Peru expects a “very ambitious” free trade deal with Australia that covers goods, services and investments to be implemented as early as next year, Peru’s deputy trade minister said on Monday.

The two countries resumed free trade talks in Australia on Monday following a first round of negotiations in July in which “a lot of progress was made,” said Deputy Trade Minister Edgar Vasquez.

“This is going to be an agreement that we should be able to implement as soon as possible, starting in 2018,” Vasquez said by telephone in Lima. “That’s what we’d like to happen and what we think is viable.”

Peru and Australia are important global producers of minerals and their bilateral trade is relatively small.

Forging a free trade deal so quickly would mark one of the first steps toward reducing trade barriers in the Pacific region after U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, which Australia and Peru had signed onto.

The remaining signatories to the TPP are in Australia this week discussing ways to salvage the deal. The 11 countries, which include Japan, Canada and Mexico, have a combined gross domestic product of $12.4 trillion.

Vasquez said the experience of negotiating the TPP had put Peru and Australia on solid footing for quickly hashing out a bilateral agreement.

“We also both have very open economies, so we’re really going to see a broad inclusion of sectors that will benefit from it – goods as well as services and investments,” Vasquez said.

Peru’s trade ministry said last month that rules of origin, migration and e-commerce were also under discussion and that Peru was eager to increase agricultural exports to Australia while spurring trade of mining and other professional services.

Australian trade officials were not immediately available for comment.

Peru’s exports to Australia amounted to $260 million last year, according to Peru’s trade ministry.
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Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto will travel to China next week to discuss trade and investment, as Mexico looks for ways to decrease its dependence on NAFTA, especially trade with neighboring United States.

He will hold a bilateral meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping and participate in a summit of the BRICS nations, a grouping that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, on Sept. 4 and 5, Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Pena Nieto’s visit comes as U.S., Mexican and Canadian negotiators meet Sept. 1 to 5 in Mexico City for a round of talks to revamp the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Mexico is trying to increase trade with Latin America and Asia, and on Monday took part in the first of three days of talks in Australia aimed at reviving the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, disrupted by the withdrawal of the United States.

On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump renewed his threat to scrap NAFTA, which he has cast as killing jobs and exacerbating the U.S. deficit, and ripped into trading partners Canada and Mexico.

Pena Nieto is scheduled to participate in a dialogue on emerging markets and a BRICS business forum, “where over 800 business leaders are expected to discuss opportunities for investment, trade, connectivity, financial cooperation, development and the blue economy, or sustainable use of marine resources,” said the ministry.

On Sept. 6, Pena Nieto will visit the offices of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, China’s top e-commerce firm and one of Asia’s most valuable companies.

Mexico’s government is working to get Mexican products and services, especially from small- and medium-sized firms, onto Alibaba’s platform.
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The price of a pack of cigarettes has skyrocketed in New York City, while the number of places they are available for sale is set to fall.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday signed a sweeping series of anti-smoking bills, part of a comprehensive effort to help reduce the number of smokers in the city by nearly 200,000 over the next few years.

“We are sending a loud and clear message that we will not let their greed kill any more New Yorkers without a fight,” de Blasio said at a bill-signing ceremony at a Brooklyn hospital. “These new laws will not only help reduce the number of smokers in our city, but also save lives.”

The minimum price for a pack of cigarettes will jump from $10.50 to $13, the highest base price for cigarettes in the nation, de Blasio said.

New York health officials hope that with brands forced to charge at least $13 for the cheapest pack, premium brands will also raise their prices to maintain separation from lower-tier smokes.

The planned price hike is one of seven bills aimed at pressuring the city’s 900,000 estimated smokers to quit.

Another new rule will reduce by half the number of retailers licensed to sell tobacco products. About 8,300 businesses now have a license. The numbers will be reduced through attrition, officials said.

Philadelphia and San Francisco have similar licensing restrictions.

Other laws will ban the sale of all tobacco products in pharmacies, require licensing of e-cigarette retailers, and require all residential buildings to have smoking policies that are given to all current and prospective tenants. Some residential buildings will be required to ban smoking in common areas such as hallways.

