East Africa is the most dynamic region in terms of growth: 4.9 percent in 2016, which rose to 5.6 percent in 2017, and to a projected 5.9 percent in 2018 and 6.1 percent in 2019.

However, across the continent job creation did not rise in lockstep with growth, lagging by 1.4 percent.

Woman and young people, aged 15-25, are those who have been most affected by the slow growth in employment.

To generate jobs for the 12 million young people entering its workforce each year, Africa must take a fast-track to industrialisation, the ADB said.

But key obstacles in infrastructure remain, including energy, water and transport, as well as health, education, security and administrative capacity.

"The continent's infrastructure needs amount to $130–170 billion (106-139 billion euros) a year, with a financing gap in the range of $68–$108 billion," the report said.

By comparison, only $62 billion was mustered for infrastructure investment in 2016.

To those daunted by the funding gap, the ADB said African countries today had a wide range of options for tapping funds, and these lie "well beyond foreign aid."

One idea is to create an "infrastructure asset" class of investment, in which governments or development finance institutions offer guarantees, using flexible financial engineering, to lower the perception of risk for investors.

Tax reform is also essential, the ADB said.

Tax collection is improving in Africa -- it hauled in around $500 billion dollars last year, a figure that compares with $50 billion in foreign aid, $60 billion in remittances and $60 billion in foreign direct investment.

Despite this progress, tax revenue is still below the threshold of 25 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) deemed necessary to scale up infrastructure spending.

"There is an urgent need for better revenue regimes -- including progressive elimination of the vast array of exemptions and leakages that pepper tax systems -- to capture the gains from growth and rapid structural change that some countries are experiencing," the ADB said.

Making these changes will not be "straightforward" given the "intensely political" challenge, the report warned.

Source: AFP

 US industry surged back to life in 2017, posting the biggest increase in output in seven years, with the largest gain in the mining sector, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday.

Industrial production rose 3.6 percent for the year on an 11.5 percent surge in mining activity, the biggest gain for that sector since 2014.

The vital manufacturing sector posted its largest increase in six years, rising 2.4 percent, the Fed said in the monthly report.

For the final month of the year, total output rebounded 0.9 percent compared to November, on a large jump in utilities, far stronger than even the most optimistic analysts were expecting.

But the December increase came after the November result was revised to show a slight decline instead of a slight increase, according to the Fed data.

The monthly rise included a 1.6 gain in mining, attributed primarily to oil and gas extraction, and a 0.1 percent rise in manufacturing output, its fourth consecutive increase.

The fourth quarter was particularly strong, jumping 8.2 percent, after back-to-back Hurricanes Harvey and Irma disrupted industrial activity in the prior quarter.

For all of 2017, the gains were broad-based, with only a few categories showing declines.

The biggest gains were in machinery, plastics and metal products, with a tepid 0.4 percent rise in motor vehicles and part.

The largest declines were in clothing, paper products, appliances and furniture.

Total industrial capacity in use in the final month of the year was at 77.9 percent, which is an increase of 1.1 points over December 2016, the report said.

But the manufacturing sector still shows a higher rate of idle capacity and at 76.4 percent it is running two points below its long-run average.

Source: AFP

There will be no more bonus payments or severance payments to company directors of Carillion, a British government agency said Wednesday as it tries to deal with the fallout of the firm's collapse.

Payments were stopped after the construction-to-catering firm went bust on Monday, the government's Insolvency Service said.

"Any bonus payment to directors, beyond the liquidation date, have been stopped and this includes the severance payments which were being paid to some senior executives who left the company," a spokesman for the agency said.

The announcement followed a heated exchange in parliament over Carillion's collapse, as Prime Minister Theresa May sought to defend the government's decision to sign major deals with the company after it issued the first of several profit warnings last July.

"We're making sure in this case that public services continue to be provided, that workers in those public services are supported and taxpayers are protected," May told lawmakers.

Carillion has public sector and private partnership contracts worth £1.7 billion ($2.35 billion, 1.9 billion euros), including cleaning and catering at public hospitals, various construction works and maintaining 50,000 army base homes for the Ministry of Defence.

The government has said the company's 19,500 staff in public sector jobs will continue to be paid, at a potential cost to the taxpayer of hundreds of millions of pounds.

In the private sector 90 percent of the company's clients have said they will continue to honour Carillion contracts in the interim. But work has paused on construction sites, the Insolvency Service said.

Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the "costly racket" of having private firms run public services should end.

"These corporations need to be shown the door," he said in parliament.

"We need our public services provided by public employees with a public service ethos and a strong public oversight."

After months of talks the government denied Carillion's formal request for help, first made on December 31.

Interim chief executive Keith Cochrane said the company was struggling under £900 million of debt and a £587 million pension deficit when it went bust, with just £29 million in cash.

Source: AFP

Europe's major stock markets churned lower Wednesday as investors took their cue from downbeat sentiment in Asia, while Wall Street resumed its upward trend.

Virtual currency bitcoin meanwhile dived, falling below $10,000 for the first time in six weeks in what one analyst called a "cryptocalypse" that saw several digital units take a hammering.

London stocks fell "as traders opt to lock in profits following the latest rally," noted Russ Mould, investment director at online stockbroker AJ Bell.

Adding to the gloom, disappointing earnings eclipsed takeover activity in the British capital.

Publisher and conference organiser Informa revealed it was in talks to buy rival UBM to create a giant worth more than £9.0 billion ($12.4 billion, 10.1 billion euros).

The deal is aimed at accelerating growth and slashing costs, the companies said in a statement. But investors were unconvinced, sending Informa shares tumbling.

The FTSE 100 was also punished as poor results from luxury fashion giant Burberry and publisher Pearson sent the two companies' share prices diving.

- 'Cryptocalypse' for bitcoin -

Bitcoin fell below $10,000 for the first time since early December, as the leading cryptocurrency extended Tuesday's 15 percent slump.

The fierce selling also spread to other alternative digital units, with ethereum, ripple and litecoin all losing about a quarter of their value Tuesday.

Bitcoin is down from record highs approaching $20,000 in the week before Christmas, having rocketed 25-fold over the year before being hit by concerns about a bubble and worries about crackdowns on trading it.

"It's been a Cryptocalypse overnight with BTC (bitcoin) and other virtual currencies coming under heavy selling pressure," said Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at AxiTrader.

But Shane Chanel, equities and derivatives adviser at ASR Wealth Advisers, sounded a slightly positive note: "Not all hope is lost. The cryptocurrency market is privy to these wild swings and seasoned veterans in this space have seen this happen many times previously.

"Not saying that it couldn't be different this time but every major correction has been followed up by a rally more powerful than the last."

David Cheetham, chief market analyst at XTB also warned against burying bitcoin prematurely.

"There have been numerous occasions when a sell-off in Bitcoin has prompted non-believers to rush in with declarations of the speculative bubble bursting, and each time they have been wrong," he said.

But "crypto bulls" were still "in very real danger of getting badly burned with a substantial further decline ahead entirely feasible", he added.

- Wall Street powers on -

The Dow was headed upwards again, pushing against the 26,000 level, helped by strong industrial production figures.

Industrials were firmer across the board, offsetting some sharp weakness in banking stocks after poor results from Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, who both saw their stocks dive, along with other financials.

"US stocks are regaining upward momentum after stumbling late yesterday, even as earnings results from Dow member Goldman Sachs and Bank of America are being met with some Street scrutiny," the Charles Schwab brokerage said in a note to clients.

In Asia earlier, Hong Kong stocks hit an all-time high to break a record that had been in place for more than 10 years.

However, most other regional markets fell into the red with energy firms rocked by lower oil prices.

