Year: 2017

Ford Motor Co will begin testing its latest self-driving vehicle technology next year in at least one city but has not changed its plan to begin commercial production until 2021, the company said. The automaker said on Thursday that it would test self-driving prototypes in various pilot programs with partners such as Lyft, the ride services company in which rival General Motors owns a minority stake, and Domino’s Pizza. However, Ford has still not decided whether to operate its own on-demand transportation service. New business models In a blog post, Jim Farley, president of global markets, said Ford also would test new business models that involve its self-driving vehicles, including the movement of people and goods. GM unveiled plans last week to introduce its own on-demand ride-sharing service in several U.S. cities in 2019, using self-driving versions of the battery-powered Chevrolet Bolt. Ford is shifting production of a future battery electric vehicle to Mexico to free up capacity at its Flat Rock, Michigan, plant to build the self-driving vehicles in 2021, according to spokesman Alan Hall. The electric vehicle, whose more-advanced battery system will enable a driving range of more than 300 miles, will go into production in 2020 at Ford’s Cuatitlan plant, which suppliers say will also build a new hybrid crossover vehicle around the same time. Adding 850 jobs At the Flat Rock plant, Ford is boosting investment to $900 million from $700 million and adding 850 jobs. Both the 2020 electric and the 2021 self-driving vehicles will …

Albania is planning to try to lure five-star hotel brands with tax breaks, including scrapping profit and property taxes, to increase its appeal for the higher-end of the tourist trade. With travel and tourism accounting for 8.4 percent of gross domestic product in 2016, rising demand to visit the country between Montenegro and Greece washed by the Adriatic and Ionian Seas is not being met by present facilities and infrastructure. One of Europe’s poorest but also most unspoiled countries, Albania has been wooing tourists by encouraging them to “Go Your Own Way,” counting on the appeal of adventure tourism. Now, to lure international hotel brands, the government is to pass a law this month to exempt them from profit tax for 10 years, scrap infrastructure tax and property taxes, and have them pay a VAT tax of 6 percent for any service on their hotels or resorts. International hotel chains or anyone possessing a franchise from them is welcome provided they invest no less than eight million euros for a four-star hotel and no less than 15 million euros for a five-star hotel, said Elton Orozi, an official at the tourism ministry. “Albania is trying to offer more to tourists who spend more time and money so as to get acquainted with the culture, history and nature,” added Orozi. The incentives will apply to developers only if they do not sell on the units since the government wants to avoid villas being built on the seashore by wealthy Albanians using …

The World Bank is ready to extend up to $200 million for projects that will boost transport and trade links between Western Balkans countries, its chief executive officer Kristalina Georgieva said on Thursday. “We are ready to fund a trade and transport project to help the countries of the region remove the obstacles that exist today,” Georgieva told a high-level economic forum in Sofia. The World Bank’s support plans to streamline border crossings in the region, improve the efficiency of logistics services and deploy modern technologies to improve freight and passenger transport and get goods to customers faster. “We estimate the benefits to be in the order of $1 billion per year – an important contribution to regional efforts to boost growth and create jobs and opportunities for more people,” Georgieva said in a statement. At a joint news conference Balkan leaders, including the prime ministers of Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia and Albania, the presidents of Kosovo and Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s foreign trade minister, agreed on steps towards deeper integration in the Western Balkans and pledged to improve infrastructure and connectivity in the region. Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said the Balkan countries will also seek financial support from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and European Investment Bank for their common projects. Bulgaria, which will take over the six-month rotating EU presidency in January, said it would push for more infrastructure, energy and other projects to help bring Western Balkan nations closer to the bloc. The region …

