Національний банк України має намір 20 березня провести позачергове засідання комітету з монетарної політики для оновлення макроекономічних прогнозів з врахуванням ефекту введення торговельної блокади непідконтрольних українській владі територій Донбасу. 

«Національний банк планує оновити макроекономічні прогнози з урахуванням ефекту торговельної блокади ОРДЛО. З цією метою в понеділок, 20 березня, відбудеться позачергове засідання комітету НБУ з монетарної політики. Оновлені макропрогнози будуть надані МВФ», – йдеться у повідомленні відомства у Facebook.

У Нацбанку додають, що діалог і технічні консультації з МВФ тривають. 

Останній перебіг подій в Україні потребує додаткового вивчення їх потенційного впливу на економіку і його урахування в макроекономічних прогнозах програми співпраці з МВФ, додають у Національному банку.

У графіку засідання ради директорів Міжнародного валютного фонду 20 березня немає питання щодо надання Україні чергового траншу, хоча раніше цього дня планувався розгляд цього питання. У Мінфіні України це пояснили необхідністю уточнення розрахунків, зокрема, наслідків від заходів, застосованих Україною у відповідь на блокаду.

Цього тижня Рада національної безпеки й оборони України 15 березня ухвалила рішення тимчасово припинити переміщення вантажів через лінію розмежування в зоні збройного конфлікту на сході України.

Загальна сума нинішньої позики Україні від МВФ має скласти 17,5 мільярдів доларів, але чергові її транші вже не раз затримувалися через недостатній поступ Києва з реформами.
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У Міністерстві фінансів України пояснюють перенесення МВФ розгляду питання щодо України потребою в уточненні розрахунків.

Як повідомляє прес-служба міністерства, перенесення викликане винятково потребою уточнення розрахунків щодо економічних наслідків від заходів, застосованих Україною у відповідь на блокаду, та захоплення українських підприємств на непідконтрольних уряду територіях Донбасу, а також у зв’язку з визнанням російською стороною документів, виданих на цих територіях.

«Уточнення цих розрахунків важливе для обох сторін задля максимальної ефективності програми. Відповідні консультації вже розпочато. Плануємо їх завершити у найкоротші терміни», – сказав міністр фінансів Олександр Данилюк.

У графіку засідання ради директорів Міжнародного валютного фонду 20 березня немає питання щодо надання Україні чергового траншу, хоча раніше цього дня планувався розгляд цього питання.

Надання цього траншу залежало від ухвалення в Україні підтриманого МВФ бюджету на 2017 рік і реформ у банківській сфері.

Загальна сума нинішньої позики Україні від МВФ має скласти 17,5 мільярдів доларів, але чергові її транші вже не раз затримувалися через недостатній поступ Києва з реформами.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the meeting of finance ministers of the G20 countries was a success Saturday despite the ministers not reaching agreement on trade protectionism.

“I will leave here confident that my colleagues and I are able to work in partnership to …foster and promote global growth and financial stability,” he said.

Citing President Donald Trump’s commitment to American companies and workers, Mnuchin pushed back on and effectively omitted a ban on protectionism from the joint statement released at the end of the summit.

Mnuchin did, however, say that the United States still believed in free trade.

“We believe in free trade, we’re one of the largest markets in the world, we’re one of the largest trading partners in the world,” Mnuchin said. “Having said that, we want to re-examine certain agreements,” he continued, speaking specifically about NAFTA.

Other world powers present played down any disagreement between the countries.

“It’s not true we are not agreed. It’s completely clear we are not for protectionism,” Wolfgang Schaeuble, finance minister of host country Germany, told reporters, though he did, without mentioning a country by name, say that “maybe one or the other important member state needs to get a sense of how international cooperation works.”

The G20 is a informal forum on economic cooperation between 19 countries plus the European Union. Representatives from the 19 countries and the EU will meet for a formal summit in July.

 
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In Greece’s grinding economic crisis, a home for abused children is now taking in those whose parents are struggling to feed them.

It is perhaps the darkest sign of economic devastation in Greece, where traditionally strong family ties are starting to crumble after years of depression.

A quarter of Greece’s workforce is unemployed and a quarter of its children live in poverty, according to United Nations figures, forcing parents to depend on grandparents for handouts.

But pensions too have been cut a dozen times.

