На думку компаній, український уряд для допомогти бізнесу повинен забезпечити чітку та прозору процедуру бронювання від мобілізації
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Йдеться про підприємство з виробництва упаковки для м’ясопереробної галузі «ПентоПак», який належав російському олігарху Івану Саввіді
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«Термінові потреби на 2024 рік оцінюються у 872,6 мільйона доларів США», йдеться в повідомленні
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Washington — U.S. officials expect the Group of Seven (G7) wealthy democracies to send a tough new warning next week to smaller Chinese banks to stop assisting Russia in evading Western sanctions, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Leaders gathering at the June 13-15 summit in Italy hosted by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni are expected to focus heavily during their private meetings on the threat posed by burgeoning Chinese-Russian trade to the fight in Ukraine, and what to do about it.

Those conversations are likely to result in public statements on the issue involving Chinese banks, according to a U.S. official involved in planning the event and another person briefed on the issue.

The United States and its G7 partners — Britain, Canada France, Germany, Italy and Japan — are not expected to take any immediate punitive action against any banks during the summit, such as restricting their access to the SWIFT messaging system or cutting off access to the dollar. Their focus is said to be on smaller institutions, not the largest Chinese banks, one of the people said.

Negotiations were still ongoing about the exact format and content of the warning, according to the people, who declined to be named discussing ongoing diplomatic engagements. The plans to address the topic at the G7 were not previously reported.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The U.S. Treasury Department had no immediate comment, but Treasury officials have repeatedly warned financial institutions in Europe and China and elsewhere that they face sanctions for helping Russia skirt Western sanctions.

Daleep Singh, deputy national security adviser for international economics, told the Center for a New American Security this week that he expected G7 leaders to target China’s support for a Russian economy now reoriented around the war.

“Our concern is that China is increasingly the factory of the Russian war machine. You can call it the arsenal of autocracy when you consider Russia’s military ambitions threaten obviously the existence of Ukraine, but increasingly European security, NATO and transatlantic security,” he said.

Singh and other top Biden administration officials say Washington and its partners are prepared to use sanctions and tighter export controls to reduce Russia’s ability to circumvent Western sanctions, including with secondary sanctions that could be used against banks and other financial institutions.

Washington is poised to announce significant new sanctions next week on financial and nonfinancial targets, a source familiar with the plans said.

This year’s G7 summit is also expected to focus on leveraging profits generated by Russian assets frozen in the West for Ukraine’s benefit.

Russia business moves to China’s small banks

Washington has so far been reluctant to implement sanctions on major Chinese banks – long deemed by analysts as a “nuclear” option – because of the huge ripple effects it could inflict on the global economy and U.S.-China relations.

Concern over the possibility of sanctions has already caused China’s big banks to throttle payments for cross-border transactions involving Russians, or pull back from any involvement altogether, Reuters has reported.

That has pushed Chinese companies to small banks on the border and stoked the use of underground financing channels or banned cryptocurrency. Western officials are concerned that some Chinese financial institutions are still facilitating trade in goods with dual civilian and military applications.

Beijing has accused Washington of making baseless claims about what it says are normal trade exchanges with Moscow.

The Biden administration this year began probing which sanctions tools might be available to it to thwart Chinese banks, a U.S. official previously told Reuters, but had no imminent plans to take such steps. In December, President Joe Biden signed an executive order threatening sanctions on financial institutions that help Moscow skirt Western sanctions.

The U.S. has sanctioned smaller Chinese banks in the past, such as the Bank of Kunlun, over various issues, including working with Iranian institutions.

China and Russia have fostered more trade in yuan instead of the dollar in the wake of the Ukraine war, potentially shielding their economies from possible U.S. sanctions.
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WASHINGTON — America’s employers added a strong 272,000 jobs in May, accelerating from April and a sign that companies are still confident enough in the economy to keep hiring despite persistently high interest rates.

Last month’s sizable job gain suggests that the economy is still growing steadily, propelled by consumer spending on travel, entertainment and other services. U.S. airports, for example, reported record traffic over the Memorial Day weekend. A healthy job market typically drives consumer spending, the economy’s principal fuel. Although some recent signs have raised concerns about economic weakness, May’s jobs report should help assuage those fears.