- Key figures around 1635 GMT -

London - FTSE 100: DOWN 0.4 percent at 7,725.43 points (close)

Frankfurt - DAX 30: DOWN 0.5 percent at 13,183.96 (close)

Paris - CAC 40: DOWN 0.4 percent at 5,493.99 (close)

EURO STOXX 50: DOWN 0.3 percent at 3,612.78

New York - DOW: UP 0.6 percent at 25,943,30

Tokyo - Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.4 percent at 23,868.34 (close)

Hong Kong - Hang Seng: UP 0.3 percent at 31,983.41 (close)

Shanghai - Composite: UP 0.2 percent at 3,444.67 (close)

Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.2235 from $1.2259 at 2200 GMT

Pound/dollar: UP at $1.3827 from $1.3794

Dollar/yen: UP at 110.76 yen from 110.53 yen

Oil - Brent North Sea: DOWN 3 cents at $69.12 per barrel

Oil - West Texas Intermediate: UP 1 cent at $63.74

Source: AFP

Watchmakers at the industry's major fair in Geneva this week said they are bringing themselves up to speed in the digital age following China's economic recovery. 

Through online stores, social networks, and brand new boutiques in China's central cities, manufacturers at the international luxury watchmakers show SIHH are hoping to reach up-and-coming affluent shoppers now that financial signals are positive again in Asia.

"China was the good surprise of the past year with a sharp increase in our exports," Swiss Watch Industry Federation President Jean-Daniel Pasche told AFP, adding the market still presents a "strong potential for growth".

While statistics for the whole of 2017 are yet to be published, Swiss watch exports to China have returned to double-digit growth, rising by 19.6 percent between January and the end of November.

Watch sales grew spectacularly with the expansion of the Chinese economy until Beijing banned extravagant gifts in an anti-corruption drive at the end of 2013.

"There was a big dip," said Pablo Mauron, a partner at Shanghai-based digital communications company DLG. "But the signals are once again very positive."

"For a long time, the Chinese loved to buy their watches in Europe, in the shops on the Rue du Rhone in Geneva or in Paris. They liked to come back from their travels with an experience to tell," he added.

But watch enthusiasts are now more inclined to buy directly in China -- both because of a reduction in taxes on foreign purchases and a greater hesitation to travel following the wave of attacks in Europe.

- Online shopping -

Among the developments, Chinese consumers are now much quicker to make purchases online, notably through China's main social network WeChat.

"Many brands have positioned themselves on this platform to reach a new clientele," said Mauron, citing German manufacturer Montblanc, which led a social media campaign to launch its interactive watch in China. 

Swiss brand H. Moser plans to unveil at the Geneva fair a partnership with JD.com, the Chinese online trading giant.

"A small factory like ours doesn't necessarily have the means to launch a big advertising campaign throughout China," its chief Edward Meylan told AFP, emphasising the effectiveness of online trade to gain a foothold in the market.

The brand, however, also plans to open its first high-street store in China because it believes buyers still want to see expensive products in the flesh before buying.

French company Hermes also plans to open an online store in China later this year, said one of its directors Guillaume de Seynes in an interview at SIHH.

He said Hermes will also open two new shops in the centre of the country where a wealthy class is emerging, to strengthen its network beyond China's megacities.

The Paris-based brand intends to set up in Changsha, in Hunan province, where Mao was born, and in Xi'an, a province of Shaanxi, known for its terracotta army.

"It remains a market on which we have a lot of hope," said Guillaume de Seynes.

Source: AFP

Leading economists from France and Germany on Wednesday called for new fiscal rules for the eurozone and the creation of an independent watchdog to help to make the single currency more resilient against crises in the future.

Their intervention comes as Germany and France seek to inject new momentum into stalled EU reform efforts, and on the same day that Eurogroup chief Mario Centeno promised eurozone finance ministers would deliver a reform plan by June.

The economists' "blueprint for reform" is intended to bridge German demands for more fiscal discipline and France's insistence on more risk-sharing.

Wednesday's paper, entitled "Reconciling risk-sharing with market discipline: A constructive approach to eurozone reform", is authored by top economists from institutes such as Bruegel, Ifo and DIW, as well as Sciences Po in Paris.

"Our motivation is to not leave things the way they are. Europe needs reforms, and those have to go through France and Germany," Marcel Fratzscher of DIW told journalists at a Berlin press conference.

In their 25-page paper, the economists warned that even if the single currency area was "finally experiencing a robust recovery... after nearly a decade of stagnation", it "remains fragile."

Despite the ongoing economic recovery, the case "for a reform of the eurozone architecture is strong", the economists said, calling for "a shift in the fiscal and financial governance of the eurozone."

The fiscal rules laid out in the EU's Stability and Growth Pact -- notably the rule that member states are not allowed to run up deficits in excess of 3.0 percent of their economies -- "have not worked well," the economists wrote.

- 'Transparent and simple' -

"Excessive public debts have accumulated because of banking crises and the Great Recession (of 2008), but also because either countries did not abide by European fiscal rules or the rules were not sufficiently stringent in good times," the economists said.

The poor functioning of the current fiscal rules was due both to their design and the way in which they are monitored and enforced, the economists argued.

"Deficit targets give rise to pro-cyclical fiscal policy -? for example, higher expenditures in good times and lower expenditure in bad times," they complained.

Fiscal rules should be "as transparent and simple as possible," the economists wrote.

Monitoring should occur both at a national level -? by an independent national fiscal council ?- and "under the oversight of a eurozone fiscal watchdog," the economists suggested.

And enforcement "cannot rely solely on the threat of penalties that are unlikely to be credible," the economists wrote.

"We are drawing the lessons from the eurozone crisis, saying that there was a lack of solidarity, but also a lack of responsibility before the crisis," one of the authors, Philippe Martin, professor at Sciences Po Paris, told AFP.

It was already a "major success" that "German and French economists who can have very different views on those topics managed to reach a common position," analyst Frederik Ducrozet of Pictet bank tweeted.

"Now the hard part begins" as politicians take over, he added.

"The status quo is not an option. We must reach compromises, even when points of view are very different," Eurogroup chief Centeno told German business daily Handelsblatt Wednesday -- adding that he was "confident" of getting results.

Source: AFP

Sudanese security agents arrested the leader of the opposition Communist Party on Wednesday after it organised a protest in the capital Khartoum against rising bread prices, its spokesman told AFP.

Sporadic protests have erupted in parts of Sudan, including Khartoum, after bread prices more than doubled earlier this month following a jump in the cost of flour.

On Tuesday, hundreds of Sudanese demonstrated near the presidential palace in response to a call by the Communist Party.

Anti-riot police fired tear gas and beat protesters with batons to disperse the crowd.

Early on Wednesday, agents of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) arrested the Communist Party's leader, spokesman Ali Saeed said.

"Today, at 3:00 am (0100 GMT), two trucks full of armed men from NISS came to the house of our general secretary Mokhtar al-Khatib and took him to an unknown location," Saeed told AFP.

"We don't know where he is but we do know that it was NISS that took him."

Several other senior Communist Party figures, student leaders and activists have already been arrested since the bread price protests began.

The Communist Party said its members would continue to mobilise people and organise demonstrations, while the country's main opposition Umma Party has called an anti-government demonstration for later on Wednesday.

The protests erupted after the cost of a 50 kilogramme (110 pound) sack of flour jumped from 167 Sudanese pounds to 450 ($9 to $25) as wheat supplies dwindled following the government's decision to leave grain imports to private companies.

So far they have been sporadic and quickly broken up by security forces. A student was killed during a protest in the western region of Darfur on January 7.

Similar protests were held in late 2016 after the government cut fuel subsidies.

The authorities cracked down on those protests to prevent a repeat of the deadly unrest that followed an earlier round of subsidy cuts in 2013.

Dozens of people were killed when security forces crushed the 2013 demonstrations, drawing international condemnation.

Source: AFP

The European Parliament called Tuesday for a ban on electric pulse fishing in the European Union, defying Brussels which wants the experimental practice in the North Sea done on a larger scale.

The parliament, the EU's only directly-elected body, will now try to strike a compromise with the European Commission, the bloc's executive, and the European Council, which groups the 28 member states.