Opponents of the price increase say it may push many smokers into buying untaxed, unregulated cigarettes on the black market.
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Запаси природного газу в українських підземних сховищах газу (ПСГ) станом на кінець минулого тижня сягнули 14,6 мільярда кубометрів. Про це свідчать дані оператора газотранспортної системи України державної компанії «Укртрансгаз».

Менш як два тижні тому радник міністра енергетики і вугільної промисловості Максим Білявський інформував, що Україна збільшила запаси газу до 14 мільярдів кубометрів.

«Запаси газу в сховищах продовжують зростати, сьогодні перетнули позначку в 14 мільярдів кубів. Менше ніж за місяць закачали один мільярд», – написав він у Facebook.

Раніше міністр енергетики і вугільної промисловості Ігор Насалик заявив про плани нагромадження на 1 жовтня 2017 року 17 мільярдів кубометрів для проходження опалювального сезону 2017–2018 років.

При підготовці до минулого опалювального періоду профільне міністерство також наполягало на необхідності нагромадити 17 мільярдів кубометрів газу, але керівництво «Нафтогазу України» запевняло, що 14,5 мільярда кубометрів буде цілком достатньо. У результаті, в опалювальний сезон 2016–2017 років Україна ввійшла із запасами «блакитного палива» на рівні 14,7 і завершила сезон на рівні 8,4 мільярда кубометрів.
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Massive flooding caused by Tropical Storm Harvey along Texas’ refinery-rich coast could have long-standing and far-reaching consequences for the state’s oil and gas industry and the larger U.S. economy. The storm’s remnants left much of Houston underwater on Sunday, and the National Weather Service says it’s not over yet: Some parts of Houston and its suburbs could end up with as much as 50 inches (1.3 meters) of rain.

With the heavy precipitation expected to last for days, it’s still unclear how bad the damage will be, but there is already evidence of widespread losses. Key oil and gas facilities along the Texas Gulf Coast have temporarily shut down, and flooding in the Houston and Beaumont areas could seriously pinch gasoline supplies. Companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico have evacuated drilling platforms and rigs, crimping the flow of oil and gas.

Experts believe gasoline prices could increase as much as 25 cents a gallon.

Harvey’s toll on air travel in the U.S. is set to extend into Monday, with the tracking service FlightAware.com reporting that more than 1,400 flights already have been canceled. That’s in addition to more than 2,000 canceled over the weekend.

Economy watchers were looking to oil futures markets Sunday night and stock trading in the U.S. Monday morning for further indications of fallout.

Here’s what was known as of Sunday night:

Refineries

Nearly a third of U.S. refining capacity sits in low-lying areas along the coast from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Lake Charles, Louisiana. Beyond the shutdown of refineries at risk of a direct strike from high winds, there’s the threat of flooding and potential power outages for gasoline supplies.

Refinery outages continued to spread Sunday, with about 2.2 million barrels per day of refining capacity down or being brought down, according to analysts at S&P Global.

Valero Energy Corp., whose two big Corpus Christi refineries escaped damage, said it was working with federal and Texas agencies and its business partners to determine what infrastructure was needed to resume refinery operations.

Even before Harvey hit, the prospect of supply disruptions sent gasoline futures to $1.74 a gallon, their highest level since April, before they retreated to around $1.67 by Friday afternoon. At the pump, experts see gasoline increasing 10 cents to 25 cents a gallon.

Given the strictures faced by the refineries, “This is the dominoes starting to fall,” Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst for Gas Buddy, said Sunday. “This is sort of slowly turning out to be the worst-case scenario.”

Oil and gas

Companies have evacuated workers from oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said Sunday that workers had been removed from 105 of the 737 manned platforms used to pump oil and gas from beneath the Gulf.

The agency estimated that platforms accounting for about 22 percent of oil production and 26 percent of natural gas output in the Gulf had been shut down.