In Athens, the Model National Nursery, set up a century ago for orphans of war, can hardly keep up with the number of parents turning to it for help. Unable to cover their basic needs, parents leave their children in the home all week.

Iro Zervaki, its head, says at least 40 children are on the waiting list, four times as many as a couple of years ago.

The home sleeps 25 in a bare room with rows of beds draped in blue blankets, and lacks the staff and funds to increase capacity, she said. Most places are for abused children.

Dozens of other children, all aged two to five, come in daily, but the days away from their parents are long.

“We had incidents where children even attempted to leave, to run away, to go to their mother,” Zervaki said.

In the buzzing playground, a little girl tugged the social worker’s blouse and yelled: “Miss! When will I go to my mum?” “They can’t tell the days apart so every day they ask: ‘Is it Friday?'” Anthoula Zarmakoupi, the social worker, said. “They know mum will pick them up at the weekend.”

But sometimes even that was not possible, she said. “We have children whose parents are homeless so it’s very difficult for them to even collect them for the weekend.”

For the home too, brighter days seem as far away as ever.

State funding has been cut and covers just half of the staff’s wages. The home depends on donations for food and clothes, and Zervaki says it is hard to tell if she will be able to make next month’s payments.

“It doesn’t look like tomorrow will be any better,” she said. “It will take some years. I hope not too many.”
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It could be a Hollywood screenplay. Juliana Armelin and her husband Paulo Siqueira decided to radically change their lives in 2010, quitting jobs in Sao Paulo’s financial sector and moving to a farm seven hours away to start growing coffee.

Seven years later, they clinched for a second consecutive year Brazil’s most prestigious coffee award, beating hundreds of established producers in a country that has exported coffee for more than 200 years.

“I would never imagine we could reach this status in such a short period,” Siqueira told Reuters on Friday after the couple received the annual award from Italian roaster Illy.

“I used to say that we don’t have a story on coffee, but only some chapters so far,” said Armelin.

The couple met during college, graduating in engineering from Brazil’s top ranked university, USP. They spent some years together in the United States getting Master of Business Administration degrees at the University of Chicago before starting careers in Sao Paulo.

Armelin is a former Mckinsey & Company consultant, while Siqueira held positions as a fund manager at Credit Suisse and boutique investment firm Vector Investimentos.

They ended up in the coffee business due to Armelin’s father, who decided to start producing the beans.

“I helped him in the research and started to like the idea.

We already had thoughts at running something together,” Armelin said.

After studying the possibility, they bought a 210-hectare (518 acres) farm in the municipality of Ibiá in a coffee-producing region known as the Cerrado Mineiro, in Minas Gerais state.

“It was an old cattle ranch, only pasture,” Siqueira recalled. They planted the first trees in 2011, collected the first beans two years later and had their first full harvest in 2015. Within a year, they received the first award.

The couple’s farm is a state-of-the-art facility. The fields are 100 percent irrigated, with a fully mechanized harvest. The washed arabicas are put to dry in raised beds to avoid contact with the soil, which could affect the flavor.

“We studied a lot, talked to a lot of people who knew how to produce high quality coffee and we did everything they said we should,” said Armelin. “Some people used to say that we were nerds that went to coffee production. And we used to say, ‘yes, we are.'”

The Terra Alta farm was chosen for aspects like the plentiful availability of water and its flat terrain to allow for mechanization.

The couple used as much government-backed credit as they could to buy all the equipment. “We have debt for the rest of our lives,” said Armelin, smiling.

The farm today exports 80 percent of its production, which varies from 10,000 to 13,000 60-kg bags per year. Many deals are done directly with gourmet coffee sellers in the United States.

Siquiera said the coffee community in the Cerrado region has always been very receptive, despite their unusual background.

But the couple stops short of recommending their experience to others.

“Even if you have the money, it really is not easy. Growing coffee requires extreme dedication,” Armelin said, adding that she takes care of the financial details while her husband likes to be out in the fields.

But they have no regrets. “We like this a lot. We will probably be coffee growers for the rest of our lives,” she said.
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Airbnb expects to maintain its rapid growth in Africa this year and double its customer numbers to 1.5 million, its Chief Executive Brian Chesky and regional head told Reuters on Friday.

The number of people using the online room rental service on the continent rose by 143 percent to about 765,000 guests in 2016 from the year before, said Nicola D’Elia, the firm’s Africa and Middle East chief.