MEPs voted by 402 members to 232 in favour of the ban, while 40 abstained.

"It is a wonderful victory against a terribly harmful kind of fishing," said Yannick Jadot, a French member of the Greens party, who took part in the campaign against the practice.

Pulse fishing involves dragging electrically-charged lines just above the seafloor that shock marine life up from low-lying positions into trawling nets.

EU rules allow member states to equip up to five percent of their fleets with electrodes, and the method has been adopted in particular by Dutch vessels fishing for sole.

The European Commission wants to maintain the southern part of the North Sea as the venue for pulse fishing but to remove the five-percent limit.

Karmenu Vella, the commissioner for fisheries, argued that pulse fishing is safer for the environment than beam trawling as it reduces carbon emissions and does less damage to the seabed.

Beam trawling involves a large net attached to a heavy metal beam of up to 12 metres in length which is dragged across the seabed, ploughing it up.

Rebecca Hubbard, director for the activist group Our Fish, praised the vote as a "huge win" for European seas, low-impact fishing and the public.

Source: AFP

Troubled General Electric said Tuesday it would book a one-off charge of $6.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017 linked to its insurance businesses, and is studying a possible breakup of its remaining units.

Chief executive John Flannery said the company is looking at all options, but cited examples of other units that already have been spun off as independent companies.

"I believe there could be different structures that can achieve all of those objectives and that we need to examine those," he said during a call with analysts, repeating that "there are no sacred cows."

Flannery, who replaced Jeff Immelt at the helm of the company last summer, has faced tough challenges, and announced thousands of layoffs as he has tried to right the ship.

"I would categorize it as an examination of options and it's a kind of thing that could result in many, many different permutations including separately traded assets really in any one of our units if that's what made sense."

He noted that GE already spun off consumer finance arm Synchrony and reduced investment in oil services company Baker Hughes, "and that's something we'd consider for other parts of the company whether that's power aviation or healthcare."

"But the real core approach here is to make sure that these businesses can flourish in the decades ahead and that they have the right capital structures and investment resources to do that," he said.

- Insurance hit -

The review of the legacy insurance business was part of the overhaul, and last year, the GE Capital unit initiated "a comprehensive review" of the group's insurance reserves, which led to the $6.2 billion charge for the final three months of 2017, the group said in a statement.

In addition, GE capital will inject $15 billion into the unit, North American Life and Health, from 2018 to 2024.

Flannery said the result "is deeply disappointing," but will "help restore GE Capital ratios to appropriate level."

"We have been taking ongoing actions to make GE Capital smaller and more focused while maintaining its key capabilities to support financing for GE Industrial products," Flannery said.

The company saw its share price fall nearly three percent following the announcement, to $18.22 in mid-morning trading, continuing a steady downward trend over the past year.

Flannery in November unveiled the first steps of his plan to shore up the 125-year-old maker of jet engines and power turbines including shedding about $20 billion in assets over the next two years.

The shift favors the conglomerate's strongest divisions: aviation, energy and health, including medical equipment and services.

S&P Global Ratings said the latest announcement would not impact the company's A-rated debt.

Source: AFP

Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson on Tuesday said it would write down 14.2 billion kronor (1.4 billion euros, $1.8 billion) in assets as the troubled company struggles to compete in a rapidly changing sector.

The writedowns, which will be booked in the fourth quarter of 2017 and which were expected, originate mainly from goodwill from "investments made 10 years ago or more, and has limited relevance for Ericsson's business going forward," the company said in a statement.

The depreciation has no impact on cash flow, it said.

Ericsson is trying to divest the two business areas mainly responsible for the writedowns, digital services and media, where the company provides services for television channels, telecom operators, content providers as well as cloud and physical devices for the Internet of Things.

The company wants to sell the two units to focus on its core business, which is network infrastructure.

In addition to the writedowns, Ericsson also announced a 1.0 billion kronor non-cash tax charge due to US tax rates being cut from 35 percent to 21 percent this month.

Once a global leader in equipment making, Ericsson is facing intense competition from the likes of Finland's Nokia and China's Huawei, coupled with sagging investment in networks.

In the third quarter, Ericsson posted a net loss of 4.4 billion kronor and registered its fourth straight operating loss, after being hit by a range of factors including higher development and hardware costs.

The company is to publish its annual results on January 31.

Source: AFP

General Electric said Tuesday it would book a one-off charge of $6.2 billion on its accounts for the fourth quarter of 2017, following a review of its insurance businesses.

"GE announced today that the comprehensive review and reserve testing for GE Capital's run-off insurance portfolio, North American Life & Health (NALH), will result in an after-tax charge of $6.2 billion for the fourth quarter of 2017," the group said in a statement.

Last year, the group's GE Capital unit initiated "a comprehensive review" of the group's insurance reserves, said chief executive, John Flannery.

"We have been taking ongoing actions to make GE Capital smaller and more focused while maintaining its key capabilities to support financing for GE Industrial products," Flannery continued.

"These actions will also help restore GE Capital ratios to appropriate level," he said, adding that "a charge of this magnitude... is deeply disappointing."

Source: AFP

 The EU will remove Panama, South Korea and six other countries from its recently unveiled tax haven blacklist in a quick reversal that drew criticism from activists.

An EU official told AFP that the bloc's finance ministers would pare down the list at talks next week, satisfied that the countries had made commitments to tax reform that Brussels will monitor.

"Barring a major surprise, EU finance ministers should remove eight countries from the blacklist of tax havens," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The change of mind comes just a few weeks after the EU announced an original blacklist of 17 non-EU countries, which drew furious reaction from several of those targeted.

The United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Mongolia, Macau, Grenada and Barbados will also be removed from the list.

The official said the countries removed from the list now move to the EU's so-called "grey list", jurisdictions that have made unspecified commitments to the EU on reforming their tax laws.

"I confirm that a dozen blacklisted third countries have since December sent additional commitments," EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici told reporters in Paris.

"It's a good sign, since the purpose of a list is to get out and to get off of it you have to solve the problems that are identified," Moscovici added.

The lists came a year on from the leak of the "Panama Papers" -- a massive amount of data from a prominent Panamanian law firm showing how the world's wealthy stash assets.

The EU originally screened a total of 92 countries to draw up the list, which is expected to be continuously updated.

"This is a worrying trend. Just one month after adopting the list they are taking people off," Aurore Chardonnet, an EU tax policy advisor at Oxfam, told AFP.

"They are weakening the credibility of the list... which is becoming empty," she added.

At the time of its adoption in December, the 28 members of the EU failed to agree on possible sanctions against blacklisted countries.

While France's finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, pleaded for sanctions, his Luxembourg counterpart, Pierre Gramegna, was less in a hurry: "It's bad enough to be on the blacklist".

Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, as well as Bahrain, Guam, the Marshall Islands, Palau, Samoa, American Samoa and Namibia remain on the blacklist.

Source: AFP

Citigroup on Tuesday reported steep fourth-quarter losses driven by a one-time charge from the recent US tax cuts.

Net losses for the final quarter of 2017 were $18.3 billion, or $7.15 per share, due to a $22 billion charge stemming from re-measurement of tax-deferred assets under the new tax law and repatriation of foreign earnings, the company said in a statement.

Many US companies have announced such charges for the fourth quarter due to the recently-passed tax overhaul, though they expect to see a reduced tax burden going forward.

CEO Michael Corbat said in a statement that despite the one-time costs from tax reform the new tax plan pointed to a rosier future for Citigroup.

"Tax reform not only leads to higher net income and increased returns, but also serves to strengthen our capital generation capabilities going forward," he said.

Excluding the effects of the tax revamp, the financial giant's net income was up four percent over the same quarter of 2016 at $3.7 billion, or $1.28 per share.

And net operating income for the full year rose $1 billion to $15.8 billion.

For all of 2017, however, the company still reported a net loss of $6.2 billion on revenues of $71.4 billion.

