Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the company plans to unveil an electric semi-truck in September.

Musk tweeted the announcement Thursday. He offered no other details about the semi, such as whether it will be equipped with Tesla’s partially self-driving Autopilot mode.

Musk also said the company plans to unveil a pickup truck in 18 to 24 months.

Tesla currently sells two electric vehicles, the Model S sedan and Model X SUV. Its lower-cost Model 3 electric car is due out by the end of this year.

But Musk revealed last summer that the Palo Alto, California-based company is working on several more vehicles, including the semi and a minibus.

Tesla shares rose nearly 3 percent in late trading Thursday in response to Musk’s tweet.
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Chilean President Michelle Bachelet announced on Wednesday evening that she was sending to Congress a bill that would dramatically increase the size of

public pensions in the face of growing opposition to the nation’s current system.

The bill would include an increase in the amount of savings held collectively, a new 5 percent payroll tax, and a corresponding boost in retirement savings. Current pensioners would see savings rise by around 20 percent, while workers currently paying into the system would see increases of up to 50

percent.

“We must advance toward a truly mixed social security system, where all play their part, where solidarity comes from personal effort, where the state and employers play their corresponding role,” Bachelet said in a speech.

Chile’s privatized pension plan was started in the 1980s during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and the so-called ‘Chilean model’ has been copied and adopted worldwide.

But opposition to it is rising in Chile, with regular street protests demanding changes. Opponents say the payouts are meager, and they complain the pensions are managed by for-profit funds.

It is unclear if Bachelet’s bill can become law. Her governing coalition is severely divided, and parliamentary elections are set to take place in November, while debate on complex bills can take years in Chile.

Earlier in April, Chile’s finance minister said divisions in the government might make any pension reform impossible, and earlier this week, a major education bill pushed by Bachelet failed in committee.

Under the system proposed by Bachelet, the new 5 percent tax would be divided into two parts and have a six-year implementation period. Three percent would go into the personal savings of each worker, while 2 percent would go into a collective account, managed by the state.

The bill would also give pensioners more say in the investment decisions of the pension investment funds, known as AFPs.
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Національний банк України ухвалив рішення про зниження облікової ставки до 13% річних з 14 квітня.

Як повідомляє прес-служба Нацбанку, відновлення циклу пом’якшення монетарної політики узгоджується з необхідністю досягнення цілей щодо інфляції у 2017-2019 роках.

У НБУ зазначають, що інфляція у березні 2017 року становила 15.1% у річному вимірі, зростання цін прискорилося переважно внаслідок ефекту бази порівняння та збільшення виробничих витрат.

Фактичне прискорення споживчої інфляції було очікуваним, наголошують у Нацбанку.

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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President Donald Trump plans to revive the hobbled Export-Import Bank of the United States, his office said, a victory for American manufacturers like Boeing and General Electric which have overseas customers that use the agency’s government-backed loans to purchase their products.

Trump first told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday he would fill two vacancies on the agency’s five-member board that have prevented the bank from having a quorum and being able to act on loans over $10 million. Trump’s picks must gain approval from the Senate, which blocked nominees by former President Barack Obama.

Trump told the Journal that the bank benefits small businesses and creates jobs, a reversal of his earlier criticism of the bank being “featherbedding” for wealthy corporations.

Bank offers loans to foreign entities

The Export-Import Bank, an independent government agency, provides loans to foreign entities that enables them to purchase American-made goods. For example, it has been used by foreign airlines to purchase planes from Boeing and farmers in developing nations to acquire equipment.

The bank’s acting chairman, Charles “CJ” Hall, was not immediately available for comment.

The bank has become a popular target for conservatives, who have worked in Congress to kill the bank, arguing that it perpetuates cronyism and does little to create American jobs.

Trump’s about-face on the export bank comes after meeting on Tuesday with former Boeing Chief Executive Officer Jim McNerney, who left the company last year but oversaw the corporation’s aggressive lobbying effort in support of the bank in 2015.

Trump also met at the White House on Feb. 23 with GE CEO Jeff Immelt and Caterpillar Inc CEO Mark Sutton, both vocal supporters of the bank.

It is not known if they discussed the bank at those meetings.

