Water restrictions are to be imposed in Sydney, Australia’s biggest city, for the first time in almost a decade because of falling reservoir levels and a long-standing drought. Residents who breach the regulations could be fined US$150.

The flow of rainwater into some of Sydney’s reservoirs is at its lowest since World War II. From Saturday, households will face restrictions that will target the use of water outdoors. Garden sprinklers will be banned, and tougher measures could follow. The New South Wales state government says that “early and decisive action” will help to conserve supplies as a record-breaking drought worsens.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology is predicting below-average rainfall and higher temperatures for the next three months across the much of the continent.

“With the lowest inflows into Sydney’s water storage since 1940, the government has come to a decision that it is best to go into water restrictions,” said Melinda Pavey, the New South Wales state Minister for Water. “We may get rain. The Bureau of Meteorology’s predictions are not fabulous, but as we know as we plan weekends, they are not always right and I hope that they are wrong. We are taking the appropriate course of action to take it to level one.”

New South Wales has been in drought since the middle of 2017.

Catherine Port, from Sydney Water, a government-owned company, says its officers will patrol to ensure the water ban is not broken.

“Sydney Water have a team of community water officers that will be out in the community to monitor and ensure that water restrictions are complied with. Penalties that will apply is AUD$220 for individuals and $550 for businesses,” she said.

Critics, though, insist that Sydney’s plight is in part the result of poor planning and a failure to take water recycling seriously.

Falling reservoir levels prompted authorities to switch on a multi-million dollar desalinization plant in January. At full capacity, it could supply Sydney, a city of 4.6 million people, with 15 per cent of its water needs.

Smaller towns in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, are also facing water crises. In Tamworth, residents are on level four restrictions that ban all use of water outdoors, and swimming pools cannot be filled or topped up. Level five restrictions are considered to be an emergency measure.

Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent.

 
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Україна піднялася на п’ять позицій порівняно з минулим роком у рейтингу конкурентоспроможності – до 54-го місця з 59-го. Про це йдеться в щорічній доповіді World Competitiveness ranking 2019 швейцарської бізнес-школи IMD.

Всього до списку увійшли 63 країни.

Україна розмістилася між Словаччиною і Перу.

Сингапур вперше з 2010 року очолив рейтинг найбільш конкурентоспроможних економік. Друге місце посів Гонконг. Сполучені Штати Америки, які раніше очолювали рейтинг, опустилися на третє місце.

Читайте також: П’ять економічних викликів для нового президента

Укладачі доповіді відзначають, що Сингапур домігся успіхів завдяки технологічній інфраструктурі, кваліфікованим робочим кадрам, сприятливому імміграційному законодавству й ефективному створенню нових підприємств.

У першу п’ятірку країн з найбільшою висококонкурентною економікою увійшли також Швейцарія і Об’єднані Арабські Емірати. Росія перебуває на 45 місці.

Замикає рейтинг країн Венесуела, де триває політична й економічна криза.
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Поточний обсяг міжнародних резервів України становить 19,3 мільярди доларів – цього достатньо для виконання боргових зобов’язань. Про це заявив глава Національного банку України Яків Смолій на зустрічі з місією Міжнародного валютного фонду, повідомили у прес-службі НБУ.

За словами Смолія, співпраця з МВФ важлива для фінансової стабільності України, бо до кінця поточного року Київ має сплатити понад 5 мільярдів доларів за зовнішнім і внутрішнім валютними зобов’язаннями.

«Співпраця з МВФ – це також і доступ до іншого – офіційного і приватного – фінансування, а також запорука продовження структурних реформ, без яких неможливе довгострокове стійке зростання української економіки», – наголосив глава НБУ.

24 травня речник МВФ Джеррі Райс повідомив, що Міжнародний валютний фонд готовий відновити діалог про подальшу співпрацю з Україною після виборів.

Місія Міжнародного валютного фонду розпочала роботу в Україні 21 травня. Представник МВФ в Україні Йоста Люнгман заявляв, що місія перебуватиме в Україні два тижні й оцінюватиме виконання поточної програми співпраці з фондом.

18 грудня 2018 року посол України у США Валерій Чалий повідомив, що в штаб-квартирі Міжнародного валютного фонду у Вашингтоні затвердили виділення Україні фінансової підтримки для продовження реалізації важливих реформ.

Обсяг нової програми – 3,9 мільярда доларів. Згідно з повідомленням, вона має стати основою для економічної політики уряду в 2019 році – передбачається, що ця політика буде зосереджена на зниженні інфляції та реформах оподаткування, фінансового і енергетичного секторів.

21 грудня Україна отримала перший транш за новою програмою співпраці з Міжнародним валютним фондом обсягом близько 1,4 мільярда доларів.
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The Trump administration said on Tuesday that no major trading partner met its currency manipulation criteria but nine countries, including China, required close attention as Washington presses tariffs and negotiations to address trade deficits.