Source: AFP

The British government on Tuesday defended its decision not to bail out imploding construction-to-catering group Carillion, as criticism grew of its handling of the giant firm's demise.

Carillion, which has a variety of private and public service contracts in Britain and employs 43,000 staff worldwide, announced its immediate liquidation Monday after the heavily-indebted company failed to secure a last-minute financial rescue by the government and banks.

The government's emergency response committee -- known as COBRA -- reportedly met for around an hour on Monday evening, with ministers from all affected departments attending, including finance minister Philip Hammond.

Treasury minister Liz Truss on Tuesday told MPs "it would be completely wrong for a public company that got itself in this state to be bailed out by the state."

Thousands of British staff working for private-sector companies inside the stricken conglomerate will only have their wages paid until Wednesday under contingency arrangements.

Prime Minister Theresa May's government has agreed taxpayers will foot a bill potentially running into hundreds of millions of pounds to continue paying the company's 19,500 staff in public sector jobs.

"Our number one priority is making sure we supply those public services," Truss said.

Carillion has public sector and private partnership contracts worth £1.7 billion (1.9 billion euros/$2.35 billion), including providing school dinners, cleaning and catering at public hospitals, various construction works and maintaining 50,000 army base homes for the Ministry of Defence.

Hammond said Tuesday that the government had issued a line of credit to Carillion's receivers "that enables (them) to operate the company's public sector contracts."

- 'Pay the wages!' -

The company has been struggling for some time and in July last year issued the first of several profit warnings.

Despite the red flags, the government continued to award the company major public contracts, including on a flagship new high-speed rail project, leading to increasingly scathing criticism.

"The collapse of Carillion is a watershed moment," Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted Monday evening, alongside a video in which he lambasted private finance initiatives like those the government awarded to the company.

"It is time to put an end to the rip-off privatisation policies that have done serious damage to our public services and fleeced taxpayers of billions of pounds," he added.

Reports suggest up to 30,000 small firms are owed as much as £1 billion by Carillion.

French building giant Vinci on Tuesday appeared to rule out bidding for parts of the failing company, with CEO Xavier Huillard saying "buying significant pieces of Carillion is not for us."

"A scalded cat fears cold water," he said, adding that Britain's economy favoured the finance and legal sectors at the expense of the construction industry.

- Directors under scrutiny -

Meanwhile the company has been roundly criticised for its executives' remunerations, with several former directors expected to continue receiving hefty salaries and benefits for months.

Britain's main lobby group representing business bosses called the pay packets "highly inappropriate" and accused them and shareholders of failing to provide "appropriate oversight".

Roger Barker, head of corporate governance at the Institute of Directors, said "effective governance was lacking at Carillion".

"We must now consider if the board and shareholders have exercised appropriate oversight prior to the collapse," he added.

Business Secretary Greg Clark confirmed Tuesday that an investigation had been launched into the conduct of Carillion's directors to see if they "may have caused detriment to those owed money, including workers and businesses affected".

Signs at a Carillion construction site in Liverpool, northwest England, were defaced with messages including "pay the wages" and "bust".

Carillion said Monday "it had no choice but to take steps to enter into compulsory liquidation with immediate effect".

The company, with operations also in Canada and the Middle East, had revenues of £5.2 billion ($7.1 billion, 5.9 billion euros) last year.

Source: AFP

Wall Street returned from a long holiday weekend to set new records amid solid corporate earnings reports and optimism for profits in 2018 due to a US tax reform. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 0.8 percent in initial trades to rise for the first time above the 26,000 mark. It later gave up some of those gains. "American markets were shut yesterday as the US celebrated Martin Luther King Jr Day, and they are making up for lost ground today," said market analyst David Madden at CMC Markets UK.

"The Dow Jones, S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100 have all reached new record highs today, although we have seen a pullback," he added. Citigroup shares climbed 1.1 percent as, while taking a $22 billion charge due to changes in tax rules that pushed it into a loss of $18.3 billion for the quarter. Without the tax charge earnings were higher than in the same period last year, and the bank said it should benefit to changes to the tax law going forward.

Eurozone stock markets rose on the coattails of Asia, while London slid as thanks to heavyweight energy and mining stocks. London's FTSE 100 still flirted briefly with new all-time high, however, as sterling dropped on official data showing that UK annual inflation pulled back in December from a near six-year peak. But by the afternoon it was trading down and closed 0.2 percent lower. The euro meanwhile came off a three-year high versus the dollar struck on Monday, while oil futures retreated also from their highest levels since 2015 that were reached at the start of the week.

That helped eurozone stocks advance, with the CAC 40 index in Paris adding 0.07 percent and the DAX 30 in Frankfurt climbing 0.4 percent. The euro is "finally seeing some weakness after its remarkable bounce of late", said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG trading group. He noted also that "sterling's impressive rally over the past nine months has helped cool imported inflation" into the UK, in turn lessening the prospect of further rate tightening from the Bank of England.

"Perhaps they won't have to raise rates this year after all, although one reading does not constitute a trend," added Beauchamp after UK annual inflation dipped to 3.0 percent from 3.1 percent. The European single currency on Monday almost broke $1.23 for the first time since December 2014 on strong economic data and after a key member of the European Central Bank hinted that it could start cutting back its bond-buying stimulus by September.

In company share price movement on Tuesday, BP shed 2.7 percent after the British energy giant said it will take an additional charge of $1.7 billion (1.4 billion euros) for last year linked to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster in 2010. Heavyweight miners were also lower, with Rio Tinto down 3.0 percent and BHP Billiton dropping 2.4 percent. Stock markets mostly rose in Asia on Tuesday, with Hong Kong clocking its highest-ever close.

While there were few leads from Wall Street owing to a public holiday in the US on Monday, investors continued to push into equity markets in Asia and maintaining a healthy start to 2018. Tokyo's main stocks index climbed one percent to a more than 26-year high and Shanghai added 0.8 percent. - Key figures around 1635 GMT - London - FTSE 100: DOWN 0.2 percent at 7,755.93 points (close) Frankfurt - DAX 30: UP 0.4 percent at 13,246.

33 (close) Paris - CAC 40: UP 0.07 percent at 5,513.82 (close) EURO STOXX 50: UP 0.2 percent at 3,617.88 New York - DOW: UP 0.6 percent at 25,956.63 Tokyo - Nikkei 225: UP 1.0 percent at 23,951.81 (close) Hong Kong - Hang Seng: UP 1.8 percent at 31,904.75 (close) Shanghai - Composite: UP 0.8 percent at 3,436.59 (close) Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.2227 from $1.2265 at 1635 GMT Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.3765 from $1.3806 Dollar/yen: UP at 110.77 yen from 110.56 yen Oil - Brent North Sea: DOWN 80 cents at $69.46 per barrel Oil - West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 33 cents at $63.97

Source: AFP

The head of the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock, has called on corporate leaders to act for the betterment of society or risk losing the investment giant's support.

In a letter to chief executives, BlackRock CEO and co-founder Laurence Fink said companies that failed to set and pursue clear goals on the environment, workforce diversity and training and technological change would "ultimately lose the license to operate from key stakeholders."

With more than $6 trillion in assets under management, BlackRock is the world's largest investor in publicly held companies.

Fink's message may run counter to the views of companies in which BlackRock is invested and which believe their overriding goal is merely to deliver returns to investors.

Like other investment managers, BlackRock in the past has faced criticism for failing to hold corporate leaders to account on matters of corporate governance and hot-button social issues.

But, in a letter dated Friday, Fink said companies without a clearly articulated purpose would be vulnerable to short-term earnings pressures "and in the process sacrifice investments in employee development, innovation and capital expenditures that are necessary for long-term growth."

This would leave the companies exposed to more sharply articulated, if near-sighted, activist campaigns and ultimately harm results, he said.

To sustain performance, "you must also understand the societal impact of your business as well as the ways that broad, structural trends -- from slow wage growth to rising automation to climate change -- affect your potential for growth," Fink wrote.

