Month: April 2018

Luxury fashion houses Dior, Chanel and Dolce & Gabbana are among the least transparent of the major retailers when it comes to providing information about their supply chains, according to an index ranking commitments to tackle slavery and forced labor. The index, released on Monday by advocacy group Fashion Revolution, coincided with the fifth anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, where 1,135 garment workers were killed and more than 2,000 were injured. The collapse of the eight-story building on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka on April 24, 2013 sparked demands for better safety in the world’s second-largest exporter of ready-made garments. “We want to see the fashion industry respect its producers … to foster dignity, empowerment and justice for the people who make our clothes,” said Orsola de Castro, co-founder of Fashion Revolution. Sportswear giant Adidas and its subsidiary Reebok topped this year’s Fashion Transparency Index, followed by another sporting label Puma and Swedish fashion group H&M. While many brands indicated a greater willingness to be transparent about their supply chains, the report said more was needed. None of the 150 retailers scored higher than 60 out of 100, the index said, which assessed factors like company policies, supply chain transparency, and their commitment to improve conditions for factory workers. “Greater transparency means greater scrutiny and accountability. It means exploitation has fewer places to hide,” said Peter McAllister, head of the Ethical Trading Initiative, a global group that aims to improve labour conditions for workers. “Unfortunately, …

Around 16,000 nurses in Zimbabwe resumed work Monday, bringing to an end one week of strikes that affected health services in the country. Zimbabwe’s health ministry said the situation had “returned to normal” in all hospitals. “The majority of nurses dismissed have applied for re-engagement, and the government has permitted them to resume duty, pending final approval from the employer,” the health ministry public relations office in Harare said Monday. Strike lasts week The nurses went on strike a week ago to press demands for improved allowances and an irregular salary grading system, its union said. Many of Zimbabwe’s nurses operate in poorly equipped state-run institutions, and patients are expected to supply basics such as drugs and equipment. Since taking charge of Zimbabwe late last year, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has vowed to improve the beleaguered economy and seek foreign investment to improve public services. Nurses offer free treatment The nurses were fired last week by Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, who said they refused to go back to work after $17 million was released to improve their pay. Hundreds of the nurses offered free treatment to the public in the country’s parliament to protest their dismissal Friday. Zimbabwe’s government said at the time that the decision would not be reversed and ordered heads of hospitals to recruit new nurses to replace those who were sacked. …

Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing on Monday began offering its service in the Mexican city of Toluca, the company said, setting up a potentially costly battle with rival Uber Technologies in a key Latin American market. The Mexican launch marks the first time Didi has brought its own app-based ride service outside of Asia, a critical global expansion that comes as the company faces increased competition at home from internet giant Meituan-Dianping, which recently launched its own ride-hailing service. Didi Express has launched in the capital city of the State of Mexico, an urban hub about 40 miles (60 km) west of Mexico City, adding a number of new safety features for drivers and riders. Reuters was first to report Didi’s plans for Toluca earlier this month. In Mexico, Didi will go up against Uber, its chief international rival, for the first time since Uber’s launch in China that ended with a merger of the two companies’ operations in 2016. Uber is the ride-hailing leader in Mexico, where it has 7 million users in more than three dozen cities. Didi, which has an operations hub in the Juarez neighborhood in Mexico City, said it hopes to bring its ride-hailing service to other major Mexican cities later this year. Didi said teams in Mexico, Beijing and California studied the Mexican market to adapt Didi’s algorithms and other ride-service technologies for the local market, addressing issues such as crime. Didi is bringing to Mexico a number of new safety features, including an …

Technology is permeating and changing almost every industry, including fashion. From how clothes are made and purchased to your relationship with what you wear, computing power is reshaping fashion as we know it. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details. …

A cup of coffee is a good way for many to start the day. But it can also do far greater good. Manyang Kher, a former Sudanese child refugee – one of the so-called Lost Boys and now a US citizen – is passionate about helping refugees build a brighter future. And he does it with coffee. VOA’s June Soh talked with the founder of a social enterprise, 734 coffee. VOA’s Carol Pearson narrates her report. …

