Month: July 2017

Venezuela’s crude and fuel deliveries to Cuba have slid almost 13 percent in the first half this year, according to documents from state-run oil company PDVSA viewed by Reuters, threatening to worsen gasoline and power shortages in the communist-run island. Cuba’s government since 2016 has reduced fuel allocations 28 percent to most state-run companies, and has cut electricity consumption. Public lighting was cut 50 percent, while residential electric use was spared. Beginning in March, Cubans also have reported minor gasoline and diesel shortages at service stations. Cuba’s economy depends heavily on Venezuelan crude shipments under a series of bilateral agreements started in 2000 by the South American country’s late President Hugo Chavez. In return, the island nation has provided Venezuela with Cuban doctors and other services. Venezuela’s shipments of crude for Cuba’s refineries dropped 21 percent to 42,310 barrels per day (bpd), the documents showed. Last year, Venezuela made up for a shortfall in crude shipments by sending Cuba more fuels, but this year’s data showed refined products sent to Cuba remained almost unchanged at around 30,040 bpd. In total, PDVSA sent Cuba an average of 72,350 bpd of crude and refined products in the first half of 2017, down almost 13 percent from the same period of last year, according to the data from internal PDVSA trade reports. “Cuba needs at least 70,000 bpd from Venezuela to cover its energy deficit and avoid deeper rationing. A larger or total loss of the Venezuelan supply would have a high political …

Corruption is undermining all efforts to rebuild Ukraine in line with European Union norms, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said on Thursday, as President Petro Poroshenko vowed to pursue ever-closer integration with the bloc. Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk were in Kyiv for a 24-hour summit with Poroshenko following the final ratification of a new trade pact that has angered Russia. “What we are asking … is to increase the fight against corruption, because corruption is undermining all the efforts this great nation is undertaking,” Juncker said at a joint briefing. “We remain very concerned.” The criticism suggests the EU delegation may have taken a tougher-than-expected line in talks forecast to be largely upbeat after the confirmation on Tuesday of an association agreement for closer political and trade ties. Seven conditions still in works Separately, European Commission Vice president Valdis Dombrovskis said Kyiv had a shrinking window to meet 21 conditions to unlock 600 million euros ($684 million) of further financial assistance from the EU, of which seven are outstanding. These conditions include making sure that a landmark reform forcing officials to declare their assets online is properly implemented, and Kyiv lifting a ban on wood exports. “What we are emphasizing currently is that we have quite limited time,” Dombrovskis told reporters. “So all the conditions need to be implemented already in October … because the macrofinancial assistance program ends on Jan. 4 next year.” Reforms lead to investments The pro-Western government in Kyiv has sought to boost …

United Nations human rights experts on Thursday called on Peru to suspend negotiations on a new contract for a large oilfield in the Amazon until past pollution was cleaned up and the rights of indigenous groups respected. Canada’s Frontera Energy Corporation now operates Block 192 in the Peruvian Amazon and is in talks with Peru about renewing its contract once the current one expires in September. U.N. Special Rapporteurs Baskut Tuncak and Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, independent experts tasked with investigating human rights issues, said Peru had failed to clean up pollution from oil spills in the region and was not doing enough to ensure indigenous groups had a voice in talks. “The Peruvian Government must suspend the direct negotiations with companies until the right to free, prior and informed consent is guaranteed, and all environmental damage has been remedied,” Tuncak and Tauli-Corpuz said in a statement from the U.N. Human Rights Council. The remarks will likely be welcomed by indigenous rights activists in Peru who say a law requiring the government to include native groups in talks on projects affecting them has not been fully enforced. Peru’s environment ministry and energy and mines ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In previous years, the government has declared several environmental emergencies in the region due to oil pollution. Frontera did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Peru’s government has been trying to jump start investments in the country’s oil industry that have dropped sharply since global oil prices fell …