Bank helps level playing field

Large American corporations that do significant amounts of exports say other countries have similar agencies and the export bank levels the playing field.

“This is an encouraging development on a key competitive issue for U.S manufacturers and their extensive supply chains,” Boeing spokeswoman Kate Bernard said in statement to Reuters.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, which includes companies like Ingersoll-Rand, United States Steel and Pfizer, cheered the move.

“Manufacturers are encouraged by President Trump’s vocal support for the bank,” said NAM Vice President of International Economic Affairs Linda Dempsey in a statement.

A 2015 fight to shutter the bank led by conservatives in Congress allowed the bank’s charter to expire for five months.

After overwhelming bipartisan support emerged to renew the bank’s charter, which is needed for it to operate, conservatives blocked nominees to the board, preventing it from financing large exports like aircraft and power turbines.

Groups work to shut down bank

Freedom Partners and Americans for Prosperity, two groups funded by the Republican donor Koch brothers, worked aggressively for years to kill the bank. Brothers Charles and David Koch have opposed the bank for what they call damaging interference into the free market by government.

Nathan Nascimento, Freedom Partners vice president of policy, called the bank on Wednesday “the epitome of what’s wrong with Washington.”

“Reopening the flood gates to Ex-Im’s corporate welfare is a bad deal for hardworking taxpayers and a bad deal for American businesses,” he said.

The Club for Growth, which spends heavily in electing conservative candidates and was one of the few groups to campaign against Trump during the Republican primary in 2016, also lamented the change in position.

“Ex-Im has a long history of cronyism and corruption that is well-known to many in the Trump Administration, and while we hoped it would be done away with, the administration now has taken on the almost impossible challenge of reforming a federal agency whose mission has been to pick winners and losers with taxpayer dollars,” spokesman Doug Sachtleben said in a statement to Reuters.

 
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Zimbabwean entrepreneurs could soon use movable assets, including livestock and vehicles, to secure loans from banks, according to a bill brought before the country’s Parliament this week.

The southern African country’s economy is dominated by informal business following the formal sector’s contraction by as much as 50 percent between 2000 and 2008, according to government data, after President Robert Mugabe’s seizure of white-owned farms decimated the key agriculture sector.

The Movable Property Security Interest Bill, introduced Tuesday by Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa, seeks to make it easier for Zimbabwe’s burgeoning informal sector to access bank funds.

A copy of the bill seen Wednesday by Reuters defines movable property as “any tangible or intangible property other than immovable property.”

New economic reality

Presenting the bill, which still has to go through several stages before becoming law, Chinamasa said the majority of small businesses did not have the immovable assets that banks require as collateral for loans.

“The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Act will be amended to achieve the objective of this bill, and the assets to be considered include any type, such as machinery, motor vehicles, livestock and accounts receivable,” Chinamasa told lawmakers.

The finance minister said banks had failed to adjust to Zimbabwe’s new economic reality, in which the informal sector, mostly made up of small businesses, plays a dominant role.

Loans to small businesses amounted to $250 million in the year to date, Chinamasa said, out of total bank loans of nearly $4 billion.

“As minister in charge of financial institutions, I feel there is need for a change of attitude by our banks to reflect our economic realities,” Chinamasa said.

The bill provides for a collateral registry to be set up by the central bank, which would maintain a database of all movable assets put up as loan security.

“The purpose of the registry is to facilitate commerce, industry and other socioeconomic activities by enabling individuals and businesses to utilize their movable property as collateral for credit,” reads part of the bill.

Pitching the proposed law to legislators, Chinamasa cited several developing economies — including those of Liberia, Ghana, Malawi, Kenya, Lesotho, Peru and Ukraine — that he said used movable assets as collateral to increase lending to small businesses.

“Their access to banking finance increased by 8 percent [on average], while interest rates declined by 3 percent per annum,” he said.

Foreign currencies

Zimbabwe’s economy enjoyed a temporary reprieve after it adopted the use of multiple foreign currencies — mainly the U.S dollar and South Africa’s rand — in 2009 to replace its inflation-ravaged local unit.

The currency move initially paid dividends, with the economy expanding by an average 11.3 percent between 2010 and 2012, according to World Bank data, while inflation came down to single digits.