"Companies must ask themselves: What role do we play in the community? How are we managing our impact on the environment? Are we working to create a diverse workforce? Are we adapting to technological change?"

BlackRock will double the size of its investment stewardship team over the next three years and directly engage with companies, favoring corporate boards that show greater ethnic and gender diversity as well as varied career experiences and perspectives among members, Fink said.

Source: AFP

US President Donald Trump's planned visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos next week will likely eclipse the long list of other movers and shakers set to attend.

The WEF on Tuesday unveiled its lineup for the annual meeting at the luxury Swiss ski resort town, where this year's focus is on how to create "a shared future in a fractured world."

"We need collaborative efforts," WEF founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab told reporters in Geneva, warning: "There is today a real danger of a collapse of our global systems... It is in our hands to change the state of the world."

But ironically this year's main attraction will be Trump, who is widely blamed for deepening a number of diplomatic rifts and creating new ones with polarising policy and rhetoric.

Since taking office a year ago, he has doubled down on his "America First" agenda, which stands in stark contrast to the globalisation and regulatory integration popular among the Davos crowd.

The five-day event kicks off Monday and is expected to draw some 3,000 political and business elites, including 70 heads of state and government.

- Trump participation 'essential' -

But attention is expected to be focused squarely on Trump, who will be the first sitting US president to attend the meeting since Bill Clinton in 2000.

A string of US presidents have avoided attending the upscale event, fearing a sojourn to a European ski resort would make them look out of touch.

But Trump is expected to use the opportunity to thumb his nose at the elites who flock to Davos -- a festival of globalism drawing many of his most virulent critics.

Trump has sparked alarm over his decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord, as well as his barrage of criticism against the World Trade Organization and various UN agencies.

He has also pushed tensions to the boiling point with nuclear-armed North Korea and more recently reportedly branded Haiti, El Salvador and countries across Africa as "shitholes".

Schwab said he was thrilled that the US president would attend, pointing out that a major topic of discussion at Davos would be "the future of global cooperation" on issues like trade, the environment and the fight against terrorism.

"It is absolutely essential to have President Trump with us," he said.

The White House has said he will be accompanied by a large delegation, including his son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

As something of a counterweight, former US vice president Al Gore and the country's former top diplomat John Kerry, both Democrats, will also be present.

Trump is slated to deliver a speech before the end of the meeting on Friday, WEF said.

This year's line-up will also be headlined by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will give the keynote address on Tuesday, and French President Emmanuel Macron, who is scheduled to address the forum on Wednesday.

British Prime Minister Theresa May and her Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau will attend, as will Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu.

The presidents of Brazil, Colombia, Zimbabwe, Switzerland and the European Commission will also be there, along with the kings of Jordan and Spain.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres will attend, flanked by the heads of the UN agencies for trade, health, labour and human rights, as well as the heads of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The business world will also be well represented, with the leaders of some 1,900 companies expected to be on hand.

- Women in focus? -

A number of Hollywood stars will also be present this year, including movie legend Cate Blanchette.

They may be among those addressing the hot-button issues of gender equality and sexual harassment, after accusations against Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein erupted into a global reckoning that has shaken artistic, media and political circles worldwide.

Trying to keep in step with the global zeitgeist, WEF organisers boast that the share of women participants this year will be the highest ever at 21 percent.

Among them are high-profile co-chairs including IMF chief Christine Lagarde, head of IBM Ginni Rometty and Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg.

Source: AFP

Anti-riot police fired tear gas and beat protesters with batons Tuesday as hundreds of Sudanese demonstrated against soaring bread prices near a presidential palace in Khartoum, an AFP correspondent said.

Bread prices have more than doubled after a jump in the cost of flour due to dwindling wheat supplies, after the government decided to stop importing grain and allow private companies to do so.

The protest was the biggest in Khartoum since demonstrations erupted in some parts of the country earlier this month following the price increase.

On Tuesday, hundreds of protesters poured into the streets near a presidential palace in central Khartoum after the opposition Communist Party of Sudan called for an anti-government rally.

"No, no to hunger! No, no to high prices!" protesters shouted near the palace.

Police fired tear gas and hit protesters with batons as they tried to break up the protest.

A senior leader from the Communist Party, Siddig Yousif, was detained along with several protesters, the correspondent reported.

Later on Tuesday police dispersed the rally near the palace but protesters staged small demonstrations in nearby streets as they were chased away.

On Monday last week, students also rallied against the rising prices near Khartoum University but police swiftly broke up the protest.

The day before, in the town of Geneina in the war-torn region of Darfur, a student was killed during a similar protest. It was unclear how he was killed.

Anti-government protests erupted after the cost of a 50-kilo (110-pound) sack of flour jumped from 167 ($9) to 450 Sudanese pounds ($25).

Similar protests were held in late 2016 after the government cut fuel subsidies.

The authorities cracked down on those protests to prevent a repeat of the deadly unrest that followed an earlier round of subsidy cuts in 2013.

Dozens of people were killed in 2013 when security forces crushed large street demonstrations, drawing international condemnation.

Source: AFP

Tabarak Investment announced today the acquisition of over 80% stake in Abu Dhabi’s Tasweek Real Estate Development and Marketing PJSC.

The acquisition comes as part of Tabarak’s plans to diversify and support its real estate portfolio, which will now include Tasweek’s strategic international real estate investments including its innovative Marrakesh Healthcare City in Morocco, ‘The Haven Lakeside Residences” and Casabrina Vacation Villas in Malaysia.

Commenting on the acquisition, Ahmad Kilani, Chief Executive Officer at Tabarak: “We are delighted to start our investment year with this announcement, which represents a milestone in our opportunistic investment plan for the year. In the near future, Tasweek’s current investment portfolio will witness additional projects that are directly related to Tabarak’s investments.”

He continued: “Tabarak team will continue to navigate the market for favorable opportunities where we can intervene to drive critical change and deliver high financial returns. The core of Tabarak’s investment philosophy is to invest in Emirati ventures that would contribute and support the national economy, in line with the vision of the UAE’s wise leadership.”

Kilani added: “Tasweek’s innovative real estate offerings has proven its unique proposition. Benefiting from our network and market exposure, we are expecting high market demand in Tasweek’s local and international real estate projects.”

Established in 2011 in Abu Dhabi, Tabarak Investment is a private equity firm that transforms companies into outstanding performing businesses, while delivering high-returns to investors. The firm has a fast-growing and expanding portfolio with proven achievements in successful transformative acquisitions of local and international businesses in different industries including real estate, education, insurance, logistics and finance.

British construction group Carillion announced its immediate liquidation Monday after the heavily-indebted company failed to secure a financial rescue from the UK government and banks in last-ditch talks.

Carillion, which employs 43,000 staff worldwide including 19,500 in Britain, said that the government would nevertheless provide some funding to allow current state projects to continue, following crunch talks over the weekend.

Analysts warned it could turn out to be a costly mistake by the government, led by Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May.

Carillion chairman Philip Green called it "a very sad day for Carillion" after failing to secure its future.

"In recent days... we have been unable to secure the funding to support our business plan and it is therefore with the deepest regret that we have arrived at this decision," he said in a company statement.

Carillion is a major UK government contractor involved in a wide range of projects from schools to the multi-billion-pound High Speed Two (HS2) railway.

But it has been struggling for some time and in July last year issued the first of several profit warnings.

Carillion on Monday said "it had no choice but to take steps to enter into compulsory liquidation with immediate effect".

It added: "An application was made to the High Court for a compulsory liquidation of Carillion before opening of business today and an order has been granted to appoint the Official Receiver as the liquidator of Carillion."

Despite the red flags, the government continued to award the company major public contracts, including on the flagship HS2 project, leading to criticism.

But the government said it was not its place to prop up the company.

"This is a private sector company, it's regrettable that it's not been able to find a suitable refinancing option with its lenders," Cabinet Office minister David Lidington told BBC radio.