“If you just look at 2017, it’s going to double, you will have 1.5 million people at the end of this year,” added D’Elia.

Airbnb CEO Chesky confirmed that the California-based company expected to double African customer numbers this year.

“Certainly that would be the forecast,” he said in an interview in Cape Town, adding: “This is literally just the beginning. It [Africa] is still relatively under-penetrated.”

Chesky said the company had 77,000 homes across Africa – out of its 3 million globally – but that it could easily have “hundreds of thousands” in a continent that’s home to over a billion people.

The 77,000 homes represented an increase of 95 percent from 2015 to 2016, the company said.

South Africa, which was an early adopter of Airbnb, is the top-ranked country in Africa in terms of listings and visitors, who mainly come from the United States, Germany, Britain and the Netherlands.

The top five cities in Africa are Cape Town, Marrakesh, Johannesburg, Nairobi and Casablanca, although listings are found in diverse locations from St Helena island in the south Atlantic Ocean to Freetown in Sierra Leone, and even a smattering in Somalia.

Chesky, who described Africa as “an incredibly exciting emerging market for travel”, was speaking to Reuters in Langa, Cape Town’s oldest township where he put in an appearance to surprise graduates from an Airbnb training program.    
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Кабінет міністрів України наполягає на зниженні облікової ставки Національним банком, повідомив прем’єр-міністр Володимир Гройсман у Верховній Раді.

«Щодо кредитної політики позиція уряду така – ми вважаємо, що Національний банк України повинен робити більше серйозні й істотніші кроки з здешевлення кредитів в економіку нашої країни… Уже відбувається зниження облікової ставки, але не так суттєво, як нам би хотілося. Наполягатимемо на тому, щоб цю роботу було прискорено», – заявив прем’єр на годині запитань до уряду у Верховній Раді 17 березня.

На початку березня Національний банк України вирішив залишити облікову ставку на рівні 14%.

У лютому 2017 року, як зазначають у Нацбанку, інфляція у річному вимірі продовжила очікувано прискорюватися.

У березні 2015 року НБУ облікова ставка була на рівні 30%, згодом Нацбанк почав поступово знижувати облікову ставку, зокрема, у жовтні минулого року – до 14 %.

Облікова ставка є одним із інструментів, за допомогою якого Нацбанк встановлює для комерційних банків орієнтир щодо вартості залучених і розміщених коштів. Фактично вона визначає ціну грошей.
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Foreign tourism to the United States, which supports millions of American jobs, is slowing, possibly because President Donald Trump sought controversial travel restrictions on some Muslim-majority nations. Online searches for flights to the United States are down in most major nations, not just those hit by restrictions. Jim Randle reports some travel experts say the push to restrict immigration is making some foreign tourists and students wary of visiting.
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Carmakers and suppliers gave widely differing timelines Thursday for the introduction of self-driving vehicles, showing the uncertainties surrounding the technology as well as a split between cautious established players and bullish new entrants.

Chipmaker Nvidia, facing direct competition with the world’s top chipmaker after Intel’s $15 billion deal to buy Mobileye, an autonomous driving technology firm, this week, gave the most optimistic predictions.

Chief Executive Jens-Hsun Huang said carmakers may speed up their plans in the light of technological advances and that fully self-driving cars could be on the road by 2025.

“Because of deep learning, because of AI [artificial intelligence] computing, we’ve really supercharged our roadmap to autonomous vehicles,” he said in a keynote speech to the Bosch Connected World conference in Berlin.

Germany’s Bosch, however, the world’s biggest automotive supplier, gave a timetable as much as six years longer to get to the final stage before fully autonomous vehicles, and declined even to forecast when a totally self-driving car might take to the streets.

Technology, liability among hurdles

Progress is fraught by issues including who is liable when a self-driving car has an accident, bringing down the costs of sensor technology and guarding against hacking.

“Of course, we still have to prove that an autonomous car does better in driving and has less accidents than a human being,” Bosch CEO Volkmar Denner told a news conference.

Nvidia has applied its market-leading expertise in high-end computer graphics to the intense visualization and simulation needs of autonomous cars, and has been working on artificial intelligence — teaching computers to learn to write their own software code — for a decade.

“No human could write enough code to capture the vast diversity and complexity that we do so easily, called driving,” Huang said.

Together with Bosch executives, Huang presented a prototype AI on-board computer that is expected to go into production by the beginning of the next decade. The computer will use Nvidia’s processing power to interpret data gathered by Bosch sensors.