Still, Friday’s report from the government included some signs of a potential slowdown. The unemployment rate, for example, edged up for a second straight month, to a still-low 4%, from 3.9%, ending a 27-month streak of unemployment below 4%. That streak had matched the longest such run since the late 1960s.

President Joe Biden is still likely to point to Friday’s jobs report as a sign of the economy’s robust health under his administration. The presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump has focused his criticism of Biden’s economic policies on the surge in inflation, which polls show still weighs heavily in voters’ assessment of the economy.

Hourly paychecks accelerated last month, a welcome gain for workers although one that could contribute to stickier inflation. Hourly wages rose 4.1% from a year ago, faster than the rate of inflation and more quickly than in April. Some companies may raise their prices to offset their higher wage costs.

The Federal Reserve’s inflation fighters would like to see the economy cool a bit as they consider when to begin cutting their benchmark rate. The Fed sharply raised interest rates in 2022 and 2023 after the vigorous recovery from the pandemic recession ignited the worst inflation in 40 years.

Friday’s report will likely underscore Fed officials’ intention to delay any cuts to their benchmark interest rate while they monitor inflation and economic data. Although Chair Jerome Powell has said he expects inflation to continue to ease, he has stressed that the Fed’s policymakers need “greater confidence” that inflation will fall back to their 2% target before they would reduce borrowing costs. Annual inflation has declined to 2.7% by the Fed’s preferred measure, from a peak above 7% in 2022.

“This report is going to complicate the Fed’s job,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist for ZipRecruiter. “No one’s getting those very clear signals that they were hoping for that a rate cut is appropriate in July or September.”

Last month’s hiring occurred broadly across most of the economy. But job growth was particularly robust in health care, which added 84,000 jobs, and restaurants, hotels and entertainment providers, which gained 42,000.

Governments, particularly local governments, added 43,000 positions. Professional and business services, which includes managers, architects and information technology, grew by 33,000.

One potential sign of weakness in the May employment report was a drop in the proportion of Americans who either have a job or are looking for one; it fell from 62.7% to 62.5%. Most of that drop occurred among people 55 and over, many of whom are baby boomers who are retiring.

A surge in immigration in the past three years has boosted the size of the U.S. workforce and has been a key driver of the healthy pace of job growth. (Economists have said it isn’t clear whether the government’s jobs report is picking up all those gains, particularly among unauthorized immigrants.)

When the Fed began aggressively raising rates, most economists had expected the resulting jump in borrowing costs to drive unemployment to painfully high levels and cause a recession. Yet the job market has proved more durable than almost anyone had predicted. Even so, Americans remain generally frustrated by high prices, a continuing source of discontent that could imperil Biden’s reelection bid.

The economy expanded at just a 1.3% annual rate in the first three months of this year, the government said last week, a sharp pullback from the 3.4% pace in last year’s final quarter. Much of the slowdown, though, reflected reduced stockpiling by businesses and other volatile factors, while consumer and business spending made clear that demand remained solid.

In April, though, consumer spending, adjusted for inflation, declined. That raised concern among economists that elevated inflation and interest rates are increasingly pressuring some consumers, particularly younger and lower-income households.

A key reason why the economy is still producing solid net job growth is that layoffs remain at historic lows. Just 1.5 million people lost jobs in April. That’s the lowest monthly figure on record — outside of the peak pandemic period — in data going back 24 years. After struggling to fill jobs for several years, most employers are reluctant to lay off workers.
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За словами Дениса Шмигаля, міністерства, центральні органи влади, обласні державні адміністрації мають відмовитися від використання кондиціонерів, зовнішнього освітлення
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За словами Юлії Свириденко, ЄБРР має розглянути можливість фінансово підтримати реалізацію програм перекваліфікації
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За даними Bloomberg, станом на 15:25 торги відбувалися приблизно на рівні офіційного курсу – 40 гривень 15 копійок за долар
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Brussels — McDonald’s MCD.N does not have the right to use the term “Big Mac” for poultry products in Europe after not using it for them for five consecutive years, the region’s second top court said on Wednesday, a partial win for Irish rival Supermac’s in a long-running trademark dispute.

