Major International Business Headlines Brief::: 01 April 2021

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Major International Business Headlines Brief::: 01 April 2021

 


 

 


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ü  Biden unveils 'once in a generation' spending plan

ü  Google rejigs remote working as its reopens offices

ü  Runway dining at $540 a meal proving hit in Japan

ü  Microsoft to sell augmented reality goggles to army

ü  Bet365 boss earns £469m in a single year

ü  UK exporters consider 'worst case scenario' plans

ü  Investors pursue Liberty Steel owner over unpaid debts

ü  Mastercard fined £31m for breaching competition law

ü  Amazon v the union: The vote the online giant fears

ü  Trading relationships three months after Brexit

ü  Deliveroo shares tumble on stock market debut

ü  London Southend Airport to pay out £86k over runway extension noise

ü  Huawei’s business damaged by US sanctions despite success at home

ü  Nigeria: Despite Govt's Repeated Promises, Importation of Dirty Fuels Continues in Nigeria

ü  South Africa: Turbulent Times - SAA Pilots Plan Unprecedented Strike After They Demand to Be Formally Retrenched

ü  How Bitcoin is Threatening the Stability of Conventional Banking?

 

 

 

 


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Biden unveils 'once in a generation' spending plan

US President Joe Biden has called for trillions in spending aimed at re-igniting America's economic growth by upgrading its crumbling infrastructure and tackling climate change.

 

The $2.3tn (£1.7tn) proposal would direct billions to initiatives such as charging stations for electric vehicles and eliminating lead water pipes.

 

The spending would be partially offset by raising taxes on businesses.

 

Those plans have already roused fierce opposition.

 

Republicans have called the rises "a recipe for stagnation and decline", while powerful business lobby groups including the Business Roundtable and Chamber of Commerce said they supported investments but would oppose tax increases.

 

The pushback is a sign of the tough fight ahead for the plan, which needs approval from Congress.

 

Joe Biden could have gone in a number of different policy directions after narrowly getting his covid pandemic aid package through Congress. That he opted to push for an infrastructure bill, rather than upping the pressure for gun control, voting rights, immigration, the environment or healthcare reform, suggests he's looking for a popular, non-controversial legislative second act.

 

Of course, like that coronavirus package, the Biden administration is likely to use a massive piece of legislation to quietly advance some of those other policy priorities. The proposal contains hundreds of millions of dollars in green energy spending, expanded care for the elderly and disabled and job training, for instance.

 

Also like the coronavirus aid bill, even non-controversial infrastructure provisions that have high public support will be swamped in partisan acrimony. In particular, Republicans are going to vehemently object to the tax increases for corporations and businesses contained in the proposed legislation.

 

Chances are, Democrats will again have to go it alone when it comes to passing Biden's legislative agenda.

 

The challenge, then, will be keeping the Democratic coalition together at a time when a wide number of constituencies, many of whom held their tongue during the Covid negotiations, line up to ensure their priorities are funded.

 

The White House has promoted its proposal as the most ambitious public spending in decades, saying the investments are necessary to keep the US economy growing and competitive with other countries, especially China.

 

"This is not a plan that tinkers around the edges," Mr Biden said in a speech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Wednesday. "It's a once in a generation investment in America."

 

What's in the American Jobs Plan?

It calls for investing more than $600bn in infrastructure, including modernising roads, replacing rail cars and buses and repairing crumbling bridges.

 

Billions more would be devoted to initiatives like improving veterans hospitals, upgrading affordable housing, expanding high-speed broadband, and providing incentives for manufacturing and technology research.

 

It calls for money to be directed to rural communities and communities of colour, including establishing a national climate-focused laboratory affiliated with an historically black university.

 

The spending, which would have to be approved by Congress, would roll out over eight years.

 

The White House said tax increases would offset the cost over 15 years.

 

Mr Biden called for raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, a move that would partially undo cuts the US passed in 2017. He also proposed raising the minimum rate charged for overseas profits.

 

In his speech, in an acknowledgment such plans are likely to face, he said he was also "open to other ideas" when it came to paying for the spending.

 

"Failing to make these investments adds to our debt and effectively puts our children at a disadvantage relative to our competitors," he said. "The divisions of the moment shouldn't stop us from doing the right thing for the future."

 

Will it pass?