Crisis-stricken Venezuela’s inflation rate reached quadruple digits for the first time, according to figures released by the opposition-led Congress, which show consumer prices rising by 1,369 percent between January and November. The legislature, which this year began publishing its own inflation figures after the government stopped releasing them, said prices rose by 56.7 percent in November and estimated that 2017 inflation would top 2,000 percent. The OPEC member country’s once-thriving socialist economy has collapsed since the 2014 fall of oil prices, leaving millions unable to find basic food or medicine. President Nicolas Maduro blames the situation on an opposition-led “economic war.” “More hunger and misery is on the way for our already beaten-down population,” said opposition deputy Angel Alvarado, who presented the report. Economists generally say that a country is in hyperinflation when the monthly rate tops 50 percent for three months or annual rates remain above three digits for three years. The central bank reported inflation of 180 percent and 240 percent in 2015 and 2016, which had been the highest on record. It has since then stopped providing figures. The Central Bank did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Maduro says business leaders are arbitrarily inflating prices to destabilize his government. Critics say an unchecked expansion of the money supply has debased the bolivar currency. Monetary liquidity grew 14 percent in a single week of November, according to official data, its steepest rise since the central bank began keeping records in 1940. Reporting by Corina Pons; …

Croatia on Thursday raised its minimum wage by 5 percent and increased the number of licenses for foreign workers in 2018 in a bid to boost the competitiveness of one of the weakest economies in the European Union. The government also slashed contributions employers have to pay on net minimum wages by 50 percent to reduce salary costs. “These measures are going to favor both employers and workers,” Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic told a cabinet session. The net minimum wage will from next year stand at 2,752 kuna ($429.63), while its gross value will be 3,439 kuna. This represents 43 percent of an average gross wage that in September amounted to 7,989 kuna. “Our goal is to increase over time the minimum wage to 50 percent of an average gross wage,” Labor Minister Marko Pavic said at the cabinet session. Some 75,000 people in Croatia receive minimum wages. The government also increased to 31,000 from this year’s 9,000 the number of licenses for foreign workers, most notably needed in construction, tourism, shipbuilding and metal processing. Over the last few years, those industries have suffered from shortage of workers on the domestic market. Croatia’s unemployment rate is 11.6 percent, or some 180,000 people. Its population is 4.3 million. Most foreign workers come from European countries outside the European Union. “These measures cannot solve the structural problems which hamper stronger economic growth, like Croatia lagging behind in modernizing its industrial sectors,” said economic analyst Damir Novotny. Croatia’s economy is expected to grow …

A federal judge in Michigan has sentenced a former high-level Volkswagen manager to seven years in prison for his part in the scheme to cheat emissions tests and defraud consumers. Oliver Schmidt has also been fined $400,000. He pleaded guilty in August to charges that included defrauding the United States and violating the Clean Air Act. “This sentence reflects how seriously we take environmental crime,” Acting U.S. Attorney Daniel Lemisch said Wednesday. “Protecting national resources is a priority of this office. Corporations and individuals acting on behalf of corporations will be brought to justice for harming our environment.” Schmidt was the general manager of Volkswagen’s U.S. Environment and Engineering office. He admitted knowing about and agreeing with engineers to carry out a scheme to install a device on certain VW diesel vehicles that would switch on for emissions tests, but switch off during normal driving. Customers bought the cars believing they were environmentally friendly when in fact the cars were polluting as much as 30 times higher than U.S. standards. Federal courts have ordered Volkswagen to spend more than $1 billion to buy back or repair the affected cars. …

China’s Ofo launched its dockless bicycles in Paris on Wednesday, becoming the fourth bike-sharing plan operator in a city set to banish all combustion-engine cars by 2030. Ofo France general manager Laurent Kennel told Reuters the firm, one of two bike-sharing giants in China, had put just over 100 of its bright yellow bicycles on Paris roads on Wednesday and plans to ramp that up to 1,000 bikes by year-end. Ofo comes hot on the wheels of Hong Kong-owned Gobee.bike, which launched in October and whose bright green bikes, estimated at a few thousand, can be seen on every Paris street. A third Asian player, Singapore-owned oBike, has a few hundred bikes on Paris streets, and will also compete with the city’s long-established Velib plan. Unlike the dockless Asian bikes, the Velib bikes must be parked in fixed docking stations of which there are some 1,800 in Paris, but which are often full in popular parts of the city. “We want to be leader in free-floating bikes in Paris and France,” Kennel said. He added that to cover Paris well, the firm plans to put several thousand bikes on the road, although there are no immediate plans to match Velib’s 24,000 bicycles. Like Velib, the Ofo bikes have three gears – unlike the gearless Gobee and oBike bikes – but will be slightly more expensive at 0.50 euros ($0.6) per 20 minutes, compared to 0.50 euros for 30 minutes for the other two Asian operators. Ofo’s bikes will be free …