The Luxembourg-based General Court’s ruling centered on Supermac’s attempt in 2017 to revoke McDonald’s use of the name Big Mac, which the U.S. company had registered in 1996 for meat and poultry products and services rendered at restaurants.

The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) dismissed Supermac’s application for revocation and confirmed McDonald’s use of the term for meat and chicken sandwiches, prompting the Irish company to challenge the decision.

Supermac’s, which opened its first restaurants in Galway in 1978 and had sought to expand in the United Kingdom and Europe, sells beef and chicken burgers as well as fried chicken nuggets and sandwiches.

The General Court rejected McDonald’s arguments and partially annulled and altered EUIPO’s decision.

“McDonald’s loses the EU trade mark Big Mac in respect of poultry products,” judges ruled.

“McDonald’s has not proved genuine use within a continuous period of five years in the European Union in connection with certain goods and services.”

The U.S. fast-food chain said in an email it can still continue to use the Big Mac trademark, which it uses chiefly for a beef sandwich.

Supermac’s founder Pat McDonagh told Ireland’s Newstalk Radio that the decision was “a big win for anyone with the surname Mac.”

“It does mean we can expand elsewhere with Supermac’s across the EU, so that is a big win for us today,” he told the radio station.

Trademark owners should pay attention to the ruling, said Pinsent Masons IP lawyer Matthew Harris.

“This is a huge wakeup call and owners of well-known trademarks cannot simply rest on the premise ‘it is obvious the public know the brand and we have been using it’,” he said.

“The case highlights that even global renowned brands are held to the same scrutiny when having to evidence genuine use of a trademark in a given territory.”

The ruling can be appealed to the Court of Justice of the European Union, Europe’s highest.

The case is T-58/23 Supermac’s v EUIPO – McDonald’s International Property (BIG MAC). 
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Згідно з розрахунками агентства, податки, пов’язані з нафтою, зросли до 632,5 мільярда рублів минулого місяця, а загальні надходження зросли до 793,7 мільярда
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Упродовж попередніх двох тижнів НБУ практично щодня послаблював гривню проти долара, оновивши кілька історичних мінімумів національної валюти
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За підсумками 2023 року компанія «Газпром» показала свій перший збиток майже за 25 років
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Chicago — Mark Tuttle planted more soy and less corn on his northern Illinois farm this spring as prices for both crops hover near three-year lows and soybeans’ lower production costs offered him the best chance of turning a profit in the country’s top soy producing state.

He even planted soybeans in one of his fields for a second straight year, breaking the traditional soy-corn-soy rotation for field management. He and many other farmers are hoping to just minimize losses.

Planting more soy at a time of sputtering demand from importers and domestic processors will only serve to drive prices lower, further swell historically large global supplies and erode U.S. farm incomes already poised for the steepest annual drop ever in dollar terms.

But Midwest farmers’ other main options — seeding more corn or leaving fields fallow — could have resulted in even wider losses.

“There’s a better chance of making money with soybeans than there is for corn right now,” Tuttle said. “But if we have another bigger crop, prices are going to go lower and that’s not going to bode well for the farmer.”

In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast farmers would plant 86.5 million acres of soybeans nationwide this spring, the fifth most ever. Some analysts expect soybean acres to increase by another million acres or more as heavy rains close the window on corn planting.

In nearby Princeton, Illinois, Evan Hultine also increased soy plantings and scaled back corn. High production costs due in part to a jump in interest rates looked likely to erode most or all of his corn returns, while soybeans remained marginally profitable, he said.

The farm’s profits will likely be the thinnest in at least five years, Hultine said.

In an annual early season crop budget estimate, University of Illinois agricultural economists projected negative average farmer returns in the state for both crops, though losses would be smaller for soybeans.