McDonald’s is hoping to make a difference in its future seven seconds at a time.   The company that helped define fast food is making supersized efforts to reverse its fading popularity and catch up to a landscape that has evolved around it. That includes expanding delivery, digital ordering kiosks in restaurants, and rolling out an app that saves precious seconds.   Much of the work is on display in an unmarked warehouse near the company’s headquarters in suburban Chicago, where a blowup of a mobile phone screen shows the app launching nationally later this year. McDonald’s estimates it would take 10 seconds for a customer to tell an employee their order number from the app, down from the 17-second average of ordering at the drive-thru, a difference that could help ease pileups. Elsewhere at the Innovation Center, the digital ordering kiosk shows how customers can skip lines at the register.   “Five, 10 years ago, we were the dominant player in convenience, as convenience was defined in those days,” CEO Steve Easterbrook said last month. “But convenience continually gets redefined, and we haven’t modernized.”    The push come as McDonald’s Corp.’s stock has hit all-time highs as investors cheer a turnaround plan that has included slashed costs and expansion overseas. Yet the asterisk on the headlines is the chain’s declining stature in its flagship U.S. market, where it is fighting intensifying competition, fickle tastes and a persistent junk food image.   In an increasingly crowded field of places to …

Working 50 meters (164 feet) under ground with minimal air supply, Uuganbaatar is one of thousands of Mongolians trying to make a living digging for coal. Although the mining season does not begin until autumn, when the ground freezes and work is safer, the 31-year-old and his colleagues are seeking to gain a head start by digging a shaft in Nalaikh, one of the nine districts of Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar, in late June. But their mine could soon be shut by the government, which has launched an unprecedented crackdown on sites that don’t meet safety standards. That would mean even fewer opportunities for Mongolia’s individual prospectors, who have already been hit hard by the privatization of mines previously open to all. Miners such as Uuganbaatar dig for coal under loose arrangements with local unions and private companies. “Things seem really tough for private miners now,” said Uuganbaatar, who, like many Mongolians, goes by one name. “All the licenses have been bought up by influential big shots. Whenever you start to dig somewhere, someone shows up and chases us away. It’s impossible to find a place or mine to dig in.” A weak economy and particularly harsh winters drove herdsman from across Mongolia to Nalaikh’s private mines in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The district, with a population of nearly 30,000, was home to Mongolia’s first state mining company, which collapsed in the 1990s in the midst of a post-communist economic crisis. The firm’s dilapidated buildings dot the landscape. With …

Spanish companies will commit millions of pounds of investment to Britain on Thursday, the British government said, as it seeks to limit the economic impact of leaving the European Union. The investment plans, which include building trains and trams in Britain, coincide with a three-day state visit to Britain by Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia. King Felipe and British trade minister Liam Fox are due to address a U.K.-Spain business forum in London on Thursday, before the Spanish monarch holds bilateral talks with Prime Minister Theresa May at her Downing Street residence. Britain said the investments would include Spanish manufacturer CAF committing 30 million pounds ($39 million) to build trains and trams at a new factory in Wales, creating 300 jobs, and Spanish infrastructure company Sacyr unveiling plans for a new office in London. Bilateral trade strong Bilateral trade between the two countries was worth 40 billion pounds in 2015, and more than 400 Spanish companies are registered in Britain, the government said. “The sheer scale of Spanish investment in Britain demonstrates Spain’s continued confidence in the strength of the UK economy, and shows that we can and will maintain the closest possible relationship,” May said in a statement. The government also highlighted more than 100 million pounds which is being invested in the expansion of Luton Airport, majority owned Spanish airport operator AENA, and the construction of a 26 million pound factory in the West Midlands by Spanish steel producer Gonvarri Steel Services. Gibraltar remains issue Away from …

It’s nearly midday at the bustling Tegeta bus terminal in Tanzania’s biggest city and Olivia Mbiku is busy preparing ugali – a popular maize meal – beef stew and vegetables for her customers. “I wake up early, light up the fire and rush to the market to buy meat, cooking oil, tomatoes and everything I need for the day,” said the 25-year-old mother of two. Shrouded in a cloud of smoke, and with a traditional colorful ‘khanga’ tied round her waist, Mbiku takes some maize flour from a sachet and sprinkles it into boiling water while briskly stirring with a stick to make it stiff. “I cook ugali every day because most of my customers like it,” Mbiku told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “It’s not a lucrative business, but I get enough to feed my family.” Mbiku is among dozens of food vendors trying to earn a living amid the hubbub of the Dar es Salaam bus terminal, where conductors hoot and yell to attract customers. She works eight hours and day, earning around 45,000 shillings ($20) to supplement her husband’s income as a mason. But unlike licensed hawkers who work from rows of wooden stalls, Mbiku cooks in the open air and is often harassed by the city militias for selling food without the proper papers. “They often seize my cooking pots and sometimes lock me up. I have to pay some money to be released and get my stuff back,” she said. Mbiku and other women with unlicensed …

