Amazon announced Friday that it will purchase Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. It is the e-commerce giant’s biggest acquisition to date, and highlights the company’s continued attempt to penetrate the $800 billion grocery industry.

“Millions of people love Whole Foods Market because they offer the best natural and organic foods, and they make it fun to eat healthy,” said Amazon co-founder and CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement. “Whole Foods Market has been satisfying, delighting and nourishing customers for nearly four decades – and they’re doing an amazing job and we want that to continue.”

Whole Foods Market was founded in 1978 in Austin, Texas. Despite nagging concerns that the high-end grocery chain inflated prices, it experienced steady growth. It has landed on the Fortune 500 list every year since 2005 and employs more than 70,000 people in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The grocer will keep its corporate office in Austin and continue to use the Whole Foods name after the sale.

For its part, Amazon has strained to enter the grocery market for years. Initially an internet bookshop, Amazon began delivering non-perishable food items like cereal and soup in 2006, prompting derision from the grocery industry. “I’m a little baffled by this,” said an analyst in 2006. “Economically I just don’t know how it makes much sense.”

The doubters appeared right. By early 2017, only 4.2 percent of regular Amazon shoppers used its grocery home delivery service. “Online grocery is failing,” analyst Kurt Jetta told The New York Times in March.

In response, Amazon, an online retailer, has built some of the kind of stores it has disrupted – brick and mortar shops. Last year, it opened two small stores in Seattle where drivers can seamlessly pick up produce without leaving their cars. The Whole Foods acquisition continues the e-retailer’s awkward embrace of physical stores. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2017.
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Міністр фінансів України Олександр Данилюк заявляє, що конфісковані кошти екс-президента Віктора Януковича не є доходом державного бюджету. Про це він заявив в інтерв’ю Радіо Свобода. 

«По-перше, це не є дохід. Ці гроші можна використати лише на обмежену кількість заходів. Про що говорили багато популістів: що «зараз ми з цих грошей роздамо зарплати»… Якщо наша економіка не генерує ці гроші в наступному році, то люди вже цих зарплат не отримають. Це чистий популізм», – сказав він. 

Міністр вважає, що ці гроші можна витратити на якісь одноразові виплати, наприклад, на інфраструктурні проекти.

У квітні генеральний прокуратур Юрій Луценко заявив про завершення процесу переказу конфіскованих коштів (1,5 мільярда доларів) Януковича і його оточення на рахунки Держказначейства. Водночас адвокат Януковича спростовував інформацію про конфіскацію цих коштів.

Повний текст і відео інтерв’ю з міністром чекайте на сайті Радіо Свобода незабаром.
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From the president of Mozambique to the US Secretary of Commerce, greater US economic engagement in Africa is the dominant theme at this year’s business summit organized by the Corporate Council on Africa. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo was there and reports.
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U.S. authorities moved on Thursday to seize a Picasso painting given to American movie star Leonardo DiCaprio and the rights to two Hollywood comedies, as they filed complaints to recover about $540 million they say was stolen from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad sovereign wealth fund.

The U.S. Justice Department filing was the latest legal action tied to alleged money laundering at the fund set up by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2009 to promote economic development. In the complaints, the department alleges more than $4.5 billion was taken from 1MDB by high-level fund officials and their associates.

“This money financed the lavish lifestyles of the alleged co-conspirators at the expense and detriment of the Malaysian people,” Kenneth Blanco, acting assistant attorney general, said in a statement. 1MDB could not be immediately reached for comment.

Najib has denied taking money from 1MDB or any other entity for personal gain, after it was reported that investigators traced nearly $700 million to bank accounts that were allegedly in his name.

The assets U.S. authorities are seeking to seize include the rights to Dumb and Dumber To, a 2014 comedy starring Jim Carrey, they allege was financed with tens of millions of dollars stolen from 1MDB, and the 2015 film Daddy’s Home, starring Will Ferrell. Last year, U.S. authorities moved to seize rights to the 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street, which starred DiCaprio.

The three films were produced by Red Granite, a company founded by Najib’s stepson Riza Aziz. Red Granite said in a statement it was in discussions with the Justice Department “aimed at resolving these civil cases and is fully cooperating.”

U.S. authorities accuse Jho Low, a Malaysian financier, of laundering more than $400 million stolen from the fund through an account in the United States, where he and his friends used the money to pay for lavish parties, gambling and yachts.