Unprofitable crops 

In northern Illinois, farmers could lose $140 per acre on average for corn and $30 an acre for soybeans with autumn delivery prices of $4.50 and $11.50 a bushel, respectively, the analysis showed. Actual returns vary significantly from farm to farm, however, depending on factors like crop yields, the timing of grain sales and whether farmers own or rent their land.

Fertilizer costs are down from highs last year, but crop prices are also down, while land costs remain elevated and borrowing rates for operating loans and equipment have jumped, likely forcing farmers to cut expenses, the economists said.

When looking to cut costs, farmers often favor planting soybeans rather than corn because they require less fertilizer and pesticides and seed costs tend to be lower.

High interest rates have been a particularly painful expense recently.

“If you’re borrowing $700 an acre to put a corn crop in at 7% to 8%, you’re talking about some real dollars there just on the price of money. You can put a bean crop in a lot cheaper. Your interest cost per acre might be half,” Tuttle said.

More soy, less corn

An early-spring forecast from the USDA projected soy plantings would expand by 3.5% this year while corn plantings were expected to shrink 4.9%.

The expansion is expected to swell the U.S. soy stockpile next season by more than 30% to the highest in five years and the sixth highest level on record as demand from the domestic and export markets is not keeping pace with rising production, according to the USDA.

Now, rain-saturated fields in some areas could clip corn acres and even further expand seedings of soybeans, which, unlike corn, can be planted well into June without significant risk to yields.

Cash prices offered for the next corn and soybean harvest have improved from earlier this spring in Spencer, Iowa, where Brent Swart has been struggling to plant the last of his corn acres due to overly wet weather. But neither crop pencils a profit at current prices.

Nearly a foot of rain over the past month, seven inches more than normal, has left his fields too soggy for field work. Swart estimates his remaining corn fields may not be in shape to plant until after his planting deadline date of June 1, when crop insurance benefits begin to drop with each day.

Swart’s best option in some of his fields may be to file an insurance claim saying he was prevented from planting due to waterlogged soils. Soybean prices remain some 40 cents a bushel under his estimated cost of production, he said.

“If you switch to soybeans, you’re potentially looking at a loss. If you prevent plant, you’re looking at more of a breakeven scenario,” Swart said.

Only farmers with severe weather issues will be able to file for insurance, however.

Weather delays and a favorable price versus corn could boost soy plantings by 500,000 to 1 million acres above the USDA’s latest forecast for 86.5 million, said Tanner Ehmke, lead economist for grains and oilseeds at CoBank.

“The signal from the marketplace to the farmer right now is that, if you have a doubt about your acreage, send those acres to soybeans,” he said.
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Це вже другий поспіль день посилення гривні. Упродовж попередніх двох тижнів НБУ практично щодня послаблював гривню проти долара, оновивши кілька історичних мінімумів національної валюти
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ORAN, Algeria — Algeria wants to lure more visitors to the cultural and scenic treasures of Africa’s largest country, shedding its status as a tourism backwater and expanding a sector outshone by competitors in neighboring Morocco and Tunisia.  

The giant north African country offers Roman and Islamic sites, beaches and mountains just an hour’s flight from Europe, and haunting Saharan landscapes, where visitors can sleep on dunes under the stars and ride camels with Tuareg nomads.  

But while tourist-friendly Morocco welcomed 14.5 million visitors in 2023, bigger, richer Algeria hosted just 3.3 million foreign tourists, according the tourism ministry.  

About 1.2 million of those holiday-makers were Algerians from the diaspora visiting families.  

The lack of travelers is testimony to Algeria’s neglect of a sector that remains one of world tourism’s undiscovered gems.  

As Algeria’s oil and gas revenues grew in the 1960s and 70s, successive governments lost interest in developing mass tourism. A descent into political strife in the 1990s pushed the country further off the beaten track.  

But while security is now much improved, Algeria needs to tackle an inflexible visa system and poor transport links, as well as grant privileges to local and foreign private investors to enable tourism to flourish, analysts say.  

Saliha Nacerbay, General Director of the National Tourism Office, outlined plans to attract 12 million tourists by 2030 – an ambitious fourfold increase.  