Degrees of autonomy

On the way to fully self-driving cars, levels of autonomy have been defined, with most cars on the road today at level two, and Tesla ready to switch from level four to five — full autonomy — as soon as it is permitted.

Level three means drivers can turn away in well-understood environments, such as highway driving, but must be ready to take back control, while level four means the automated system can control the vehicle in most environments.

Independent technology analyst Richard Windsor wrote this week that he doubted automakers would have autonomous vehicles leaving factories by a typical self-imposed deadline of 2020, mainly because the liability issue was unresolved.

“This is good news for the automotive industry, which is notoriously slow to adapt to and implement new technology as it will have more time to defend its position against the new entrants,” he wrote.

But Nvidia’s Huang said he expected to have chips available for level three automated driving by the end of this year and in customers’ cars on the road by the end of 2018, with level four chips following the same pattern a year later.

That is at least a year ahead of the plans of most carmakers that have an autonomous-driving strategy.

BMW says market will decide

The head of autonomous driving at BMW told the conference the luxury carmaker was on its way to deliver a level three autonomous car in 2021, but could produce level four or five autonomous cars in the same year.

“We believe we have the chance to make level three, level four and level five doable,” he said. He told Reuters the decision on which levels to release would depend in part on the market, and that cars with more autonomy might first be produced in small batches for single fleets.

Bosch said it saw level three vehicles being released with its on-board computer at the end of the decade, and level four driving not before 2025.

Uber, Baidu and Google spin-off Waymo are testing self-driving taxis, while carmakers including Volvo, Audi and Ford expect to have level four cars on the road by 2020 or 2021.

Nvidia’s Huang predicted those plans would speed up: “In the near future, you’re going to see these schedules pull in.”
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Latin American countries are becoming more reliant on costly fuel imports amid floundering efforts to bolster domestic oil output and expand refinery capacity.

Incomplete reform projects and budget cuts that have stalled investments are aggravating the situation for many Latin American countries. For refiners in the United States, it is a bonus: They have in their own backyard a ready market for rising fuel exports.

Overall, the 30 nations in the region bought 2.32 million barrels per day (bpd) of diesel, gasoline and other fuels last year from the United States, up 67 percent from 2011, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Demands for U.S. imports are rising in the region’s biggest economies, up 199,000 bpd or 29 percent last year in Mexico and 75,000 bpd or 94 percent in Brazil, contributing to the gains.

“We need to build joint ventures to find the capital the refineries require,” said the head of Mexico’s oil regulator, Juan Carlos Zepeda, referring to his own country. “And we need to produce more gas,” he added in comments earlier this month.

But getting there will take time, and in Mexico, energy reform is likely to lead to more imports as the retail market is liberalized, before upstream reforms can boost domestic production.

Cheaper fuel prices have made it easier for these countries to buy in recent years. Latin America’s bill for fuel imports from the United States fell to about $47 billion last year from $51 billion in 2015.

Needs seen growing

But if last year’s imports were measured at 2012’s peak prices, the fuel tab would have been twice as large. Any spike in oil prices would hit countries hard, given the increased volumes they need.

“With demand increasing and a stable refining capacity, the region’s import needs will continue to grow,” said Jake Fuller, a senior analyst at consultants IHS Markit.

American refiners along the Gulf Coast are well-placed to continue supplying the region. In contrast, Latin America’s state-controlled refinery firms have little capital or outside investment interest in expansions or overhauls, Fuller said.

As fuel imports rise, crude shipments from the region’s energy producers are falling. Latin America exported 5.2 million bpd in 2016, according to Reuters Trade Flows figures. The United States buys just under half of the region’s crude exports.

Reforms that encourage producers to bring capital to oilfields are under way in Mexico and Argentina. “We are in the right path,” said Miguel Gutierrez, president of Argentina’s state-run YPF SA, when asked about political change in his country earlier this month.

Refineries wanted

Analysts offer a simple fix for Latin America’s dependence on fuel imports: Build more refineries and halt the subsidies that push up demand. Political realities often collide with such remedies, however.

In Ecuador, Venezuela and some Caribbean nations, heavy consumer subsidies have stymied efforts to attract outside investment.

Mexico this year raised prices on gasoline by up to 20 percent in a move that caused public protests.