Despite the civil allegations, U.S. authorities have not charged Low with any crime.

Low did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent to his Hong Kong-based company Jynwel Capital.

Artwork, Oscar for DiCaprio

Authorities said that in 2014 Low used $3.2 million diverted from a 1MDB bond sale to buy a Picasso painting for DiCaprio.

“Dear Leonardo DiCaprio, Happy belated Birthday! This gift is for you,” a friend of Low’s wrote in a note.

Low also used $9.2 million diverted from 1MDB bond sales to buy a collage made by the New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat which was also given to DiCaprio. DiCaprio and Low signed a note in March 2014 absolving the star of “any liability whatsoever resulting directly or indirectly from these art-work,” according to the filings.

A spokesman for DiCaprio said in an emailed statement on Thursday the actor last July “initiated the return” of gifts he had received from financiers connected to the 1MDB case. The spokesman said DiCaprio also returned an Oscar won by actor Marlon Brando which was given to DiCaprio by Red Granite “to thank him for his work on The Wolf of Wall Street,” the statement said.

DiCaprio’s spokesman said the star accepted the gifts to raise funds in an auction for his environmental foundation.

Complaints against 1MDB

Fraud allegations against 1MDB go back to 2009, the Justice Department said, and the fund is subject to money laundering investigations in at least six countries, including Switzerland and Singapore.

The complaints allege that officials at 1MDB, their relatives and other associates allegedly laundered the funds using complex transactions and shell companies with bank accounts located in the United States and abroad.

That allowed the origin, source and ownership of the funds to be hidden and ultimately passed through U.S. financial institutions, with the money being used to buy and invest in assets in the United States and overseas, according to the complaints.
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American tourists strolling the ample squares and narrow streets of colonial Havana may not know it, but from novelist Ernest Hemingway’s famed Floridita bar to Sloppy Joe’s eatery, they are probably patronizing businesses owned by Cuba’s military.

It is that lucrative line of business that President Donald Trump will target when he rolls out his new Cuba policy Friday in Miami, the heart of the country’s hard-line exile community, according to U.S. officials who have seen a draft presidential memorandum.

Trump will significantly restrict U.S. companies from doing business with some military-linked enterprises, the officials said.

“Any ban on using military-owned tourism facilities would make it very difficult to bring groups larger than seven people, because for logistical reasons you need to work with the government,” said Collin Laverty, president of Cuba Educational Travel.

The number of Americans traveling to Cuba, mostly in large groups because of U.S. regulations, has nearly tripled in recent years and was expected to reach around 400,000 in 2017, according to U.S. travel agencies.

Trump’s expected limits on U.S. business deals will target the Armed Forces Business Enterprises Group (GAESA), a conglomerate involved in all sectors of the economy that is led by General Luis Alberto Rodriguez, reportedly President Raul Castro’s son-in-law.

That is bad news for the pro-engagement U.S. politicians and hundreds of businesses that flocked to Cuba in the last few years in search of new opportunities.

Lone hotel deal

The only hotel deal struck to date may prove the last for now, at least in the capital. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, which is owned by Marriott International, signed on to manage a Gaviota hotel in Havana under the Sheraton brand, which opened in 2016.

Gaviota is part of GAESA, and tourism development projects in Havana and other choice locations are almost exclusively in its hands.

U.S. Gulf Coast ports and the Port of Virginia, which have signed letters of intent to work with the new Mariel container terminal, will most likely have to look elsewhere for shipping partners because it is controlled by Almacenes Universales, another GAESA company.

The terminal feeds a surrounding Chinese-style development zone that allows investors 100 percent ownership and that was visited by dozens of U.S. business delegations beginning in 2015, though no deals were signed. It also is controlled by Almacenes Universales.

GAESA does not run Cuba’s airports, or its cruise ship terminals, meaning U.S. airlines and cruise operators might not be directly affected, but it does control the marinas.

All the state hotels, stores and eateries in colonial Old Havana are owned by Habaguanex, which was recently taken over from the city historian’s office by GAESA.

GAESA began modestly enough in the 1980s as an effort to bring modern management to the civilian sector mired in the ways of Soviet-style administration.

It has grown dramatically over the last decade since Raul Castro took over for his ailing and now deceased older brother, Fidel.

Today GAESA boasts dozens of companies that control 40 percent to 60 percent of the Caribbean island’s foreign exchange earnings, according to Cuban economists.