"We did decide that taxpayers can't be expected to bail out a private sector company, particularly when their troubles arose the most part from a side of their business that's nothing to do with UK government contracts," he added.

The government meanwhile advised Carillion staff to still come to work to see through some projects.

"There is no doubt that Carillion posed a huge political challenge for the government, which did not want to be seen to bail out another group of private shareholders and banks after suffering such a backlash from their decisions during the financial crisis," said Rebecca O’Keeffe, head of investment at stockbroker Interactive Investor.

"However, the prospect of the government temporarily funding existing Carillion public service contracts, alongside the likely increase in costs for renegotiating contracts with new suppliers, makes it highly likely that they could ultimately pay far more than if they had provided the guarantees that Carillion's creditors needed."

City Index trading group warned in a client note that "the knock-on effect on the broader economy could be large, given that the potential number of job losses are in the thousands".

- 'Serious questions' -

Union leaders blamed both the government and Carillion management for the company's collapse.

"The blame for this lies squarely with the government who are obsessed with out-sourcing key works to these high risk, private enterprises," said Mick Cash, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union.

Jim Kennedy, a senior official at the Unite union, called for a public inquiry and said there were "serious questions that need to be asked and answered about Carillion's conduct", while he questioned also why the government handed "public money to a company that had issued repeated profits warnings".

Andrew Adonis, who resigned as head of a government-backed infrastructure commission last month, said Sunday that the Carillion crisis raised "big questions" for transport minister Chris Grayling.

Carillion has a wide range of public sector contracts, including providing support services for almost 900 schools and around 50,000 homes for military personnel.

The company, with operations also in Canada and the Middle East, had revenues of £5.2 billion ($7.1 billion, 5.9 billion euros) last year.

In January, British watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority launched an investigation into its market updates.

Source: AFP

Scotland's economy would shrink by 8.5 percent if Britain leaves the EU without a deal, Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon warned Monday as she pushed for Britain to stay in the European single market.

"There is no option short of EU membership that is as good as being in the EU," First Minister Sturgeon said as she presented an analysis of the economic impact of possible future ties with the bloc.

"This is about degrees of what does the least damage to our economy," she told journalists in the Scottish capital Edinburgh.

According to the new analysis, Scotland's GDP would plunge 8.5 percent by 2030 -- or 12.7 billion pounds ($17.5 billion, 14.3 billion euros) -- if no deal is reached with Brussels and Britain has to fall back on World Trade Organisation rules.

This compares to a 6.1 percent (9.0 billion) fall if a free trade accord is signed with the bloc, and 2.7 percent (4.0 billion) drop if the UK joins the European Economic Area and therefore stays part of the single market.

Sturgeon said the impact study served as "compelling" evidence that Britain should remain part of the single market, if it is not possible to stay an EU member as her Scottish National Party would like.

Scotland backed EU membership by 62 percent in the June 2016 referendum, compared to the overall British vote on 52 percent in favour of Brexit.

The SNP has previously pushed for a second referendum on Scottish independence from Britain, as a result of Brexit, and Sturgeon said Sunday a decision on holding another vote would be taken when the shape of the EU deal becomes clearer.

Sturgeon predicted a majority of British lawmakers would support single market membership, despite Prime Minister Theresa May ruling it out largely owing to its condition of continuing free movement of people.

But the Scottish leader argued the EU migration which comes as part of the single market rules is "essential to our future economic prosperity".

"Growing our population, and particularly our working age population, is perhaps the greatest national challenge that we face," she said.

- Scottish leader 'scaremongering' -

London and Brussels are due to move on to the next stage of Brexit negotiations this year, after achieving "sufficient progress" in December on a preliminary exit agreement.

Sturgeon accused the British government of a "reckless and irresponsible approach" in the negotiations so far, arguing London had entered talks with unachievable aims, and urged the government to put single market membership back on the table.

But the Scottish wing of the ruling Conservative Party accused the SNP of "scaremongering" with its study.

"No-one's doubting that Brexit will pose challenges, but it will bring opportunities too," said Scottish lawmaker Adam Tomkins.

The Conservative government is expected to be further challenged by the SNP over the management of areas such as fishing, which are currently governed through the devolved Scottish Parliament, as Britain prepares legislation to repeal EU laws.

Sturgeon said on Friday the SNP would introduce a bill to ensure Scotland retains the devolved powers after Brexit, in an attempt to avoid a Westminster "power grab".

Source: AFP

 The sales chief of European planemaker Airbus predicted Iran would take delivery of dozens of European jets it has ordered under a nuclear sanctions deal with major powers, but warned the transactions could take longer to complete than planned.
US President Donald Trump, who has strongly criticized the 2015 deal to lift a raft of sanctions in return for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities, urged European allies on Friday to help fix “disastrous flaws” in the pact or face a US exit.
European planemaker Airbus and its US rival Boeing have agreed to sell a combined total of 180 jets to renew the aging fleet of state carrier IranAir, but depend on US support for the deal because of the number of US parts in all their jets.
“I think those deals will get fulfilled, maybe not on the original schedule,” Airbus sales chief John Leahy told Reuters in an interview, referring to the company’s agreement to sell 100 planes to IranAir.
“We have to arrange financing; they have to understand about making pre-delivery payments,” he added.
So far IranAir has taken delivery of three Airbus jets and a handful of turboprops built by its Franco-Italian affiliate ATR.
Bankers say further business with Iran has been held up by the reluctance of Western financial institutions to deal with Tehran because of concerns that the nuclear deal could unravel or that they could fall foul of ongoing US financial controls.
Posting the vast majority of the 100 sales to Iran as firm orders allowed Airbus to beat Boeing in their annual race for new business in 2016. Airbus again won more orders in 2017.

UNCERTAINTY
Airbus has secured a batch of export licenses from the US Treasury that expire around the start of the next decade, meaning it would need renewed permission to complete its planned deliveries to Iran, which are scheduled to stretch beyond 2020.
The number of deliveries covered by those existing licenses would shrink if schedules were delayed, industry sources say.
Diplomats say the process of obtaining or renewing licenses has become slower amid uncertainty over US policy on Iran.
Leahy, who is due to retire later this month, indicated Airbus would be cautious about building jets for Iran without receiving deposit payments. Industry sources say Boeing has also held off building jets until it receives downpayments.
“You have got to make pre-delivery payments where aircraft get into production, so we are doing it on perhaps a lower basis than we thought, but we still believe that it will work out,” Leahy said.
Industry sources say Iran has been forced by the lack of financing to pay cash via its central bank for the airplanes it has received already, and deals may be worked out allowing these payments to double as deposits for future aircraft deliveries.
Airbus declined to comment on Trump’s latest declaration on Iran, but said it “continues to work with IranAir and the Iranian authorities on the execution of the purchase agreement signed last year in full compliance with the (nuclear deal) and other regulations.”
Boeing, which has sold 80 planes to IranAir and committed to sell 30 more to another Iranian airline, Aseman Airlines, said it continued to follow the US government’s lead. So far it has not included any of the Iranian sales in the way it accounts for unfilled orders.
“We are aware of last Friday’s announcement and we are reviewing it to determine any impact it may have on our interactions with Iran’s commercial airlines,” a spokesman said.
“As the government provides us details and guidance, we will adjust our activities if required.” (Additional reporting by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Source: arabnews

The outlook this year for sovereign ratings in the GCC is “negative,” according to ratings agency Moody’s in a new report highlighting geopolitical risks and muted economic growth as factors undermining the creditworthiness of the region.
“Although oil prices have risen significantly from their lows in early 2016, most sovereigns in the region will continue to run sizable fiscal deficits and record an increase in their debt burdens over the next 12 to 18 months,” said Steffen Dyck, vice president as senior credit officer at Moody’s.
“In addition, long-standing geopolitical event risks have come to the fore again and will play an important role in defining sovereign credit quality in 2018.”
The report forecast a slight increase in GDP growth of close to 2 percent this year across the GCC.
While regional government debt burdens are set to rise, the report said, the speed of growth will vary from country to country. Bahrain’s debt is expected to approach 100 percent of GDP by 2019.
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia’s debt burdens are forecast to increase, but at lower levels in comparison to Bahrain, according to the report. Qatar and the UAE’s debt is expected to stabilize in 2018 and 2019.
Regional geopolitical tensions are likely to persist in 2018, with Moody’s anticipating that the diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar by the Saudi Arabia-led group of Arab countries will continue throughout 2018 and possibly longer.
Three out of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries currently have negative rating outlooks, according to Moody’s, with the remaining countries having stable outlooks.
This is an improvement compared to the start of 2017 when four out of six had negative outlooks. Qatar, Oman and Bahrain all saw their credit rating downgraded last year by Moody’s.