“We made this very unpopular move to increase prices. Mexico was along with Ecuador and Venezuela in the group of Latin American countries with the cheapest gasoline in the world,” said Pemex director Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya.

Alternative fuels

Brazil is tackling its needs using third-generation fuels from sugar cane and power generated from biomass waste.

“Brazil is in a good position to lead the regional change,” Decio Oddone, director of Brazil’s oil regulator ANP, told Reuters. “Diversity has been key to address the consumption growth.”

Brazil, the world’s second-largest producer of ethanol after the United States, is able to offer gasoline blended with more than 25 percent biofuel thanks to its huge production volumes.

Hydroelectric also provides two-thirds of its power generation.

But for now, Brazil stands out in a region where recent economic struggles have curtailed most investments in such alternative energy sources.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is headed Friday to his first G-20 meeting of the world’s top financial leaders in Germany with a message that the new administration of President Donald Trump won’t tolerate any countries that try to devalue their currencies to gain an unfair trade advantage.

The U.S. ran a trade deficit of $502 billion last year, the difference between the value of U.S. exports compared to the bigger worth of products it imports. Even as Trump has vowed to end multi-national trade deals, it is a figure that could grow with the strong U.S. dollar, boosting U.S. manufacturing costs and making it more difficult to sell U.S. products overseas.

Trump has complained during his long run to the White House that China’s yuan currency and the eurozone’s euro currency are too weak, giving Beijing and the 19-nation euro currency bloc an unfair trade balance with the U.S. The new president has been particularly vocal in his attacks on China’s currency valuation, even as he is planning a two-day summit next month at his Florida retreat along the Atlantic Ocean with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Mnuchin, aides said this week, plans to “push hard” at the two-day meeting in the German spa resort of Baden-Baden with his finance chief counterparts to reaffirm previous G-20 commitments to avoid competitive currency devaluations.

But European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said last week that it is the U.S. dollar that is overvalued, rather than that the euro is undervalued. China’s premier Li Keqiang, representing the world’s second biggest economy after the U.S., said this week that Beijing does not want a trade war and would not devalue its currency.

Mnuchin could face tough questions from his counterparts about Trump’s withdrawal from the proposed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership that was championed by former U.S. president Barack Obama and his announced intention to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. The new president says he favors one-to-one trade deals between the U.S. and other individual countries.

Trump also has said he wants to impose stiff tariffs — perhaps 35 percent — on products manufactured by American businesses at overseas locations that the companies then bring back to sell in the United States. Congress would have to approve such a tariff, which almost certainly would boost the cost of foreign-made goods for American consumers and could ignite a tit-for-tat tariff war with other countries importing U.S. goods.
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The Kenya Association of Manufacturers says the government’s directive to ban plastic bags beginning in September will hurt more than 170 companies and put at least 60,000 people out of work.

The problem is not plastic bags, but consumer behavior, says Phyllis Wakiaga, the association’s chief.

“Issue of waste management is an issue we must admit as a country because all of us are responsible for it,” Wakiaga said. “How we manage our waste at the individual level, at a household level, at the business level, is a concern that all of us. As Kenyans, we should be part of the solution in charting the way forward.”

Many countries in the world, including Kenya, have faced challenges in disposing of the used bags. Many are thrown in the garbage and water streams, though the waste does not break down.

Geoffrey Wahungu, the National Environment Management Authority director general, says the best way to deal with the plastic bags issue is to ban them.

“It takes a generation to change consumer behavior,” Wahungu said. “We do not have that time since there are alternatives, and we do not have to deal with this problem all over until it gets out of hand. We think we need to ban plastic and explore alternatives.”

According to the United Nations environment agency, Kenyan supermarkets use 100 million plastic bags every year. The agency has welcomed the government ban.

The ministry of environment said it had banned the manufacture, use and importation of plastic bags used for commercial and household packaging.

The government tried to ban plastics bags 10 years ago, but the ban failed to be implemented after resistance from the public and manufacturers.

Wahungu says the ban will work because the population is better informed and more supportive.

“In the previous times, Kenyans had not seen the … pollution effect of plastic,” Wahungu said. “Right now, plastic has encroached into the lives of Kenyans. The pollution from plastic and even economic losses from clogging of drainage, flooding, killing livestock; Kenyans are tired of plastics.”

Tanzania and Rwanda have banned plastic bags and called for the total prohibition of them in East Africa.
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