Vulnerable communities uprooted by climate change are being left out of a voluntary pact to deal with migration, campaigners said, after the United States pulled out of the global deal. Although people within low-lying states are being forced to relocate because of worsening storms and rising seas, they will not be recognized in U.N. migration pact talks next year, putting lives at risk, campaigners said. “Many of the situations we find ourselves in, here in the Pacific, are not caused by us. We continue to ask, ‘Where is the justice?’ Those of us who are least responsible, continue to bear the brunt,” said Emele Duituturaga, head of the Pacific Islands Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (PIANGO). Hoping for acceptance “We hope that there will be an openness and an acceptance that climate-induced migration is one that the world community has to be responsible for,” she said on the sidelines of a conference co-hosted by PIANGO in Fiji’s capital, Suva. With a record 21.3 million refugees globally, the 193-member U.N. General Assembly adopted a political declaration in September 2016 in which it also agreed to spend two years negotiating a pact on safe, orderly and regular migration. U.S. President Donald Trump this week withdrew from negotiations because the global approach to the issue was “simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty.” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres regretted the U.S. decision, his spokesman said, but expressed hope the United States might re-engage in the talks ahead of the start of formal negotiations in February. Unique heritage …

Starbucks is a giant in the global coffee market, and it is getting even bigger with the world’s largest Starbucks store, which opened this week in Shanghai. Faith Lapidus reports. …

Sinopec USA, a subsidiary of the Chinese oil and gas conglomerate, has sued Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA in a U.S. court, claiming it never received full payment for an order of steel rebar. The lawsuit asks for $23.7 million for breach of contract and conspiracy to defraud. The legal action signals a split with another of Venezuela’s biggest backers as the cash-strapped country seeks to restructure some $60 billion in debt in a landscape of low oil prices and production. The complaint suggests “patience is getting really thin at this point,” said Mark Weidemaier, law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an expert on international debt disputes. “This is a further sign of frostiness in the Chinese-Venezuelan relations.” PDVSA declined to comment. China, which has loaned Venezuela more than $50 billion over the past decade, recently has been reluctant to involve itself more deeply in the South American country’s debt crisis. It has curtailed its credit to Venezuela in the last 22 months because of chronic payment delays, troubles with joint venture projects, and crime faced by Chinese firms operating in the country. In its lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Houston on Nov. 27, Sinopec said PDVSA paid half of a 2012 purchase order for 45,000 tons of steel rebar, which is used in oil rigs, by its fully owned subsidiary Bariven. It accused the Venezuelan oil company of using Bariven “as a sham to perpetrate fraud against Sinopec,” and called the …

The U.N.’s intellectual property agency says China racked up a record 1.3 million patent applications last year, topping the combined total in the U.S., Japan, Korea and Europe. The World Intellectual Property Organization says innovators worldwide filed 3.1 million patent applications in 2016, up 8.3 percent from a year earlier, marking the seventh-straight yearly increase. China alone accounted for 98 percent of that increase, with its patent office receiving 236,600 more applications than in 2015. Releasing WIPO’s annual intellectual property report Wednesday, Director-General Francis Gurry cited the “extraordinary growth numbers” that epitomize the trend of recent years. WIPO said trademark applications shot up by 16 percent to about 7 million, and worldwide industrial design applications increased by 10.4 percent to almost 1 million, again led by growth in China. …