The speaker of Brazil’s lower house vowed Wednesday to fight any changes President Michel Temer makes to a labor reform bill passed by the Senate, highlighting new tension between longtime political allies. The speaker, Rodrigo Maia, would replace Temer if Congress allows the Supreme Court to move ahead with a corruption charge against the president, a vote that Maia has said he wants to have this week. The bill, a business-friendly measure modernizing labor laws dating from the 1940s, passed by a wide margin in the Senate on Tuesday following approval in the lower house and will be sent to Temer to be signed into law. Given that any changes in the Senate would have sent the bill back to the lower house for fresh debate, Temer assured senators Tuesday that he would use a decree to tweak the legislation as they suggested after he signed it into law. Maia rejected any such arrangement. “The lower house will not accept any change to the law. Any [presidential decree] will not be recognized by the House,” the speaker said in a Twitter post. Graft scheme Prosecutors charged Temer last month in a graft scheme involving JBS SA, the world’s biggest meatpacker. Executives said the president took bribes from the company in exchange for resolving tax matters and facilitating loans from state-run banks. Temer has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. The presidential press office said in a statement that Maia has remained loyal to Temer since becoming speaker last year. “The presidential palace …

Zambia’s parliament has imposed a 90-day state of emergency, after the president last week declared the need for one. The situation is likely to deepen the political crisis in the country, and analysts say it also could scare away much needed investors to the copper-dependent, landlocked nation. The president called for the state of emergency after a fire destroyed the capital’s main market earlier this month. He described the fire as an arson attack by “a few unpatriotic citizens” and said, in a speech to the nation, that this and other fires were “premeditated acts, which if left unchecked could have serious socio-economic consequences capable of drawing the country backwards.” Parliament unanimously passed the measure Tuesday. No opposition lawmakers voted, as 48 of them were suspended last month for boycotting a speech by President Edgar Lungu. Their leader, Hakainde Hichilema, has been in jail since April, facing a treason charge. The few opposition who remained Tuesday boycotted the vote. Opposition spokesman Charles Kakoma says his opposition United Party for National Development would have voted against the measure, which he says limits citizens’ essential freedoms. Additionally, he says he fears it will scare away visitors. “People obviously, investors and even tourists will be scared to come to a country that has just declared a threatened state of emergency,” he told VOA. “They are not sure about their investments, and about their safety once they are in Zambia.” Falling copper prices and an energy crisis had already sent Zambia’s economic growth downward …

Iraq says it will offer new oil and gas exploration rights as it looks to boost energy revenues to fund its war against the Islamic State group and shore up its finances amid low oil prices.   Oil Minister Jabar Ali al-Luaibi said late Tuesday that his ministry plans to put nine border exploration blocks up for bidding by international energy companies. Five are shared with Iran, three with Kuwait and one is in the Persian Gulf.   He did not provide a timetable.   Iraq has the world’s fourth largest oil reserves. This year, it added 10 billion barrels, bringing its total reserves up to 153.1 billion. Low oil prices have taken a heavy toll, as some 95 percent of the country’s revenues come from the energy sector.     …

When Janet Yellen delivers her testimony on the Federal Reserve’s semiannual report to Congress on Wednesday, investors may listen as much for clues to her own future – and the Fed’s – as they will to what she says about interest rate policy. The Fed chair is likely to repeat a message she has been sending about rates: That further gradual increases will follow the three rate hikes the Fed has made since December. She is expected to say that even though inflation has slowed further below the Fed’s target level, the job market appears healthy enough to justify slightly higher borrowing costs. But lawmakers may prod Yellen about her own plans and about the potential reshaping of the Fed itself resulting from a forthcoming influx of new board members selected by President Donald Trump. During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump was critical of the central bank for its low-rate policies, which he said were helping Democrats, and for its efforts to enact tougher regulations on banks in response to the 2008 financial crisis. On Monday, the administration announced that it had chosen Randal Quarles, a Treasury Department official under two Republican presidents, to serve as vice chairman for supervision, the Fed’s top bank regulatory post. Including the post Quarles would fill, the Fed has three vacancies on the seven-member board. Trump has yet to announce his other choices, though at least one person –  Marvin Goodfriend, an economist, a former staffer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and …