GAESA’s books, like those of other state-run companies, are not public.

Military’s self-interest

Some Cuba experts and diplomats believe the military is feathering its own nest and perhaps preparing to cash in if the government falls.

But others believe revenues flow to the cash-strapped state.

A former British ambassador to Cuba, Paul Hare, who lectures at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, said the military was viewed as a guardian of the Revolution.

“Their function is to ensure that private Cubans and foreign investors do not undermine the principles of ‘socialism,’ ” he said.

The holding company controls virtually all of the thousands of stores, supermarkets and malls in the country that sell imported products ranging from food and beverages to clothing and appliances, and hundreds of gas stations and eateries.

That means when you enter a shop in Cuba to purchase a bottle of water, soda or beer, you probably are patronizing a military establishment.

If you want to rent a condominium or satellite TV service, you have to go through a GAESA company.

The holding company also controls two banks and all credit card and money transfer transactions through Fincimex. RAFIN, the conglomerate’s mini-hedge fund, owns shares in the telecommunications monopoly ETECSA.
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Foreign fishing in Indonesian waters has long been a concern for the government, for which it has recently taken a literally explosive approach: blowing up illicit fishing boats. But the country’s wildly popular Minister of Marine Affairs lobbied the United Nations last week to declare illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUUF) an organized crime, signaling growing frustration and a new approach from Jakarta.

That said, even if the U.N. takes this step, Indonesia faces an uphill battle in protecting its fisheries. As the world’s largest archipelagic nation, it has somewhere between 15,000 and 17,000 islands and many kilometers of unsecured coastline. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo created a task force to address illegal fishing in October 2015, which reports directly to him and gives the Navy, the National Police and the Maritime Security Agency wide jurisdiction to deter illegal fishing by any means necessary.

But the fleet and law enforcement personnel are still small given the scale of the problem, which costs Indonesia, by one estimate, $3 billion a year.

Surprisingly empowered task force

Task forces, or “Satgas” (satuan tugas in Bahasa Indonesia) are almost a punchline in Indonesian governance because they are created for a wide variety of issues and often with unclear mandates. But the fishing task force feels different, according to Mas Achmad Santosa, head of the IUUF Fisheries Task Force.

“This is the first time for Indonesians that the president has set up a task force and it actually works well,” Santosa told VOA. “Every element needed for enforcement is there: investigators [from the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fishery, Marine Police, Coast Guard, and Navy], prosecutors under the attorney general’s office, and several experts from fields like money laundering and environmental law.”

There are about 60 dedicated members of this task force, but they work closely with the above institutions so their effective numbers are larger, Santosa said.

The task force only directly prosecutes cases with “elements of serious crime,” said Santosa, and they have prosecuted 42 such cases over the last year.

“But our fleet is far from sufficient, we must admit,” Santosa said. “Compared to our oceans, which are huge, the technology is limited.” They only have four patrol boats, for instance.

Since Jokowi took office in 2014, Indonesia has blown up over 300 illegal fishing boats, taking out 81 near Ambon over a single weekend last April. The eye-catching strategy has become something of a local tourist attraction. Its symbolic impact, though, could be larger.

“Blowing up boats is just one of our treatments. But we hope it creates a general deterrent effect,” Santosa said.

Charismatic leader

Indonesia’s Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti, known as “Bu Susi,” is a high school dropout turned entrepreneur with a knack for viral photo opportunities (smoking on a paddleboard, sleeping in an airport) and a no-nonsense style that has raised the profile of her relatively obscure ministry.

“It’s very important to have a strong leader, and she is a person of integrity who leads by example,” Santoso said.

Foreign fishing is concentrated in Maluku, Sumatra, and the Indian Ocean, according to the maritime ministry. Beyond that, there are also illicit Indonesian vessels that engage in what Santoso calls “unsustainable fishing that will destroy ecosystems.” So international cooperation is not a silver bullet;  the task force’s inroads on domestic fishing will be equally important, and somewhat harder to attack in such a spectacular manner.

Domestic agenda

The Peoples Coalition for Fishery Justice (KIARA) has urged the maritime ministry to revise regulations that they say hinder the development of the local fishing industry.

“Today the biggest challenge faced by coastal communities, especially fishermen, is the investment from and development through foreign capital,” KIARA secretary-general Susan Herawati Romica told VOA. For instance, she said, on the island of Gili Sunut, Lombok, there are 109 households who have been displaced by construction on a Singaporean beach resort to more dangerous cliffside areas.