U.S. worker productivity rose 3 percent in the third quarter, the best showing in three years, while labor costs fell for a second straight quarter. The increase in productivity in the July-September quarter was double the 1.5 percent gain in the second quarter and both quarters were up significantly from a scant 0.1 percent rise in the first three months of the year. Labor costs fell 0.2 percent after an even bigger 1.2 percent decline in the second quarter. The third quarter figure for productivity was unchanged from an initial estimate while labor costs were initially estimated to have risen by 0.5 percent. Economists are hopeful that the upturn in productivity may be a sign that this key measure of living standards is improving after a prolonged period of weakness. Economists believe finding ways to increase productivity, the amount of output per hour of work, is the biggest challenge facing the economy right now. They say that without an improvement, the Trump administration will have difficulty reaching its goal of doubling economic growth in coming years. The upturn in the past two quarters reflects the fact that overall output, as measured by the gross domestic product, accelerated sharply following a weak start to the year. GDP grew at an annual rate of 3.3 percent in the third quarter, the government reported last week, and that followed a 3.1 percent rise in the second quarter. It was the first back-to-back GDP gains of 3 percent or better in three years. Productivity …

Since taking office last month, Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa has put economic revival at the center of his administration. He has gone a step further to state his resolve to re-engage the international community that had long been disengaged by former president Robert Mugabe’s regime. The South African based Zimbabwean Business Forum says having a president with such passion for rebuilding the country’s ailing economy is the best news Zimbabwe has heard in almost four decades. Executive chairman of the forum, Marshall Sankara, says they are already hard at work convincing Zimbabwean business people outside the country and foreign investors to grab the economic opportunities in Zimbabwe. Sankara, who is also a businessman, says the Forum is convinced Zimbabwe is open for business. “We are very interested and we are going to do some massive investment in Zimbabwe. We are very confident that this regime, under the leadership of Comrade Mnangagwa, is going to loosen investment policies, which were so choking off to investors,” he said. Sankara’s forum seeks to lure $100 million worth of investment by the end of 2018. But Senior Researcher Samukele Hadebe, of the Chris Hani Institute in Johannesburg, says investors will first want to see practical guarantees that Zimbabwe is now a safe investment destination. “The problem that we have always had was that of policy inconsistency, issues of corruption, personalization of public institutions, issues of fiscal discipline,” Hadebe said. “Those are practical things that cost no money, but that people would like to see very …

India’s government says it plans to phase out imports of a dirty fuel known as petroleum coke, or “petcoke,” after an Associated Press investigation found U.S. oil refineries are exporting vast quantities of the product to India. But when it comes to domestic use, the Indian government seems to be going in a different direction. The government this week argued in court that restrictions on petcoke around polluted New Delhi should be eased for certain low-impact industries. The move has infuriated environmentalists. The AP investigation found the U.S. sold about 20 times more petcoke to India last year than it did six years earlier after U.S. refineries struggled to sell the product at home. In 2016, the U.S. sent more than 8 million metric tons of petcoke to India, enough to fill the Empire State Building eight times over. Petcoke is a bottom-of-the-barrel leftover from the refining of Canadian tar sands crude and other heavy oils. It’s cheaper and burns hotter than coal. But laboratory tests on imported petcoke used near New Delhi found it contained 17 times more sulfur than the limit set for coal. A day after the AP investigation was published, Indian Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said the government was formulating a policy to end imports. “We are planning to implement a system to stop imports and use home-produced petcoke for non-polluting sectors, such as cement production,” Pradhan said on Saturday, according to the Press Trust of India news agency. He said fuel-hungry India …

A war on food waste in France, where supermarkets are banned from throwing away unsold food and restaurants must provide doggy bags when asked, has helped it secure the top spot in a ranking of countries by their food sustainability. Japan, Germany, Spain and Sweden rounded out the top five in an index published the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which graded 34 nations based on food waste, environment-friendly agriculture and quality nutrition. It is “unethical and immoral” to waste resources when hundreds of millions go hungry across the world, Vytenis Andriukaitis, EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, said at the launch of the Food Sustainability Index 2017 on Tuesday. “We are all responsible, every person and every country,” he said in the Italian city of Milan, according to a statement. One third of all food produced worldwide, 1.3 billion tons per year, is wasted, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Food releases planet-warming gases as it decomposes in landfills. The food the world wastes accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than any country except for China and the United States. “What is really important is the vision and importance of [food sustainability] in these governments’ agendas and policies,” Irene Mia, global editorial director at the EIU, told Reuters. “It’s something that is moving up in governments’ agendas across the world.” Global hunger levels rose last year for the first time in more than a decade, with 815 million people, more than one in 10 on the planet, …