The Treasury Department, in a semi-annual report to Congress, said it reviewed the policies of an expanded set of 21 major U.S. trading partners and found that nine required close attention due to currency practices: China, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam.

“No major U.S. trading partner met the relevant 2015 legislative criteria for enhanced analysis” as a currency manipulator, the department said in a statement.

President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports and begun the process of imposing tariffs on another $300 billion in Chinese goods.

Talks to end the trade dispute between the two countries collapsed earlier this month, with the two sides in a stalemate over U.S. demands that China change its policies to address a number of key U.S. grievances, including theft of intellectual property and subsidies for state enterprises.

The Treasury Department said Washington believes direct foreign exchange intervention by the People’s Bank of China has been limited in the past year.

“Treasury will continue its enhanced bilateral engagement with China regarding exchange rate issues, given that the RMB (yuan) has fallen against the dollar by 8 percent over the last year in the context of an extremely large and widening bilateral trade surplus,” Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in the statement.

China needs to aggressively address market-distorting forces, including subsidies and state-owned enterprises, the Treasury statement said. Improved economic fundamentals would support a stronger yuan and help reduce China’s trade surplus with the United States, it said.
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Європейський центральний банк з 28 травня ввів в обіг нові банкноти номіналом 100 та 200 євро.

Як повідомили у ЄЦБ, оновлені банкноти матимуть удосконалену систему захисту від фальшивомонетників. Купюри залишилися того ж кольору, що й раніше, але дещо змінився дизайн та їх розмір. Тепер ширина банкнот цього номіналу буде аналогічна купюрам у 50 євро.

На банкноти додали новий захисний елемент – голограму, о змінює колір, якщо купюру повертати.

Нові банкноти завершили серію оновлення євро. Раніше ЄЦБ випустив нові банкноти номіналом 5, 10, 20 та 50 євро. При цьому ЄС більше не випускає банкнот у 500 євро.

У ЄЦБ запевнили, що старими банкнотами все ще можна розраховуватися.
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Officials in Zimbabwe say the bodies of eight illegal miners have been retrieved from an abandoned gold mine about 50 kilometers north of Harare. The news Monday was a reminder of the risk faced by desperate illegal miners trying to make a living in the economically troubled southern African country. Matopo is a gold rich area in southern Zimbabwe, and some men there enter such mines, despite the danger involved. 

These men are illegal miners, using a metal detector to search for gold at the Nugget Mine, about an hour’s drive from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city. 

​Piniel Ndingi-Nyoni is one of those who entered the mine, despite the recent collapse of a mine shaft that killed four men. 

Ndingi-Nyoni says he has no choice but to take the risk. 

“Problems at home force me to do this. We need school fees, you need food, there are medical bills to take care of, so all that force you to stay in the bush. It is not funny at all. In this cold weather, we sleep in shacks while the wife is at home. At times, we can go for three months without getting anything,” Ndingi-Nyoni said.

​A few minutes later, the illegal miners disappeared into the bush at the sight of officials in the area. Once the coast is clear, they re-appear.

No man gives up, is the motto 42-year-old Edward Madyauta lives by. He says he has gold rush dreams. But he says on several occasions, he has gone for months on a wild-goose chase. 

What about fears of being trapped under, as what happened a few meters away?

“I do not fear death, because (I) usually get gold before depth gets past my height. So that can’t collapse on me. But those who go under have a higher risk of the shaft collapsing on them,” Madyauta explained.

On Monday, searchers found the bodies of eight men working an abandoned mine in Mazowe, north of the capital. It was the third fatal incident involving illegal miners this year. 

Polite Kambamura, deputy minister of mines, says the government is worried about the trend and has embarked on a campaign to urge people to stay away from abandoned mines.

​“We are going to call on owners of such mines to show cause why they are not mining. We are risking the lives of many people. If a mine stays for long without any activity, the ground will weaken up,” Kambamura said. “Some of those miners are going underground to mine on pillars. The moment they mine on pillars, then there is no more support and the ground will fall off.”

But with Zimbabwe’s economy in meltdown and no recovery in sight, one wonders if any of the miners, like Nyoni and Madyauta in Matopo, will listen to the advice.
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Zimbabwe’s disused mines continue to be a death trap for poor and desperate illegal miners in search of the precious minerals to earn a living. Columbus Mavhunga travelled to Matopo a gold rich area about 500 kilometers south of Harare, where mining continues despite some having been trapped earlier this month.
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Fiat Chrysler proposed a merger Monday with Renault, a union that would create the world’s third biggest automaker.

The merger, if it happens, would vault the new company, with annual sales of 8.7 million vehicles, into a position ahead of General Motors and behind only Volkswagen and Toyota, both of which sell about 10.6 million.

The merger could give the combined companies a better chance in the battle among auto manufacturers to build new electric and autonomous vehicles.