Mr Biden's proposal - which closely resembles promises he made during last year's election campaign - comes just weeks after Democrats muscled through $1.9tn more in aid to address the economic upheaval caused by the pandemic, approving that package without Republican support.

 

It's not clear yet how much of Mr Biden's latest plan will make it through Congress - or how much of another spending package focused on areas such as childcare and education that he plans to unveil in coming weeks.

 

Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist at Capital Economics, said the speedy advance of the pandemic package was unusual.

 

"Normally the negotiations drag on for months and what eventually gets passed, if anything gets passed at all, bears only a passing resemblance to what the administration originally asked for," he said. "We suspect these negotiations will revert to the mean."

 

Eli Allen is director of the Center for Sustainable Careers at Civic Works, a non-profit organisation that offers programmes such as job training focused on careers in sustainable energy in Baltimore, Maryland, a majority black city near Washington, DC.

 

He said he was "cautiously optimistic" that something resembling Mr Biden's ambitions would eventually pass and was particularly heartened by Mr Biden's emphasis on creating "quality jobs" in terms of pay and benefits - which he said could help set a standard across the industry.

 

"The focus on racial equity is not something we've seen in some of the past federal programmes that we've worked with," he added. "I think that focus … is very important as we think about strategies to expand access to these jobs, especially for communities of colour."

 

Stefani Pashman is chief executive of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, a regional economic development group in Pittsburgh, the former steel town in Pennsylvania where Mr Biden delivered his speech on Wednesday.

 

The city, located in a state that was key to Mr Biden's election victory, has been working to reinvent itself as a centre for high-tech research in areas such as autonomous vehicles.

 

Ms Pashman said the president's promise of billions of government dollars has also injected new energy into ambitious local plans, like an effort by Carnegie Mellon University and rail technology company Wabtec to establish a new research lab focused on innovations in freight rail, like autonomous trains.

 

"The idea is to transform the rail industry … but we need $600m from the federal government to amplify what we're able to do at the local level," she said.

 

"The past few years … I don't think the government was positioned to take this on at the level that it needs to be addressed and invested in to propel our region's economy and all the economies of the nation," she added.

 

"It's clear that they're prioritizing infrastructure in a new way."--BBC

 

 

 

Google rejigs remote working as its reopens offices

Google is changing its work-from-home policy as it looks to get more people back into its US offices.

 

The tech firm will only allow employees to work from home for more than 14 days a year if they apply for it.

 

Google will continue it current work-from-home arrangements until 1 September but will allow people to return voluntarily from next month.

 

The tech giant was one of the first companies to offer working from home when the pandemic struck last year.

 

"It's now been a year since many of us have been working from home, and the thought of returning to the office might inspire different emotions," Fiona Cicconi, Google's head of people operations, wrote in a company email on Wednesday.

 

Google is currently preparing for a broad reopening in September, when employees will be expected to be in the office for at least three days a week.

 

Until then, the initial return period will be voluntary as offices slowly reopen with limited capacity, based on vaccine availability and a downward trend in Covid-19 cases.

 

When staff are required to officially return to Google's offices in September, they "won't look exactly the way you remember them" but "will include meals, snacks and amenities where possible," Ms Cicconi said.

 

"We will even be welcoming our Dooglers back," she added, referring to Google's bring-your-dog-to-work group. There is now a dog park at its Mountain View campus called The Doogleplex.

 

The company is advising workers to get vaccinated against Covid-19, but is not making it mandatory for returning to the workplace.

 

Google is taking a different approach from its tech rivals who have said most staff can continue remote work indefinitely. Twitter has said it will allow most employees to work from home permanently.

 

A number of big companies have said they will test so-called hybrid work arrangements, where employees split their time between home and office.

 

"None of us have this all figured out," said Carolyn Everson, vice president of Facebook's global business group when talking about current work-from-home arrangements.

 

"We are making this up on the fly. The reality is we are all trying to figure it out together," the senior executive told a panel hosted by Bloomberg.

 

Facebook will start to reopen its Silicon Valley offices at the beginning in May, after more than a year of working from home during the global pandemic.

 

Its largest offices won't reach 50% capacity until early September, it said.--BBC

 

 

 

Runway dining at $540 a meal proving hit in Japan

Japan's biggest airline is offering first-class dining on a parked plane at $540 (£392) a meal.