Source: arabnews

European Union officials have proposed removing eight jurisdictions from the blacklist of tax havens the bloc adopted in December, in what critics may see as a blow to its campaign against tax avoidance.
EU states decided last month to draw up the list in a bid to discourage the most aggressive tax dodging practices.
But eight of the 17 jurisdictions currently listed are set to be quickly removed from the list after they offered to change their tax rules, according to EU documents seen by Reuters.
Panama, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Barbados, Grenada, Macao, Mongolia and Tunisia are the jurisdictions that EU officials have recommended be delisted.
The removal of Bahrain was also initially considered, but its delisting was eventually not recommended, the documents show.
The proposal will be discussed at a meeting of EU ambassadors on Wednesday and is expected to be adopted by EU finance ministers when they meet next week in Brussels for monthly talks.
Jurisdictions set to remain on the blacklist are American Samoa, Bahrain, Guam, the Marshall Islands, Namibia, Palau, Saint Lucia, Samoa, and Trinidad and Tobago.
The proposal for the delisting was made by the so-called Code of Conduct Group, which gathers tax experts from the 28 EU member states. It monitors countries’ commitments to abide by EU standards on tax matters.
If the recommendation were confirmed by EU ministers, the eight jurisdictions will be moved to a so-called grey list which includes those who have committed to change their rules on tax transparency and cooperation. The grey list currently includes 47 jurisdictions.
The shrinking of the blacklist is likely to be criticized by tax transparency groups. In December some activists denounced the listing process as a whitewash and had called for the inclusion in the blacklist of some EU countries accused of facilitating tax avoidance, like Luxembourg, Malta, Ireland and the Netherlands.
The recommended removal of Panama may cause particular outcry, as it has been at the center of one of the largest disclosures of offshore schemes, the so-called Panama Papers.
EU officials have said the purpose of the blacklist is to convince jurisdictions to become more transparent. Having fewer on the list means more countries have committed to changes, they say.

Source: arabnews

As bitcoin raced to another record high on Tuesday, one of the biggest providers of digital currency wallets, Coinbase, went down under the weight of traffic, leaving many of its more than 10 million customers unable to access their funds.

At the same time, Bitfinex, the world's biggest bitcoin exchange by trading volume, said it was under a heavy denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, meaning its servers had been intentionally flooded with junk online requests, taking down its website and crippling its services.

The latest outages show how the market infrastructure for an immature and volatile instrument that millions of investors have piled into may be ill-equipped to cope with sudden shifts in demand, which is worrying some investors.

During a particularly volatile period of trading on Dec. 7, bitcoin surged from below $16,000 to $19,500 in less than an hour on Coinbase's exchange GDAX, while it was changing hands at less than $16,000 on another, Bitstamp.

As trading volume surged, GDAX and Coinbase went down at least 10 times because of "record-high traffic", Coinbase said.

"More people are engaging with our platform than ever and that bodes well for the future of the digital currency. At the same time, it does create extreme volatility and stress on our systems," the company's director of business operations, David Farmer, said.

"We can confirm that there has been no unusual or suspicious activity. All we know right now is that there is a large amount of traffic," he told Reuters.

Bitfinex said it had been under a sustained DDoS attack since last week.

"While last week the platform traded continuously, to effectively perform emergency maintenance, we took the website down for a brief time today (Tuesday) to mitigate further issues for customers," a spokesman said.

"We are constantly improving our systems to ensure that we're able to both accommodate the immense volume of trading that occurs on our platform while also fending off sustained DDoS attacks," he said.

24/7 MARKET

Daniel Masters, founder of Global Advisors Bitcoin Investment Fund, worries the exchanges would struggle to cope if there were a sudden rush for the exit.

"The ability of these platforms to handle volume is yet to be tested properly," he said. "What happens if this market turns into a lot of sellers? The liquidity itself could be an issue."

Charles Cascarilla, chief executive of New York-based company Paxos, which operates cryptocurrency exchange itBit, told Reuters that dealing with spikes in volume was a problem faced by all exchanges, not just cryptocurrency platforms.

"Clearly the reality is the world of cryptocurrency is growing at an exponential rate right now and everyone is doing their best to expand infrastructure, but it is hard to know what would happen in a hypothetical scenario," he said.

Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of the Gemini exchange, an early bitcoin investor and an outspoken supporter of the cryptocurrency, said the risk the wider market would suffer badly if one exchange went down no longer existed, as trading volume had become more evenly spread.

"We are definitely beyond the too-big-to-fail situation," he told Reuters. "That was a problem we had five years ago when Mt. Gox accounted for 95 percent of volume."

"Most of the exchanges are doing a good job. This is a 24/7 market, there is no session close and there is no downtime."

Mt. Gox, the world's biggest bitcoin exchange at the time, collapsed in 2014 after hackers stole 650,000 bitcoins, triggering a collapse in the bitcoin price.

The demise of Mt. Gox left more than 24,000 customers unable to access hundreds of millions of dollars of cryptocurrency and cash. More than three years later none has recouped a cent.

BITCOIN FUTURES

Some investors had said they were worried the launch of bitcoin futures by the world's biggest derivative exchanges could exacerbate volatility by prompting some traders to take out large positions betting on a price fall in the future.

The Chicago-based Cboe Global Markets Inc. futures launched a futures contracts on bitcoin on Dec. 10 and CME Group Inc will launch a rival contract a week later.

So far this week, the launch of futures by Cboe does not appear to have created any additional volatility, with price moves less violent than last week's wild trading.

But Tim Swanson, a bitcoin expert and founder of Post Oak Labs, a technology advisory firm, said he was concerned that if the futures liquidity increases there could be an incentive for someone with a large bet against bitcoin to disrupt or attack the network to make money from the ensuing price fall.

CME Group and Cboe declined to comment.

Flooding the bitcoin network with tiny transactions could potentially send the price down sharply, said Swanson, as could sending many sell-signals to the market that are not honored - so-called spoofing, which is illegal in regulated markets.

A surge in bitcoin trades in recent weeks has also left the blockchain network that the cryptocurrency relies on to process and verify transactions struggling to keep up.

As of Wednesday at 1445 GMT, more than 125,000 bitcoin transactions remained unconfirmed.

In the past week, more than half a million new users have opened wallets with retail-focused bitcoin wallet provider Blockchain, the firm said, taking the total number of users to more than 20 million, from 10 million last year.

The London-based company has also been struggling to keep up, citing "record traffic levels" last week.

VOLATILE TRADING

Created in 2008, bitcoin uses encryption and a shared blockchain database that enables the anonymous transfer of funds outside of a conventional centralized payment system.

But there is little evidence to suggest buyers are using bitcoin as a means of exchange and payment. On the whole, they buy the cryptocurrency as a speculative investment, attracted by massive price gains, said Garrick Hileman, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge's Judge Business School.

As a result, some banks say they are worried that a collapse in bitcoin would have a knock-on effect on investments by individual investors in other asset classes.

Deutsche Bank said in a report on Dec. 7 that a bitcoin crash - and the impact it could have on retail investors' confidence - was one of the biggest risks to markets in 2018.