“After the storm has passed, facilities will be inspected,” the agency said in a news release. “Once all standard checks have been completed, production from undamaged facilities will be brought back on line immediately. Facilities sustaining damage may take longer to bring back on line.”

Shipping

The shipping industry also is expected to be disrupted by the worst hurricane to hit the Texas coast in more than 50 years. Shipping terminals along the Texas coast shut down as the storm approached. Port operations in Corpus Christi and Galveston closed, and the port of Houston said container terminals and general cargo facilities closed around midday Friday. Rates increased for carrying freight between the Gulf and the U.S. East Coast.

Travel

More than 1,400 flight cancellations are reported for Monday, according to FlightAware.

Houston’s two airports were closed to all flights except those connected to relief efforts. Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport was not expected to reopen Monday until noon at the earliest. Houston International Airport was scheduled to remain closed until Wednesday morning.

Airlines were offering customers the chance to reschedule trips that would take them to Houston, San Antonio or Austin from Friday through the weekend.

Utilities

                   Researchers at Texas A&M University estimated that the storm would knock out power for at least 1.25 million people in Texas. They said the hardest-hit areas will include Corpus Christi, which is on the coast, and San Antonio, which is about 140 miles (225 kilometers) inland.

Insurance

A firm that does forecasts for insurance companies expects wind-damage claims in the low billions of dollars, and possibly reaching as high as $6 billion.

Risk Management Solutions Inc. said storm surges and inland flooding could be an even bigger source of losses. If the firm is correct, that would put homeowners and the government-backed National Flood Insurance Program at risk.

The flood program is run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which owes the Treasury about $23 billion in funds borrowed to cover the cost of past disasters, according to a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Homeowner policies offered by insurance companies typically don’t cover flood damage, yet a relatively small percentage of homeowners have flood insurance through the federal program.

Property data firm CoreLogic estimated that insured losses for home and commercial properties, as of Friday, would be $1 billion to $2 billion from wind and storm-surge damage.

 
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Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has been named Uber’s top executive, taking the difficult job of mending the dysfunctional ride-hailing giant and turning it from money-losing behemoth to a profitable company.

Uber’s fractured eight-member board voted to hire Khosrowshahi late Sunday, capping three days of meetings and the withdrawal of once-top candidate Jeffery Immelt, former CEO and still chairman of General Electric, two people briefed on the decision said. They didn’t want to be identified because the decision had not been officially announced as of Sunday night.

Khosrowshahi has been CEO of Expedia since August of 2015. The online booking site is one of the largest travel agencies in the world.

Self-driving cars

He’ll replace ousted CEO Travis Kalanick and faces the difficult task of changing Uber’s culture that has included sexual harassment and allegations of deceit and corporate espionage. Uber also is losing millions every quarter as it continues to expand and invest in self-driving cars.

The company currently is being run by a 14-person group of managers and is without multiple top executive positions that will be filled by Khosrowshahi.

Khosrowshahi has served as a member of Expedia’s board since it was spun off from IAC/InterActiveCorp. two years ago. An engineer who trained at Brown University, Khosrowshahi helped to expand IAC’s travel brands which were combined into Expedia, the company’s website says. He also serves on the boards of Fanatics Inc. and The New York Times Co.

Many problems to solve

He immediately will face troubles on many fronts, including having to deal with multiple board factions that had once pushed Immelt and Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman. Several factions of the board are suing each other.

Whitman, an investor in Uber, denied multiple times publicly that she was interested in the job. Although she spoke to some board members remotely Friday night, they could not guarantee an end to their infighting or that Kalanick would not become board chairman, said another person with knowledge of the board discussions. That person also didn’t want to be identified because board discussions are supposed to be private.

Khosrowshahi also must bring together a messy culture that an outside law firm found was rampant with sexual harassment and bullying of employees. He also must deal with driver discontent, although Uber already has started to fix that by allowing riders to tip drivers through its app.
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A hurricane in the heart of the U.S. energy industry is expected to upend years of U.S. excess oil capacity and low prices, with the impact expected to reverberate globally and affect energy markets for weeks.