However, declining exports from the mineral-dependent country following weaker mineral commodity prices coincided with a sharp rise in imports, triggering an acute foreign currency shortage and slowing down the economy as credit to businesses dried up.
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President Donald Trump said Wednesday that his administration would not label China a currency manipulator, backing away from a  campaign promise, even as he said the U.S. dollar was “getting too strong” and would eventually hurt the economy.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump also said he would like to see U.S. interest rates stay low, another comment at odds with what he had often said during the election campaign.

A U.S. Treasury spokesman confirmed that the Treasury Department’s semiannual report on currency practices of major trading partners, due out this week, would not name China a currency manipulator.

The U.S. dollar fell broadly on Trump’s comments on both the strong dollar and interest rates, while U.S. Treasury yields fell on the interest rate comments, and Wall Street stocks slipped.

Trump’s comments broke with a long-standing practice of both U.S. Democratic and Republican administrations of refraining from commenting on policy set by the independent Federal Reserve. It is also highly unusual for a president to address the dollar’s value, which is a subject usually left to the Treasury secretary.

A day-one promise

“They’re not currency manipulators,” Trump told the Journal about China. The statement was an about-face from Trump’s election campaign promises to slap that label on Beijing on the first day of his administration as part of his plan to reduce Chinese imports into the United States.

The Journal paraphrased Trump as saying that he’d changed his mind on the currency issue because China has not been manipulating its yuan for months and because taking the step now could jeopardize his talks with Beijing on confronting the threat from North Korea.

Separately Wednesday, at a joint news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Trump said the United States was prepared to tackle the crisis surrounding North Korea without China if necessary.

The United States last branded China a currency manipulator in 1994. Under U.S. law, labeling a country as a currency manipulator can trigger an investigation and negotiations on tariffs and trade.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement that Trump’s decision to break his campaign promise on China was “symptomatic of a lack of real, tough action on trade” against Beijing.

“The best way to get China to cooperate with North Korea is to be tough on them with trade, which is the number one thing China’s government cares about,” Schumer said.

Yellen’s future

Trump also told the Journal that he respected Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and said she was “not toast” when her current term ends in 2018.

That was also a turnaround from his frequent criticism of Yellen during his campaign, when he said she was keeping interest rates too low.

At other times, however, Trump had said that low rates were good because higher rates would strengthen the dollar and hurt American exports and manufacturers.

“I think our dollar is getting too strong, and partially that’s my fault because people have confidence in me. But that’s hurting — that will hurt ultimately,” Trump said Wednesday.

“It’s very, very hard to compete when you have a strong dollar and other countries are devaluing their currency,” Trump told the Journal.

The dollar fell broadly Trump’s comments on the strong dollar and on his preference for low interest rates. It fell more than 1.0 percent against the yen, sinking below 110 yen for the first time since mid-November.

“It’s hard to talk down your currency unless you’re going to talk down your interest rates, and so obviously he’s trying to get Janet Yellen to play ball with him,” said Robert Smith, president and chief investment officer at Sage Advisory Services in Texas.

Trump’s comments on the Fed were his most explicit about the U.S. central bank since he took office in January, and they suggested a lower likelihood that he plans to try to push monetary policy in some unorthodox new direction.

Fed overhaul

Some key Republicans have advocated an overhaul of how the Fed works, using a rules-based policy that would most likely mean higher interest rates, not the lower ones Trump said he prefers.

The Fed in mid-March hiked interest rates for the second time in three months, increasing its target overnight rate by a quarter of a percentage point.

“Maybe he’s learning on the job,” said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago, noting that with Trump’s transition from candidate to president he was now being counseled by more orthodox voices sensitive to what is needed to keep global bond markets on an even keel.

The president is also “very close” to naming a vice chair for banking regulation and filling another open seat that governs community banking on the Federal Reserve Board, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said during the interview.
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President Donald Trump told a group of chief executives Tuesday that his administration was revamping the Wall Street reform law known as Dodd-Frank and might eliminate the rules and replace them with “something else.”

At the beginning of his administration, Trump ordered reviews of the major banking rules that were put in place after the 2008 financial crisis, and last week he said officials were planning a “major haircut” for them.