“To achieve this, we, as the tourism and traditional industry sector, are seeking to encourage investments, provide facilities to investors, build tourist and hotel facilities,” she said, speaking at the International Tourism and Travel Fair, hosted in Algiers from May 30 to June 2.  

Algeria has plans to build hotels and restructure and modernize existing ones. The tourism ministry said that about 2,000 tourism projects have been approved so far, 800 of which are currently under construction.  

The country is also restoring its historical sites, with 249 locations earmarked for tourism expansion. Approximately 70 sites have been prepared, and restoration plans are underway for 50 additional sites, officials said.  

French tourist Patrick Lebeau emphasized the need to improve infrastructure to fully realize Algeria’s tourism prospects.  

“Obviously, there is a lot of tourism potential, but much work still needs to be done to attract us,” Lebeau said.  

Tourism and travel provided 543,500 jobs in Algeria in 2021, according to the Statista website. In contrast, tourism professionals in Morocco estimate the sector provides 700,000 direct jobs in the kingdom, and many more jobs indirectly.
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Упродовж попередніх двох тижнів НБУ практично щодня послаблював гривню проти долара, оновивши кілька історичних мінімумів національної валюти
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New York — The typical compensation package for chief executives who run companies in the S&P 500 jumped nearly 13% last year, easily surpassing the gains for workers at a time when inflation was putting considerable pressure on Americans’ budgets.

The median pay package for CEOs rose to $16.3 million, up 12.6%, according to data analyzed for The Associated Press by Equilar. Meanwhile, wages and benefits netted by private-sector workers rose 4.1% through 2023. At half the companies in this year’s pay survey, it would take the worker at the middle of the company’s pay scale almost 200 years to make what their CEO did.

CEOs got rewarded as the economy showed remarkable resilience, underpinning strong profits and boosting stock prices. After navigating the pandemic, companies faced challenges from persistent inflation and higher interest rates. About two dozen CEOs in the AP’s annual survey received a pay bump of 50% or more.

“In this post-pandemic market, the desire is for boards to reward and retain CEOs when they feel like they have a good leader in place,” said Kelly Malafis, founding partner of Compensation Advisory Partners in New York. “That all combined kind of leads to increased compensation.”

But Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the progressive Institute for Policy Studies, believes the gap in earnings between top executives and workers plays into the overall dissatisfaction among Americans about the economy.

“Most of the focus here is on inflation, which people are really feeling, but they’re feeling the pain of inflation more because they’re not seeing their wages go up enough,” she said.

Many companies have heeded calls from shareholders to tie CEO compensation more closely to performance. As a result, a large proportion of pay packages consist of stock awards, which the CEO often can’t cash in for years, if at all, unless the company meets certain targets, typically a higher stock price or market value or improved operating profits. The median stock award rose almost 11% last year compared to a 2.7% increase in bonuses.

The AP’s CEO compensation study included pay data for 341 executives at S&P 500 companies who have served at least two full consecutive fiscal years at their companies, which filed proxy statements between Jan. 1 and April 30.

Top earners

Hock Tan, the CEO of Broadcom Inc., topped the AP survey with a pay package valued at about $162 million.

Broadcom granted Tan stock awards valued at $160.5 million on Oct. 31, 2022, for the company’s 2023 fiscal year. Tan was given the opportunity to earn up to 1 million shares starting in fiscal 2025, according to a securities filing, provided that Broadcom’s stock meets certain targets – and he remains CEO for five years.

At the time of the award, Broadcom’s stock was trading at $470. Tan would receive portions of the stock awards if the stock hit $825 and $950 and the the full award if the average closing price is at or above $1,125 for 20 consecutive days between October 2025 and October 2027. The targets seemed ambitious when set, but the stock has skyrocketed since, and reached an all-time closing high of $1,436.17 on May 28.

Like rival Nvidia Inc., Broadcom is riding the current artificial intelligence frenzy among tech companies. Its chips are used by businesses and public entities ranging from major banks, retailers, telecom operators and government bodies.