“Today, 90 percent of Indonesian fishermen are traditional fishermen with vessels that average below 10 gross tons,” she said. “They rely heavily on marine and coastal areas, but they still face major challenges in accessing the coast.”

According to KIARA data, there have been at least 34 recent cases of mine reclamation or development that have displaced local communities. “To that end, we say, if the country wants to push fisheries to provide the maximum benefit to coastal communities, then access to the sea [for local communities] should be guaranteed by the state.”
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The Trump administration is suspending regulations aimed at cutting dangerous methane gas emissions from oil and natural gas wells.

The Interior Department is indefinitely putting on hold methane trapping rules imposed on wells on federal lands.

The Senate rejected the suspension last month, prompting the department to act on its own.

An Interior official said the regulation is a “significant regulatory burden that encumbers American energy production, economic growth and job creation.”

The Environmental Protection Agency wants a two-year delay on separate rules requiring oil and gas producers to monitor and capture methane gas leaks.

EPA chief Scott Pruitt said the federal regulations duplicate state regulations that he said can do a better job.

Methane gas traps heat in the atmosphere and contributes to climate change.

Both sets of federal rules were implemented in the closing months of the Obama administration and were criticized by the oil and gas industry as burdensome job killers.

But Mark Brownstein of the Environmental Defense Fund said lifting the rules takes away what he said are protections that make natural gas a clean-burning fuel.

“Disregarding the will of the people, the interests of taxpayers and legal safeguards, all in the name of doing the bidding of the oil and gas industry, is shameful,” Brownstein said.
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У Службі безпеки України заявляють про викриття спільно з Генпрокуратурою механізму регулярного придбання посадовцями «Укрзалізниці» неякісної продукції, що могло загрожувати функціонуванню залізничної інфраструктури. Про це йдеться у повідомленні на сайті відомства.

За даними СБУ, йдеться про купівлю контрафактних запасних частин для тягового рухомого складу на суму в майже 100 мільйонів гривень.

«Використання неякісних запасних частин виробничими підрозділами «Укрзалізниці» – одного з тепловозоремонтних заводів та сімома локомотивними депо – призводило, зокрема, до постійного виходу з ладу десятків тепловозів та тривалих простоїв на позапланових ремонтах. Унаслідок оборудки посадовців «Укрзалізниця» не змогла забезпечити в повному обсязі перевезення продукції металургійних комбінатів. Це, відповідно, призвело до недоотримання держпідприємством прибутків, скорочення обсягів валютної виручки та зменшення надходжень до бюджетів усіх рівнів», – повідомили в СБУ.

Раніше цього тижня Генеральна прокуратура України проводила обшуки в ПАТ «Укрзалізниця». Під час обшуків співробітники Генпрокуратури передали підозру одному з керівників департаменту локомотивного господарства.

В «Укрзалізниці» тоді заявили, що епізод, за яким триває слідство, стосується 2015-2016 років, і наголосили, що сприяють проведенню слідчих дій.
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The real estate firm owned by the family of Jared Kushner has withdrawn a request for a big tax break for one its buildings in Jersey City, New Jersey, the latest setback for the company in the area.

The Kushner Cos. sent a letter withdrawing its application for a 30-year break from city taxes for a planned two-tower project in the struggling Journal Square section of the city, Jersey City spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill said Wednesday. Opponents of the tax breaks marched downtown earlier this year and the city’s mayor recently came out against the Kushner request.

Jared Kushner was CEO of the family company before stepping down to become a senior adviser to his father-in-law, President Donald Trump.

Committed to area

Kushner Cos. spokesman James Yolles said the company is committed to the “much-needed investment” in that area of the city.

The loss of the tax break is the latest blow for the company in a city where it is major real estate developer.

The 79-story building, One Journal Square, gained attention last month after Jared Kushner’s sister, Nicole Kushner Meyer, mentioned her brother in a presentation in Beijing where she had hoped to attract Chinese investors in the building. Marketing material noted the “celebrity status” of her family.

Government ethics experts blasted the family for what they said was an attempt to profit off Jared Kushner’s position in Washington, and the Kushner Cos. canceled upcoming investor presentations in the country.

The company said Meyer wasn’t trying to use her White House ties to attract investors.