“For the bankers in the room, they’ll be very happy because we’re really doing a major streamlining and, perhaps, elimination, and replacing it with something else,” Trump said Tuesday.

“That will be the minimum. But we’re doing a major elimination of the horrendous Dodd-Frank regulations, keeping some obviously, but getting rid of many,” he said.

The many provisions of the Dodd-Frank measure were aimed at decreasing risks in the U.S. financial system. The White House is not unilaterally able to upend Dodd-Frank’s rules, almost all of which are implemented by independent regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve.

A sweeping change to the law would require congressional action, though in some cases regulators may also have wiggle room to make changes through a formal rule-making process.

Report on regulations

In February, Trump issued an executive order requiring Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to consult with U.S. regulators and submit a report outlining a proposal for possible regulatory and legislative changes that will help fuel economic growth and promote American business interests.

That report, due to be released in June, will most likely serve as a blueprint for possible changes down the road. However, congressional action on a Wall Street bill is not expected in the near term, as Congress focuses primarily on health care and tax reform.

Participants in the Tuesday meeting included Rich Lesser, chief executive of Boston Consulting Group; Doug McMillon, chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores; Indra Nooyi, chief executive of PepsiCo; Jim McNerney, former chief executive of Boeing; Ginni Rometty, chief executive of IBM; and Jack Welch, former chairman of General Electric.

The business leaders are part of Trump’s “Strategy and Policy Forum” that last met with him in February.

Trump also reiterated his criticism of the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico.

“NAFTA is a disaster. It’s been a disaster from the day it was devised. And we’re going to have some very pleasant surprises for you on NAFTA, that I can tell you,” he said.
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United Airlines saw its stock price decline by 4 percent or more after a viral video showing a passenger being dragged off a flight and injured sparked outrage in the U.S. and several nations. One airline analyst says he has never seen such a “parade of incompetence.”
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South Asian migrants powering the construction boom in oil-rich Gulf countries are often illegally made to pay for their own recruitment, adding to hardships of poor working conditions and wages, according to an investigation released Tuesday.

Millions of migrants seeking a way out of poverty by working in Gulf nations from Qatar to the United Arab Emirates must routinely pay fees that can equal a year’s salary, U.S. researchers said in a report.

“Recruitment is not free,” said report co-author David Segall of New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. “Somebody does have to bear these costs, but that of course should be the employing company.”

The findings came as conditions for construction workers from India, Nepal and Bangladesh in the 2022 FIFA World Cup host, Qatar, have drawn scrutiny from rights groups who say migrants live in squalor and work without proper access to water and shelter.

In five fact-finding missions to the Gulf and South Asia, the researchers found workers are typically made to pay for their airfare from South Asia and their work visa, often at inflated prices.

Selling visas for profit is illegal in the six Gulf countries the researchers investigated — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. But violations rarely lead to prosecution and punishment, the report said.

Fees highest for Bangladeshis

Bangladeshi workers paid as much as $5,200 in recruitment fees, according to the study, the highest price among other South Asian construction workers, who number some 10 million people in the Gulf.

In rare cases, construction companies took on expenditures to recruit their workers, the study found. The fees had the effect of pushing already destitute migrants further into poverty by tying them to high-interest loans.

“These are people who are already desperate enough that they feel that they need to undertake this journey, leave their families in order to just achieve the possibility of economic success,” Segall told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “For them to be in debt before they even start this journey is really an injustice.”

Reports of abuse of migrant domestic workers have prompted countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Indonesia to ban their citizens in recent years from seeking jobs in the Middle East.

The New York University report expanded on the findings of an investigation conducted in Qatar and released last week, which concluded hundreds of Asian workers had paid recruitment fees.
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У березні 2017 року споживча інфляція прискорилася до 15,1%, порівняно з 14,2% у лютому, у місячному вимірі зростання індексу споживчих цін становило 1,8%. 

Як повідомляє прес-служба Національного банку України, прискорення інфляції в річному вимірі було очікуваним. 

За даними НБУ, інфляція сирих продуктів харчування пришвидшилася за рахунок збільшення виробничих витрат, активного експорту та низької бази порівняння, також вплинуло планове підвищення окремих тарифів та акцизів. 

На поточний рік Нацбанк очікує інфляції 9,1%.
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