In granting the stock award, Broadcom noted that under Tan its market value has increased from $3.8 billion in 2009 to $645 billion (as of May 23) and that its total shareholder return during that time easily surpassed that of the S&P 500. It also said Tan will not receive additional stock awards during the remainder of the five-year period.

Other CEOs at the top of AP’s survey are William Lansing of Fair Isaac Corp, ($66.3 million); Tim Cook of Apple Inc. ($63.2 million); Hamid Moghadam of Prologis Inc. ($50.9 million); and Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix ($49.8 million).

At Apple, Cook’s compensation represented a 36% decline from the year prior. Cook requested a pay cut for 2023, in response to the vote at Apple’s 2022 annual meeting, where just 64% of shareholders approved of his pay package.

The survey’s methodology excluded CEOs such as Nikesh Arora at Palo Alto Networks ($151.4 million) and Christopher Winfrey at Charter Communications ($89 million).

Although securities filings show Elon Musk received no compensation as CEO of Tesla Inc., his pay is currently front and center at the electric car company. Musk is asking shareholders to restore a pay package that was struck down by a judge in Delaware, who said the approval process for the package was “deeply flawed.” The compensation, mostly stock awards valued at $2.3 billion when granted in 2018, is now estimated to be worth around $45 billion.

CEO pay vs workers

Workers across the country have been winning higher pay since the pandemic, with wages and benefits for private-sector employees rising 4.1% in 2023 after a 5.1% increase in 2022, according to the Labor Department.

Even with those gains, the gap between the person in the corner office and everyone else keeps getting wider. Half the CEOs in this year’s pay survey made at least 196 times what their median employee earned. That’s up from 185 times in last year’s survey.

The gap is particularly wide at companies where employees typically earn lower wages, such as retailers. At Ross Stores, for example, the company says its employee at the very middle of the pay scale was a part-time retail store associate who made $8,618. It would take 2,100 years earning that much to equal CEO Barbara Rentler’s compensation from 2023, valued at $18.1 million. A year earlier, it would have taken the median worker 1,137 years to match the CEO’s pay.

Corporate boards often feel pressure to keep upping the pay for well-performing CEOs out of fear that they’ll walk out the door and make more at a rival. They focus on paying compensation that is competitive within their industry or marketplace and not on the pay ratio, Malafis said. The better an executive performs, the more the board is willing to pay.

The disparity between what the chief executive makes and the workers earn wasn’t always so wide.

After World War II and up until the 1980s, CEOs of large publicly traded companies made about 40 to 50 times the average worker’s pay, said Brandon Rees, deputy director of corporations and capital markets for the AFL-CIO, which runs an Executive Paywatch website that tracks CEO pay.

“The [current] pay ratio signals a sort of a winner take all culture, that companies are treating their CEOs as, you know, as superstars as opposed to, team players,” Rees said.

Say on pay

Despite the criticism, shareholders tend to give overwhelming support to pay packages for company leaders. From 2019 to 2023, companies typically received just under 90% of the vote for their executive compensation plans, according to data from Equilar.

Shareholders do, however, occasionally reject a compensation plan, although the votes are non-binding. In 2023, shareholders at 13 companies in the S&P 500 gave the executive pay packages less than 50% support.

After its investors gave another resounding thumbs down to the pay packages for its top executives, Netflix met with many of its biggest shareholders last year to discuss their concerns. It also talked with major proxy-advisory firms, which are influential because they recommend how investors should vote at companies’ annual meetings.

Following the talks, Netflix announced several changes to redesign its pay policies. For one, it eliminated executives’ option to allocate their compensation between cash and options. It will no longer give out stock options, which can give executives a payday as long as the stock price stays above a certain level. Instead, the company will give restricted stock that executives can profit from only after a certain amount of time or after certain performance measures are met.

The changes will take effect in 2024. For last year, co-CEO Ted Sarandos received options valued at $28.3 million and a cash bonus of $16.5 million. Co-CEO Greg Peters received options valued at $22.7 million and a cash bonus of $13.9 million.