Manyang Kher was three years old when he arrived at a refugee camp in Ethiopia’s Gambella region. During the 13 years, the South Sudanese native lived there, he observed lots of other children die. From hunger. From cholera. From attempting to flee the camp. “You fear every day because you may die, too,” Kher says. Kher is one of the so-called Lost Boys of Sudan, some 20,000 Sudanese children who escaped when their villages were attacked during the 1980’s civil war and made the 1600 kilometer-walk to Ethiopia. Deeply affected by the camp, he has named his coffee company, 734 Coffee, after the geographical coordinates of the Gambella region: 7˚N 34˚E. Part of his larger humanitarian non profit project, Humanity Helping Sudan, 734 helps the 200,000 South Sudanese refugees still in the region. “I know these people,” Kher says. “I speak the language; I know the struggles those refugees face every day.” Kher is dedicating 80% of his coffee proceeds to helping them. “A cup of 734 coffee can buy; this cup can buy, one fishing net.” A fishing net is a dollar. It is also a tool that can help a refugee achieve self-sufficiency. Kher’s aim is to help refugees help themselves. He wants them to be aid-free.  “That’s why we give fishing nets because they can go to the river and fish for themselves. If you build more community gardens they can grow their own food. If you also build water wells, now you create a community because …

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Sunday he is giving $4.5 million to the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat to cover a U.S. government funding gap for the international Paris climate accord. Bloomberg’s charitable foundation said the money will support work developing countries are doing to achieve their targets under the agreement as well as “promoting climate action” among cities and businesses. The 2015 treaty signed by more than 200 nations and entities vowed to curb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions in order to try to limit global temperature rise. Former President Barack Obama’s administration was among the signatories, but President Donald Trump said he would pull out of the agreement. Trump campaigned as a booster of fossil fuels and a skeptic of climate change science, and said the Paris accord would cause U.S. businesses to lose millions of jobs. “This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States,” Trump said last year. Bloomberg made a similar payment last year and pledged to continue the contributions. He told CBS News in an interview broadcast Sunday that Trump is capable of changing his position. “But he should change his mind and say, look, there really is a problem here, America is part of the problem, America is a big part of the solution, and we should go in and help the world stop a potential disaster,” Bloomberg said. The United States is among the world’s top …

The World Bank’s shareholders on Saturday endorsed a $13 billion paid-in capital increase that will boost China’s shareholding but bring lending reforms that will raise borrowing costs for higher-middle-income countries, including China. The multilateral lender said the plan would allow it to lift the group’s overall lending to nearly $80 billion in fiscal 2019 from about $59 billion last year and to an average of about $100 billion annually through 2030. “We have more than doubled the capacity of the World Bank Group,” the institution’s president, Jim Yong Kim, told reporters during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings in Washington. “It’s a huge vote of confidence, but the expectations are enormous.” The hard-fought capital hike, initially resisted by the Trump administration, will add $7.5 billion paid-in capital for the World Bank’s main concessional lending arm, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Its commercial-terms lender, the International Finance Corp, will get $5.5 billion paid-in capital, and IBRD also will get a $52.6 billion increase in callable capital. Lending rules The bank agreed to change IBRD’s lending rules to charge higher rates for developing countries with higher incomes, to discourage them from excessive borrowing. IBRD previously had charged similar rates for all borrowers, and U.S. Treasury officials had complained that it was lending too much to China and other bigger emerging markets. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said earlier Saturday that he supported the capital hike because of the reforms that it included. The last World Bank capital …

The European Union and Mexico reached an agreement Saturday on a new free trade deal, a coup for both parties in the face of increased protectionism from the United States under President Donald Trump. Since its plans for a trade alliance with the United States were frozen after Trump’s election victory, the EU has focused instead on trying to champion open markets and seal accords with other like-minded countries. The agreement in principle with Mexico follows a deal struck last year with Japan and comes ahead of talks next week with the Mercosur bloc of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. “With this agreement, Mexico joins Canada, Japan and Singapore in the growing list of partners willing to work with the EU in defending open, fair and rules-based trade,” said European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. For Mexico, a deal with the EU is part of a strategy to reduce its reliance on the United States, the destination of 80 percent of its exports. That has become more urgent, given Trump’s push to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement. The EU and Mexico wanted to update a trade deal agreed to 21 years ago that largely covers industrial goods. The new deal adds farm products, more services, investment and government procurement, and include provisions on labor and environmental standards and fighting corruption. The European Commission said that, under the deal struck Saturday, practically all trade in goods with Mexico will be duty-free, including for farm products such as Mexican chicken and …