Investors in both companies showed their initial approval of the announcement, with Renault’s shares jumping 15 percent in afternoon trading in Paris and Fiat Chrysler stock up more than 10 percent in Milan. The proposal calls for shareholders to split ownership of the new company.

Fiat Chrysler said the deal would save the combined companies $5.6 billion annually with shared payments for research, purchasing and other expenses. The deal does not call for closure of any manufacturing plants but the companies did not say whether any employees would lose their jobs.

The deal would give Fiat access to Renault’s electric car technologies, allowing it to meet the strict carbon dioxide emission standards the European Commission is enacting.

For its part, Renault might be able to gain ground in the U.S. market because of Fiat’s extensive operations in North America.

The French government owns 15 percent of Renault and said it supports the merger, while adding that “the terms of this merger must be supportive of Renault’s economic development, and obviously of Renault’s employees.”

 
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Гривня зміцнилася на 15 копійок стосовно долара, повідомив Національний банк України.

На 28 травня офіційна вартість долара встановлена на рівні 26 гривень 32 копійок.

Українська валюта двічі цього місяця повторювала річний максимум щодо долара США – 26 гривень 11 копійок. Такі офіційні курси НБУ встановлював на 21 травня 2018 року, 14 та 22 травня 2019 року.
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Only the chirping of birds and insects break the silence at a gold mining site in the Eastern Region of Ghana, right at the foot of the Atewa forest reserve.

Caterpillar excavators stand still, as the two Ghanaian companies operating them wait for a new mining permit  a process that has been in the works for months.

But a fresh pile of sludge spilt over a patch of vegetation suggests the mine is being operated illegally.

Felix Addo-Okyreh, who works for Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), says the sludge — referred to as slime’ in mining jargon — is dirty waste water created when gold is separated from sediment, sometimes with the help mercury. It is stored in dams on the site.

“It rained heavily last week. The embankment of the dam was weak. It got broken, and this is the result,” he says.

The toxic slime landed a few meters away from a stream that flows into the Birim, a river supplying water to millions of people in the capital Accra.

Ghana cracked down on illegal small-scale gold mining in 2017, after the national water company warned that the chemicals discharged by what is locally known as galamsey could force the country to import all its drinking water within the next two decades.

That year the government set up a military task force to dismantle illegal mining sites and imposed a 20-month ban on all small-scale mining to give nature a breather. Satellite imagery and digital technologies are being used to better monitor mining activity.

Yet Global Forest Watch data released last month shows the rate of deforestation in Ghana increased by 60 percent in 2018, faster than in any other part of the world. The country lost 1.13 percent its primary forest last year, in part due to gold mined illegally and often siphoned away by Chinese buyers.

Daniel Kwamena Ewur, an officer for conservation group A Rocha, said the ban pushed more small-scale miners to work within the protected Atewa forest, operating at night when security officials are off duty.  

Local authorities and NGOs have started training illegal miners to learn alternative livelihood skills such as soup-making and farming bees. But critics doubt these activities are economically viable.

“It’s kind of scratching the surface of the core issues of livelihood driving people,” said Nafi Chinery, Ghana country manager for the New York-based Natural Resource Governance Institute.

Chinery believes the anti-galamsey campaign has been more about politics than impact. “We don’t have enough data about who is actually involved in galamsey,” she added.

Around 1.1 million Ghanaians were estimated to work in small-scale mining before the ban, which was lifted in December, accounting for around 30 percent of the country’s annual mineral production. 

EPA’s head of mining Michael Ali says the government is now going to great lengths to “sanitize” the gold industry by formalizing galamsey sites, being stricter with paperwork and cracking down on the use of mercury.

“The mission is to reduce it to the barest minimum,” said Ali. “We cannot eliminate it completely, unless the citizens themselves police it.”

The EPA has reclaimed ten acres of illegally mined land around the Atewa forest, near the southeastern town of Kyebi. Trees were planted to encourage residents to take initiative and help meet an ambitious reclamation target of more than 7,000 square kilometers of land by 2022.

In the nearby town of Sagymase, 65-year old cocoa farmer Janet Achampong does not know what to do about the gaping pit left on land she leased to illegal miners five years ago. She cannot afford to fill the hole herself and reconvert it to farmland.

The government has acknowledged money is short and says it is seeking support from the international community. In Sagymase, Norwegian donors are funding the reclamation of six acres of galamsey land over the next four years.

A Rocha’s Ewur is facilitating the project, but is wary of planting trees and food crops in soil that has been mixed with chemicals.

“There is some quantity of mercury in the belly of this land,” said Ewur. “I would not eat the mangoes that grow here.”   
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У березні прем’єр Гройсман заявив, що доручить Мінфіну і «Нафтогазу» почати переговори із МВФ щоб запобігти росту тарифів на газ для населення
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