Anderson, of the Institute for Policy Studies, said Say on Pay votes are important because they “shine a spotlight on some of the most egregious cases of executive access, and it can lead to negotiations over pay and other issues that shareholders might want to raise with corporate leadership.”

“But I think the impact, certainly on the overall size of CEO packages has not had much effect in some cases,” she said.

Female CEOs

More women made the AP survey than in previous years, but their numbers in the corner office are still minuscule compared to their male counterparts. Of the 342 CEOs included in Equilar’s data, 25 were women.

Lisa Su, CEO and chair of the board of chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, was the highest paid female CEO in the AP survey for the fifth year in a row in fiscal 2023, bringing in compensation valued at $30.3 million — flat with her compensation package in 2022. Her overall rank rose to 21 from 25.

The other top paid female CEOs include Mary Barra of automaker General Motors ($27.8 million); Jane Fraser of banking giant Citigroup ($25.5 million); Kathy Warden of aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman Corp. ($23.5 million); and Carol Tome of package deliverer UPS Inc. ($23.4 million).

The median pay package for female CEOs rose 21% to $17.6 million. That’s better than the men fared: Their median pay package rose 12.2% to $16.3 million.
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Abuja, Nigeria — Nigerian unions began an indefinite strike on Monday, closing schools and public offices, impacting airports and shutting down the national power grid after talks with the government failed to agree a new minimum wage.

The worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation in Africa’s most populous country has left many Nigerians struggling to afford food.

The main Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) urged workers to down tools after the government refused to increase its minimum wage offer beyond 60,000 naira ($45) per month, according to local media.

“Nigeria workers stay at home. Yes! To a living wage. No! To a starvation wage!” the unions said in a joint statement.

Since coming to office a year ago, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has ended a fuel subsidy and currency controls, leading to a tripling of gas prices and a spike in living costs as the naira has slid against the dollar.

Tinubu has called for patience to allow the reforms to take effect, saying they will help attract foreign investment, but the measures have hit Nigerians hard.

‘No work now’

Government buildings, gas stations and courts in the capital Abuja were closed, AFP journalists saw, while the doors to the city’s airport were also shut and long queues formed outside.

A source close to the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) said domestic flights had been cancelled and the airport would be shut to all flights on Tuesday.

AFP has contacted FAAN for comment.

The unions are also protesting an electricity tariff hike.

The labor union at the Transmission Company of Nigeria said it had shut down the national grid overnight. Blackouts were reported across the country.

Security was stepped up with an increased presence of soldiers on the streets of Abuja.

Outside the Federal Secretariat, which houses several ministries, picketing union members urged workers to return home.

“Stay at home and stay safe. We don’t want to embarrass you. No work now,” they called.

In Lagos, an AFP journalist saw the industrial court was padlocked shut and children walked back home after finding their schools were closed.

In the northern city of Kano, government offices were shut and public schools closed. Children in one neighborhood chanted: “No school, it’s a free day!”

The unions said in a statement on Friday: “Nigerian workers, who are the backbone of our nation’s economy, deserve fair and decent wages that reflect the current economic realities.”

AFP has contacted the government for comment.

Thousands of Nigerians rallied against soaring living costs in February, though previous strikes have had limited effect.
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Жорстка позиція Пекіна щодо газопроводу «Сила Сибіру-2» демонструє те, як вторгнення Росії в Україну робить Путіна все більш залежним від китайського лідера Сі Цзіньпіна, зазначає видання
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Vienna, Austria — The OPEC+ group of oil-producing nations agreed Sunday to extend their production cuts in a bid to support prices, as economic and geopolitical uncertainty looms over the market.  

The 12-member oil cartel and its 10 allies decided to “extend the level of overall crude oil production… starting 1 January 2025 until 31 December 2025,” a statement by the alliance said.  

In addition, eight countries said they would also extend voluntary supply cuts made at Riyadh’s request to further support the market: Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman.  

Some of those cuts will run until September before being phased out, while others will be kept in place until December 2025.  

The decisions came after the biannual meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), led by Saudi Arabia, and its 10 partners, headed by Russia.  

The group-wide supply cuts amount to about two million barrels per day (bpd).  