 

All Nippon Airways (ANA) started offering the service on Wednesday and has added more slots for April after they sold out quickly.

 

A number of airlines have been thinking creatively about what to do with grounded planes during the pandemic.

 

But Australia is trying to get its planes in the air with a $1.2bn (£660m) package to encourage domestic travel.

 

The global airline industry is facing its toughest ever challenge to survive amid tough quarantine and travel restrictions, that have already crippled some carriers.

 

Many have thought of creative ways to boost their revenues, with "flights to nowhere" proving popular, along with onboard dining on grounded planes.

 

In October, Singapore Airlines offered diners the opportunity to have lunch on a stationary Airbus A380 parked at the city's main airport. Despite a price tag of up to £380 the first two seating dates sold out within half an hour.

 

Japan's ANA dining experience takes place on a Boeing 777 parked at Haneda Airport in Tokyo.

 

While a first-class seat costs 59,800 yen, diners can opt for a cheaper business-class experience for 29,800 yen. The "restaurant with wings" idea was conceived by employees who wanted to make better use of its parked aircraft.

 

Last week, British Airways also made its first class menu available through its catering partner DO & Co, although these meals are for home delivery. There's a choice of four different cook-at-home meal kits, each serving two and starting from £80.

 

Up in the air

On Thursday, the Australian government launched its $1.2bn package aimed at getting people to spend on domestic travel. The scheme will halve the price of nearly 800,000 airline tickets and runs until the end of July.

 

Qantas, Virgin Atlantic and Jetstar have released half-price fares to more than 20 destinations. Qantas is also trialling a digital travel app.

 

On Wednesday, the global airline industry body IATA said a digital travel pass for Covid-19 test results and vaccine certificates will be launched on the Apple platform in mid-April.

 

"The application will only achieve its success once airlines, different countries, airports adopt it," a spokesman for IATA said, explaining that its travel pass will help speed up check-ins.--BBC

 

 

 

Microsoft to sell augmented reality goggles to army

US tech giant Microsoft is to sell augmented reality headsets to the US army in a bumper deal worth up to $21.9bn (£15.9bn) over 10 years.

 

The headsets are based on its HoloLens product, which allows users to see holograms laid over their actual environment.

 

The contract is for more than 120,000 headsets, which will be manufactured in the US.

 

Microsoft shares surged 3% after the announcement was made on Wednesday.

 

Augmented reality differs from virtual reality, in that it adds graphics to the user's existing field of view instead of replacing it with an entirely new environment.

 

As a result, users can see "heads-up displays" or holographs, which can add more information to what they already see.

 

HoloLens is commercially available for $3,500 per headset, with Microsoft selling it primarily to businesses, who often pair it with customised software applications.

 

Architecture firms, hospitals, universities, car manufacturers and US space agency Nasa are among the technology's users.

 

Over the past two years, Microsoft has worked with the US Army on the prototyping phase of what is called the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), which is a military-grade version of the Hololens.

 

The company said that the Army had moved into the production phase of the project.

 

In a blog post, Microsoft said the headsets "will keep soldiers safer and make them more effective".

 

"The program delivers enhanced situational awareness, enabling information sharing and decision-making in a variety of scenarios," the post said.

 

After Microsoft announced the $480m IVAS contract in 2018, at least 94 workers petitioned the company to cancel the deal and stop developing "any and all weapons technologies".--BBC

 

 

Bet365 boss earns £469m in a single year

The boss of the gambling firm Bet365 has been awarded one of the biggest pay packets in UK corporate history.

 

The highest paid director of Bet365 Group - believed to be founder and majority shareholder Denise Coates CBE - earned a salary of £421m in the year ending 29 March.

 

She also earned £48m in dividends, taking her total pay to £469m.

 

The company said the arrangements were "appropriate and fair", despite sales falling at the firm last year.

 

But campaign group the High Pay Centre said it was "appallingly inefficient for single individuals to hoard wealth in this way".

 

Ms Coates, who founded the Bet365 website 20 years ago in Stoke-on-Trent, has been the UK's highest paid boss for several years.

 

 

How Bet365's Denise Coates hit her own jackpot

She is also one of Britain's wealthiest women and a major philanthropist, donating millions through the Denise Coates Foundation.

 

Her salary in the year to March was more than 50% higher than the £277m received in 2019 and meant she earned almost £1.2m every day last year.