The International Monetary Fund’s policymaking committee said Saturday that a strong world economy was threatened by increasing tension over trade and countries’ heavy debt burden. Longer-term prospects are clouded, it said, by sluggish growth in productivity and aging populations in wealthy nations. In a statement at the end of three days of meetings, the lending agency urged countries to take advantage of the broadest-based economic expansion in a decade to cut government debt and to enact reforms that will make their economies more efficient. The IMF expects the world economy to grow 3.9 percent this year and next, which would be the strongest since 2011. But an intensifying dispute between the U.S. and China over Beijing’s aggressive attempt to challenge U.S. technological dominance has raised the prospect of a trade war that could drag down worldwide growth. “Trade tensions are not to the benefit of anyone,” said Lesetja Kganyago, who leads the policymaking committee and is governor of the South African Reserve Bank. The U.S. has resisted pressure to back off President Donald Trump’s protectionist “America First” trade policies. Treasury Steven Mnuchin urged the IMF to do more to address what the Trump administration says are unfair trade practices and called on the World Bank to steer cheap loans away from China and toward poorer countries. Unfair trade policies “impede stronger U.S. and global growth, acting as a persistent drag on the global economy,” Mnuchin said. He appealed for the IMF to go beyond its traditional role as an emergency …

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Saturday that he was contemplating a visit to China for discussions on issues that have global leaders concerned about a potentially damaging trade war. “I am not going to make any comment on timing, nor do I have anything confirmed, but a trip is under consideration,” Mnuchin said at a Washington news conference during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings. Mnuchin said he discussed the possible trip and potential trade opportunities with the new head of China’s central bank. Tensions have escalated between the U.S. and China over Beijing’s attempts to challenge America’s technological prowess, raising the prospects of a trade war that could hinder global economic growth.  Mnuchin said he had spoken with a number of his counterparts who have been forced to deal with U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” trade policies, including U.S. tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel and on up to $150 billion in Chinese goods. Some of the leaders, he said, were focused on exemptions from the tariffs. He said he emphasized that the U.S. was not trying to construct protectionist trade barriers with the tariffs. Instead, he said, “we are looking for reciprocal treatment.” Mnuchin also said he wanted the IMF to do more to address what the Trump administration believes are unfair trade practices. He also called on the World Bank to redirect low-interest loans from China to more impoverished countries.  …

China has strongly refuted suggestions its multibillion-dollar economic corridor now under construction with Pakistan has “hidden” military designs as well.   Beijing has pledged to invest about $63 billion in Pakistan by 2030 to develop ports, highways, motorways, railways, airports, power plants and other infrastructure in the neighboring country, traditionally a strong ally.   The Chinese have also expanded and operationalized the Pakistani deep water port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, which is at the heart of the massive bilateral cooperation, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC. The strategically located port is currently being operated by a Chinese state-run company . China has positioned CPEC as the flagship project of its $1-trillion global Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, championed by President Xi Jinping. “I want to make it very clear, BRI initiative and with CPEC under it, it’s purely a commercial development project. We don’t have any kind of military or strategic design for that,” said Yao Jing, Chinese ambassador to Islamabad. He made the remarks in an exclusive interview with VOA. Within five years of finalizing and launching CPEC, Jing said that 22 “early harvest” projects out of the 43 total projects under CPEC have been completed or are under construction, with a total investment of around $19 billion, the largest influx of foreign investment in Pakistan’s 70-year-old history. The projects have already brought 60,000 local jobs and effectively addressed the country’s once crippling energy crisis.   Power plants built under the joint venture, officials …

The European Union needs to be exempted from steel and aluminum tariffs announced by the United States in order to work with Washington on trade with China, France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Friday. “We are close allies between the EU and the United States. We cannot live with full confidence with the risk of being hit by those measures and by those new tariffs. We cannot live with a kind of sword of Damocles hanging over our heads,” Le Maire told a press conference during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings.  “If we want to move forward … if we want to address the issue of trade, an issue of the new relationship with China, because we both want to engage China in a new multilateral order, we must first of all get rid of that threat,” he said. U.S. President Donald Trump announced a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports last month to counter what he has described as unfair international competition. Le Maire said the EU’s exemption from the tariffs should be “full and permanent.” The EU is seeking compensation from the United States for the tariffs through the World Trade Organization. Brussels has called for consultations with Washington as soon as possible and is drawing up a list of duties to be slapped on U.S. products. …