Adding the series a voluntary cuts, OPEC+ members are currently slashing output by almost six million barrels per day overall to bolster flagging oil prices.   

‘Positive surprise’ 

OPEC+ also agreed to allow the United Arab Emirates to increase its production target by 300,000 bpd for next year, a statement said.  

The UAE had pledged to make additional voluntary output cuts at the request of Saudi Arabia, which wanted to share the burden of cuts in an effort to support prices.   

UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo called Sunday’s announcements a “positive surprise.” 

The decision “removes some uncertainty over some tensions down the road, as the quotas will now be reviewed end 2025 for 2026,” Staunovo told AFP.  

Negotiations about the production quotas of member countries have repeatedly been a source of discord in the past, triggering heated debates and even shock departures.   

At the end of 2023, Angola exited OPEC over a disagreement on output cuts.  

But according to Mukesh Sahdev at the Rystad Energy research group, the alliance still faces the issue of “actual barrels flowing to the market likely being higher than what is accounted for”, which could potentially undermine the cartel’s strategy.  

Moreover, Iraq and Kazakhstan exceeded their quotas in the first quarter, while Russia overproduced in April.   

‘Challenging environment’  

Amid questions surrounding global demand, some analysts say that gradually allowing oil to return to the markets without causing prices to plummet will prove challenging.  

Producers will probably have to come up with a complex system to skillfully reintroduce barrels that were previously removed, without causing prices to crater.  

Oil prices have changed little since the last meeting in November, hovering at around $80 a barrel.  

OPEC continues to stick to its demand forecasts for 2024, while the International Energy Agency has lowered its estimates.  

Amid “above-average inflation, slowing global growth outlook, central bank uncertainties, rising US oil production and Middle East tensions, the environment is challenging”, said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a market analyst at Swissquote Bank.
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DUBAI — The next CEO of Boeing BA.N should have an understanding of what led to its current crisis and be prepared to look outside for examples of best industrial practices, the head of the International Air Transport Association said on Sunday.

U.S. planemaker Boeing is engulfed in a sprawling safety crisis, exacerbated by a January mid-air panel blowout on a near new 737 MAX plane. CEO Dave Calhoun is due to leave the company by the end of the year as part of a broader management shake-up, but Boeing has not yet named a replacement.

“It is not for me to say who should be running Boeing. But I think an understanding of what went wrong in the past, that’s very important,” IATA Director General Willie Walsh told Reuters TV at an airlines conference in Dubai, adding that Boeing was taking the right steps.

IATA represents more than 300 airlines or around 80% of global traffic.

“Our industry benefits from learning from mistakes, and sharing that learning with everybody,” he said, adding that this process should include “an acknowledgement of what went wrong, looking at best practice, looking at what others do.”

He said it was critical that the industry has a culture “where people feel secure in putting their hands up and saying things aren’t working the way they should do.”

Boeing is facing investigations by U.S. regulators, possible prosecution for past actions and slumping production of its strongest-selling jet, the 737 MAX.

‘Right steps’

Calhoun, a Boeing board member since 2009 and former GE executive, was brought in as CEO in 2020 to help turn the planemaker around following two fatal crashes involving the MAX, its strongest-selling jet.

But the planemaker has lost market share to competitor Airbus AIR.PA, with its stock losing nearly 32% of its value this year as MAX production plummeted this spring.

“The industry is frustrated by the problems as a result of the issues that Boeing have encountered. But personally, I’m pleased to see that they are taking the right steps,” Walsh said.

Delays in the delivery of new jets from both Boeing and Airbus are part of wider problems in the aerospace supply chain and aircraft maintenance industry complicating airline growth plans.

Walsh said supply chain problems are not easing as fast as airlines want and could last into 2025 or 2026.

“It’s probably a positive that it’s not getting worse, but I think it’s going to be a feature of the industry for a couple of years to come,” he said.

Earlier this year IATA brought together a number of airlines and manufacturers to discuss ways to ease the situation, Walsh said.

“We’re trying to ensure that there’s an open dialogue and honesty,” between them, he said.
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