EB-5 visa program

The Kushner family is seeking 300 wealthy Chinese to invest a total of $150 million in One Journal Square. The family was trying to raise money through the EB-5 visa program that grants temporary U.S. residency to wealthy foreigners in exchange for investments of at least $500,000 in certain U.S. projects

The company also is in danger of losing another tax break for the building. The shared office space firm WeWork recently pulled out as anchor tenant. That has put in doubt a state tax break tied to WeWork.

Another project is off, too. The Kushner Cos. once considered bidding to develop a 95-acre industrial site along the Hackensack River in the city for housing, called Bayfront. Last month, it was revealed the family had withdrawn from those plans last year.

The Kusnher Cos. has said politics had nothing to do with its decision to withdraw from Bayfront, and that “economics of the deal” drove the move.

As for One Journal Square, company spokesman Yolles said the project will provide 4,000 construction jobs and $180 million in tax revenue for the city over 30 years.

Tax breaks an issue

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, a Democrat, is running for re-election this fall, and tax breaks to developers have become a major issue.

Unlike neighboring Hoboken, Jersey City has granted dozens of tax breaks in recent years. Fulop had campaigned to reform the practice, but critics say he has done little.

Another Kushner property in the city overlooking the Hudson River got a five-year tax break soon after Fulop was elected mayor. That 50-story building has licensed the Trump name and is called Trump Bay Street. The building was also partly financed with EB-5 visa money from abroad.

The Kushner family owns or manages 20,000 apartments, 13 million square feet of office space and industrial properties in several states, including New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Illinois. 
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Fierce competition among car manufacturers requires constant search for ways to cut expenses without compromising safety and other standards. One of the areas with room for improvement is in manufacturing of car bodies, which could be made lighter but still strong enough to protect passengers. VOA’s George Putic visited the National Institute for Science and Technology, NIST, outside Washington, where everything starts with new ways of testing sheet metal.
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With a cigarette in one hand and a muddy machete in the other, Brazilian grandmother Maria Nobre de Oliveira thinks high-end chocolate will help end the epidemic of deforestation ravaging Amazon communities like hers.

Her community of a few dozen residents live in hand-built wooden houses with no electricity or running water in the world’s largest rainforest, more than six hours by river boat from the nearest town in Brazil’s southwestern Amazonas State.

Residents in isolated Amazon settlements say they have few opportunities to make a living other than clearing land to raise cattle — part of the reason why Amazon deforestation rates in Brazil shot up 29 percent last year after years of decline.

As well as villagers clearing land to feed themselves, large ranchers and speculators have been trying to invade the Arapixi nature reserve where Oliveira lives to cut down trees, an official with Brazil’s environment ministry said.

But residents of the reserve have new ally to help them protect the trees — chocolate.

“This is virgin forest,” Oliveira, 62, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation as residents used long poles to knock cocoa beans — the base ingredient for chocolate — from the reserve’s trees.

“Some guys came to cut the trees down a while back — but we told them to get lost,” Oliveira said, as other farmers carried fresh cocoa beans to dry in the sun.

“If we had let them, we wouldn’t have an income source … cocoa helps us protect the forest.”

Farmers in the nature reserve work with a local cooperative in Boca do Acre that manages the sale and export of the cocoa.

Finding a balance

Finding a balance between employment for local people and protecting Amazonian forests has long stumped policymakers.

Every minute, forests larger than two football fields are felled in the Amazon, according to the former director of Brazil’s forestry service.

Brazilian officials say projects like the cocoa co-op are helping residents make a living from the land while moving away from deforestation.

“These cocoa projects come from the community, we are a partner with them,” said Abilio Ikeziri, an official at Brazil’s environment ministry, responsible for protected areas.

The income also helps locals keep the ranchers and land scammers out of the reserve, Ikeziri said.

“I am the only [official] responsible for looking after 1.5 million hectares (15,000 km sq) of land — it is impossible [without local help],” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Communities living in the reserve and making a living from sustainably harvesting plants like cocoa that grow naturally makes it easier for over-stretched officials to defend the land from speculators, the official said.

Cooperative solutions

In the Arapixi reserve, residents used to harvest cocoa for their own consumption and began selling it to a cooperative 10 years ago.

Last year they exported more than 10 tonnes of natural cocoa to Europe which earned the co-op about 130,000 reis ($39,000), a decline from previous years due to poor weather.

Once it arrives in Germany the cocoa is refined into high-end, environmentally certified chocolate.