Periods of high volatility are not uncommon in other currencies and asset classes, particularly in commodities and emerging markets. But bitcoin's volatility is extreme, and frequent: the one-day price move has been more than 10 percent on nine days in the past three months.

Moves of a similar magnitude for the U.S dollar, for example, are extremely rare. Its biggest one-day move against a major currency was in January 2015 when the Swiss central bank abandoned a cap on the franc, sending the dollar down 18 percent.

Some bitcoin watchers, such as Swanson, also worry about the risk of one of the big exchanges being suddenly shut by authorities.

In July, U.S. authorities shut down the website of the BTC-e exchange, saying it had "facilitated transactions involving ransomware, computer hacking, identity theft, tax refund fraud schemes, public corruption, and drug trafficking".

BTC-e, which is no longer operating, could not be reached for comment.

The top three exchanges out of more than 100 - Bitfinex, GDAX and bitFlyer - are home to more than 60 percent of all trading, according to data provider Bitcoinity.

Another issue specific to the market is the risk of hacking and theft. More than 980,000 bitcoins have been stolen from exchanges, Reuters has found, with the Mt. Gox heist accounting for the majority.

Last week, a Slovenian cryptocurrency mining marketplace, NiceHash, said it had lost about $64 million worth of bitcoin in a hack of its payment system.

Source: AFP

Two decades ago, Fatima Nolasco walked over the border into the United States in search of a better life, going on to build a successful business, and a new home.

Now, after Donald Trump decided to end a program that has allowed her to work legally in the country, along with 200,000 fellow immigrants from El Salvador, she fears she is about to lose it all.

Unless Congress can find a long-term solution to replace the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program granted to Salvadorans in 2001 after two earthquakes devastated their country -- Nolasco will lose her legal immigration rights in September 2019.

Under the plan's protections, Nolasco started a small construction and home remodeling business with her husband Walter Dubon, a permanent legal resident.

Today, they employ 20 workers and pay up to $30,000 a year in business taxes, on top of individual taxes.

"We've been paying taxes for 16 years," she said. "We never thought this would end like this. We always had hope that they would give us the opportunity."

Nolasco notes that her family does not rely on any government aid. In fact, TPS recipients do not qualify for needs-based government programs, but do contribute to them through payroll taxes.

- Economic hit -

"We have given ourselves a decent life as a result of our work and effort. I hope they realize we are not a burden on the country," she told AFP in an interview at her home near the capital Washington, which hosts a large population of Salvadorans.

While Trump takes credit for solid growth and jobs gains during his first year in office, economists and business leaders warn that expelling immigrant workers wholesale would cause a major hit to the economy.

This would be especially damaging at a time when firms increasingly complain they cannot find workers, especially in fields like construction -- a particular concern for rebuilding efforts in hurricane-hit areas of Houston and Florida.

One analysis shows that if Salvadoran TPS holders as well as tens of thousands from Honduras and Haiti were removed from the labor force, the United States would lose $164 billion in GDP over the next decade -- without counting $6.9 billion in lost contributions to Social Security and Medicare.

As much as 88 percent of those immigrants work -- much higher than the rate among US citizens -- while about a third own homes. Many, like Nolasco, own businesses.

If sent home, they face an uncertain future.

While the US government deems that conditions in El Salvador no longer justify protected status for its citizens, it still has a travel warning cautioning Americans that "gang activity, such as extortion, violent street crime and narcotics and arms trafficking, is widespread."

- 'We consider ourselves American' -

Trump has also announced the end of another program providing legal status to immigrants who were brought to the country as young children.

If Congress fails find a compromise, 800,000 people covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) will lose their protections March 5.

Economists warn the US could lose $215 billion in GDP if the so-called "Dreamers" leave the labor pool.

Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google were among more than 100 major companies whose top executives signed a letter calling for protection for the "Dreamers," and warning that failure to act "will lead to businesses losing valuable talent, cause disruptions in the workforce and will result in significant costs."

Miguel Aguiler, who was brought to the United States from Mexico when he was 11, has found a route to legal status, but fears for his fellow "Dreamers."

"It's pretty ridiculous that the president wants to do away with so many young people who do nothing but contribute to this country," he told AFP.

"We've lived here all our lives, we consider ourselves American, even though we don't have the paper to show it."

He is a shining example of the American dream.

After passage of DACA, he attended a US college on a soccer scholarship and then was drafted to play in the domestic professional soccer league -- the first undocumented immigrant to achieve that goal.

He later married a US citizen, his college sweetheart, which allowed him to gain status as a permanent legal resident with a so-called green card.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, is optimistic Democrats and Republicans in Congress will find a solution to help "Dreamers."

"For better or for worse, the administration has provided a deadline to Congress to figure this out," he told AFP.

Source: AFP

Despite repeatedly vowing to reduce its energy dependency on Moscow, Europe is more reliant on Russian gas than ever before -- and there are few signs of this trend reversing.

Russian gas giant Gazprom said this month it had completed record deliveries towards Europe and Turkey in 2017 at a total of 193.9 billion cubic metres -- eight percent higher than its previous record, set in 2016.

This result was not only a financial victory for the company, whose exports are its main source of profit, but also a political one at a time when diplomatic relations between Russia and the European Union are at their worst since the Cold War.

The numbers "show the increasing demand from European countries for Russian gas, but also the reliability of these deliveries in the required amount," Gazprom's chairman Alexei Miller said.

Deliveries to Germany and Austria reached a historic high and exports to France rose by 6.7 percent compared to 2016, according to Gazprom's figures.

Brussels set goals to diversify its energy sources following a series of gas crises between Moscow and Kiev that affected deliveries to Europe. But the percentage of Russian gas in Europe has only increased in recent years and now represents a third of the total gas consumption in the EU.

That goal was reinforced by tensions between Brussels and Moscow following the start of the Ukrainian crisis in 2014 that led to fears of Moscow using its gas leverage for geopolitical means.

Meanwhile, diversification became easier to achieve with the development of the market for liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is transported by ship rather than pipelines, allowing for the import of supplies from Qatar and even the United States.

However a number of factors have worked to push up consumption of Russian gas.

According to Valery Nesterov, an oil and gas analyst at Russian bank Sberbank CIB, EU demand for gas is rising due to "economic recovery" in Europe and thanks to gas prices being "more competitive" than those of coal.

Other reasons pushing up demand include cold winters, the decline of European (mainly Dutch) gas output and the closure of nuclear power plants, such as in Germany.

If Nesterov envisages a possible reduction of Russian exports to EU this year after record results in 2017, he nonetheless says the general tendency will not change: "Gazprom will likely keep its market share in the EU."

- 'Schizophrenia' -

Strong European demand has allowed Gazprom to increase production after weak results in recent years due to a decline of its market share on its home market and the loss of Ukraine, an important client which stopped buying Russian gas in 2015.

Gazprom is also looking to develop new pipelines with the support of major European companies to maintain its part in the market. But the EU is wary.

Brussels blocked South Stream, a Russian project to ease exports to southern European nations, and has been resisting other projects such as TurkStream, a pipeline planned via Turkey, and North Stream 2, via the Baltic Sea, which Gazprom justifies as necessary for the increased European demand in the future.

"A sort of schizophrenia exists between Europe's diplomacy and its market. The market chooses the cheapest gas to produce and use in Europe, which is Russian gas. Europe is said to be too dependent but nothing has been done to change this," said Thierry Bros, researcher at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

"We could say that the speed limit signs are in place but they are ineffective because there is no speed check. There are mechanisms for regulation but there is nothing to verify that they are respected," he added.

And Russia is not content with just pipelines. The country recently took a major step into the LNG market by launching the Yamal LNG terminal in the Arctic, financed by Russian gas producer Novatek with the help of France's Total. The Yamal project will supply both Europe and Asia via sea routes.

Diversification for the EU is prevented by a simple obstacle, said Thierry Bros: it "requires additional costs and the question is: who is going to pay?"

Source: AFP