Harvey hit the Texas shore as a fierce Category 4 hurricane, causing massive flooding that knocked out 11.2 percent of U.S. refining capacity, a quarter of oil production from the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, and closed ports all along the Texas coast.

Gasoline futures jumped as much as 7 percent to their highest level in more than two years in early Monday trading in Asia as traders took stock of the storm’s impact.

Damage assessment could take weeks

The outages will limit the availability of U.S. crude, gasoline and other refined products for global consumers and further push up prices, analysts said.

Damage assessments could take days to weeks to complete, and the storm continues to drop near-biblical amounts of rain as it lingers west of Houston, home to oil, gas, pipeline and chemical plants.

More than 30 inches (76 cm) fell in the Houston area in 48 hours and a lot more rain is forecast, according to the National Weather Service.

“This is not like anything we have ever seen before,” said Bruce Jefferis, chief executive of Aon Energy, a risk consulting practice. It is too soon to gauge the full extent of Harvey’s damage to the region’s energy infrastructure, he said.

The storm was felt from coastal ports to inland oil and gas wells. Oil producers in the Eagle Ford shale region of south Texas have halted some operations.

Corpus Christi export terminals closed

At least four marine terminals in the Corpus Christi area, an export hub for energy deliveries to Latin America and Asia, remained closed due to the storm.

“We just simply don’t know yet the damage all this rain will have on Houston’s energy infrastructure,” said Andrew Lipow, president of energy consultancy Lipow Oil Associates LLC.

Texas refineries could be offline for up to a month if their storm-drainage pumps become submerged, he said.

As the storm churned towards Texas on Friday, U.S. gasoline futures rose to their highest level in three years for this time of year. Those gains came even before several large Houston area refiners, including ExxonMobil, halted some operations.

Exxon closed the second largest U.S. refinery, its 560,500 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery in Baytown, Texas, complex because of flooding. Royal Dutch Shell also halted operations at its 325,700-bpd Deer Park, Texas, refinery. The refinery may be shut for the week, it said.

Flooding keeps employees away

Flooding on highways between Houston and Texas City nearer to the coast led Marathon Petroleum to cut back gasoline production at the company’s 459,000-bpd Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, said sources familiar with plant operations.

Marathon Petroleum employees were unable to drive to work and conditions at the plant forced the company to reduce gasoline output, said industry sources. Marathon spokesman Jamal Kheiry declined to discuss plant operations.

Not every plant in the region was hit. Operations were stable at the largest U.S. crude refinery, Motiva Enterprises’ 603,000-bpd Port Arthur plant, the company said.

Motiva double-staffed the refinery’s crew ahead of the storm, as did Total SA at the company’s 225,500-bpd Port Arthur refinery, said sources familiar with plant operations.

Pipelines not affected

Coastal refineries in Texas account for one-quarter of the U.S. crude oil refining capacity. All of those refineries have been impacted by Harvey since Thursday when refineries in Corpus Christi, Texas, shut in production ahead of the storm’s landfall on Friday.

Colonial Pipeline, the largest mover of gasoline, diesel and other refined products in the United States, said its operations had not been affected by Harvey. Any disruptions to the conduit would send prices across the U.S. Southeast and Northeast soaring. Traders have been keeping a close eye on whether there will be an outage at the pipeline.

Citgo Petroleum and Flint Hills Resources, two of the refiners that closed last week as the storm approached, did not provide updates about the status of their Corpus Christi refineries on Sunday.

 
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Рейтингове агентство Moody’s Investors Service підвищило рейтинги уряду України в українській і іноземній валюті на одну сходинку, з Caa3 до Caa2, і змінило прогноз зі «стабільного» на «позитивний».

Як заявило агентство у п’ятницю, головними чинниками підвищення рейтингу стали загальний вплив структурних реформ в Україні, які можуть допомогти урядові впоратися з борговим навантаженням, а також поліпшення позиції країни на зовнішніх ринках.