Based in the Amazon river port of Boca do Acre the co-op employs more than 400 people, including a dozen in Dona Oliveira’s community, said manager Jose Geraldo Tranin.

“Before we launched the co-op, many people were deforesting land for cattle,” Tranin told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in the co-op’s sparse one room office in Boca do Acre. “Now people know cocoa will generate some income so they are preserving the forest.”

With help from German social entrepreneurs who provided money to buy boats and other capital for the co-operative to get started, reserve residents like Oliveira were given training in cocoa production and tools to better harvest and transport the crop.

“The co-op wants to expand, so that is good for us,” said 52-year-old farmer Jose Freitas, taking a break from racking cocoa beans over a metal grate in the sun.

Backed by research

Residents can earn up to 1,200 reais ($365) per month in the busy season preparing the beans for export – a decent salary in a region beset by poverty – although it means working seven days per week.

“We can buy more food now,” Freitas said. “I could even afford to make the trip to the hospital.”

For European consumers, their chocolate is branded as “wild cocoa of Amazonas.”

The project has had a clear impact on forest preservation in Arapixi compared to similar Amazon reserves, said Francidalva Oliveira de Souza, a researcher at the State University of Amazonas studying the project.

“Deforestation has been decreasing in this reserve,” Souza told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview. “This sort of project could be expanded to help preserve other areas and help residents earn an income.”
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China’s three big Internet-driven companies, Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu, are set to influence a vast section of the country’s business because they control data concerning the consumer and social behavior of millions of people. The awesome power comes from the government’s drive to develop a “big data” industry, which is thriving in China.

Several other players, including utilities like phone companies and retail chains, are also trying to dip into the newly discovered pot of money from buyers who need information to understand buying preferences of potential customers, and design their products and strategies in line with the data flows.

“It [big data] is an improvement to do [a] better job, but unfortunately your [consumer’s] lifeline is more and more dependent on these big three guys,” said Chiang Jeongwen, a professor of marketing at the China Europe International Business School.

Recent studies have shown that nearly 90 percent of China’s 731 million online users have made at least one online purchase, often involving the use of Baidu’s search facilities, e-commerce sites and third-party transactions using mobile phone apps.

Predicting trends

“People are buying things and using their third party payment systems. [That] information [is] also being captured by Tencent and Alibaba. That is huge because now they know both offline and online information of consumers,” said Chiang.

These companies own a wide range of businesses that makes it possible for them to gather both online and offline data that is generated when a customer uses a phone app to make payments at a physical shop.

Alibaba owns Alipay while Tencent runs the highly popular WeChat service which offers mobile payment options. Baidu is China’s biggest internet search engine and holds the kind of influence that Google does in other countries.

“They have diversified the services [that] they offer. Alibaba, they are big in e-commerce. The kind of data they generate comes from anything ranging from what you buy online to your bill payments, travel bookings you do with, for example, the Alipay app,” said Shazeda Ahmed, visiting academic in the technology and economics division of Mercator Institute of Chinese Studies.

“People use the same platforms to make purchases, so there is a sense of extreme power in this situation because you can do all of these on one platform,” she explained.

These companies have a very strong predictive power that comes from a vast store of historical data and real-time data that they are collecting from users of different services. “They kind of able to anticipate the next thing a user might want before the user himself is aware of it,” she said.

Trading in data

The expansion of big data has given rise to serious concerns about the privacy of millions of people, who reveal both their transaction information and facets of social behavior through social media.

China has seen the rise of a black market for data. Data sellers offer a wide range of data on a targeted person, business or community by cracking into official databases and privately run sites.

But Chinese officials insist the government has put in place strong safeguards.

“There is a very strong firewall built before the big data center was established,” Zhang Bin, a senior official of the main big data center established by the Chinese government in Guiyang city. “We also made strict policy to control the data leaks from the government, so these are the two ways to protect information not to be leaked to the private companies for illegal use.”

The government has established a big data exchange center in Guiyang to encourage private and state-run companies to trade in data in a transparent manner, and help the industry find out the real price of the information. The center has come in for some praise by foreign companies who visited it but some questions remain unanswered.

“Having a legitimate place to trade data is an idea, but how does an exchange ensure that the data controllers has to requisite rights to sell data and it’s not breach of privacy?” Gagan Sabharwal, director of the National Association of Software and Service Companies in India, said after a recent visit.
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