А позитивний прогноз, мовиться у прес-релізі агентства, відображає імпульс реформ – якщо він збережеться, це може призвести до дальшого поліпшення надійності внутрішнього і зовнішнього боргу України. «Такий імпульс реформ також підтримає поновлення доступу України до світових ринків капіталу, що полегшить шлях до рефінансування значних виплат за зовнішнім боргом, які настануть, починаючи з 2019 року», – мовиться в повідомленні агентства.

Але нинішнє зростання рейтингу обмежене лише однією сходинкою – з Caa3 до Caa2 – саме через цей тягар виплати зовнішніх боргів, який настане через кілька років і буде вимагати значного фінансування в іноземній валюті, повідомило агентство Moody’s.

Інші два провідні рейтингові агентства світу – Fitch і Standard&Poor’s – наразі зберігають оголошену навесні цього року рейтингову оцінку України на рівні B–, зі «стабільним» прогнозом.
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Проект бюджету на 2018 рік має бути представлений 15 вересня, заявив міністр економічного розвитку і торгівлі України Степан Кубів, відповідаючи на запитання Радіо Свобода.

«На даний момент бюджет погоджений із міністерствами в структурі балансу, проведена спільна нарада з участю президента України, прем’єр-міністра, голови Верховної Ради, представників фракцій для того, щоб представити бюджет вчасно – 15 вересня 2017 року», – сказав Кубів.

Зупинилися на 10 пріоритетах, які є складовими реформ, зазначив міністр, не розкриваючи, які саме ці пріоритети.

Бюджет-2018 буде більшим за теперішній, зазначила в коментарі Радіо Свобода перший заступник міністра фінансів Оксана Маркарова.

«Наша економіка зростає, і доходи наші теж зростуть. Постійне зниження дефіциту – це напрямок, у якому ми працюємо. Плюс у нас є певні зобов’язання, які ми на себе взяли, в тому числі перед міжнародними партнерами за програмою Міжнародного валютного фонду. Тому в цьому році граничний дефіцит, який ми не маємо права перевищити, становить близько 3 відсотків, наступного року – 2,4%», – зауважила Маркарова.

Бюджет-2017 за результатами першого півріччя був перевиконаний, а кошти перерозподілені на субсидії, безпеку та оборону, програму реімбурсації за медичним напрямком, кілька освітніх програм і ті напрямки, в яких спостерігалась критична потреба, пояснила заступник міністра фінансів.

Раніше чільні українські посадовці звертали увагу, що бюджет на 2018 рік має передбачити фінансування низки реформ, які нині здійснює Україна.
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The head of the U.S. central bank says the financial system is safer now than it was before the recession, and urges Washington to make some adjustments in financial regulations, rather than trash them.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen says the recession of 2008 cost nine million American jobs and meant millions of people lost their homes. She says financial reform regulations were intended to make it less likely that big institutions would fail in the future and to provide an orderly way to resolve the debts of big financial companies that do fail without government bailouts.

She says financial firms, particularly very large ones that could hurt the entire economy if they fail, are now required to keep larger reserves. That way if one loan goes bad, the firm is less likely to have to hastily sell off other assets at bad prices to cover the losses. Low reserve levels prompted a downward spiral when many fragile firms ran into trouble all at once, all of them trying to sell assets and no one willing to buy them.

Yellen acknowledges that over-regulation could hamper the lending and risk-taking needed for economic growth, but she says some research shows the current level of regulation hurts lending, while other research shows it helps.

In a Friday speech to a gathering of top economic officials from around the world at a resort in Wyoming, she said Fed officials are looking at ways to simplify regulations for small banks that would not cause problems for the national economy if they failed.

Small banks complain the cost of complying with complex regulations makes it hard to make loans. Small banks are important because they are often the source of capital for small companies, and such small, growing firms are the source of most new jobs.

Yellen’s closely-watched speech at the annual gathering of economists at a resort in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, comes after criticism from Republicans and others that stricter regulation is hurting lending and economic growth.

President Donald Trump has called for repealing a key part of the regulations called “Dodd-Frank” named after the legislators who crafted the law.
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