 

That was more than the bosses of every FTSE 100 company combined, according to the High Pay Centre.

 

It came as sales at Bet365 fell 8% to £2.8bn as international sporting events were cancelled due to the pandemic. Profits slumped 74% to £194.7m.

 

However, the company said it had not cut staff pay or laid off employees as a result of the crisis. It also did not make use of the furlough scheme.

 

The company also paid £85m to Ms Coates's charitable foundation.

 

The chief executive's annual pay packet is likely to be the biggest ever in UK history. Earlier this month hedge fund tycoon Sir Chris Hohn staked a claim to that title after paying himself £343m last year.--BBC

 

 

 

UK exporters consider 'worst case scenario' plans

Many exporters to the EU are still struggling with the added cost and complexity of shipping goods to the UK's largest export market, three months after the new post-Brexit border procedures kicked in.

 

An initial 41% plunge in goods going to the EU in January was described by the government as "teething problems" which it said were hard to separate out from the impact of COVID-related disruption.

 

The government insists that "overall freight volumes between the UK and the EU" have been back to their normal levels since the start of February, and that there is no general disruption at UK ports.

 

However, haulage groups insist recent figures on freight volume tally the number of vehicles and ferry movements, rather than the value of the actual goods traded between the EU and UK and many more lorries than before are returning to the EU empty. An admittedly small sample of members of the Federation of Small Business found that one in four exporters had paused sales to the EU and 11% were considering abandoning exports to the bloc completely.

 

Unsustainable

Scott Clarke is a director at Rex London, a specialist gift company selling goods all over Europe. He described January as "chaotic". There were delays and confusion at customs, additional freight costs, and extra charges for his EU customers in the form of duties and taxes. Many of his shipments weren't getting through at all and were returned to his warehouse in west London.

 

"We had hundreds of boxes we tried to send in January, and they all came back," says Scott.

 

"There was probably a three or four week period at the beginning of the year where we couldn't supply our customers at all, which is a big deal for us because over half of our business is with Europe."

 

He acknowledges that things have got better, but many of the difficulties they have faced are here to stay.

 

"It has calmed down a lot. We can supply our customers in Europe now. But we're three months in, and this doesn't seem sustainable in the longer term," he adds.

 

"There's been a lot of talk about teething issues. There were teething issues, but they were just part of the underlying problems that haven't gone away."

 

'Everyone loses'

What's the solution? For Scott, it's to establish a warehouse in Belgium so he can better serve his customers in Europe, without customs delays and extra costs. It's something they previously saw as a "worst case scenario" option, and he says there'll be negative consequences for the UK.

 

Scott Clarke


"Splitting off part of our business and sending it to Belgium probably means that further growth is going to be happening there. Instead of taking on new staff here, we'll employ them there. Instead of making more profit and paying more tax here, we'll pay it there. Basically, everyone is losing out here," he says.

 

He's not the only one looking at establishing a base in the EU. The BBC has spoken to a number of investment agencies around Europe - including in Germany, Belgium, Austria and France. All of them say they've seen a big increase in the number of UK businesses expressing an interest in moving some of their operations across the channel. The Netherlands is emerging as a favourite destination.

 

Michiel Bakhuizen is from the Netherlands Foreign investment Agency. They have been in talks with over 600 UK businesses since the Brexit referendum, and the monthly numbers have increased since the start of this year.

 

"In January, 40 companies made enquiries, in February it doubled to 80 companies, and up until the middle of March it was 40 again, so interest is really growing. The numbers have more than doubled on the average month in 2020," says Michiel.

 

"Interest has grown since January, because of the real difficulties Brexit is causing some companies in the UK. They're talking about administrative hurdles, supply chain related problems, licensing issues, so those problems are real and that's why those companies are showing interest in the Netherlands and other countries."

 

Michiel is keen to point out there are downsides for the Netherlands too.

 

"The Netherlands is not 'winning' this. If you look at Brexit from a macro perspective, the Netherlands just lost its second biggest trading partner, moving outside the European Union and the single market," he says.

 

"Obviously attracting foreign business towards the Netherlands is growing because UK businesses need a future in the European market, and the Netherlands is there to help them to secure that, but in the end Brexit is not good news for the Netherlands."

 

Dried up

For other exporters to the EU, shifting some of the business closer to their customers just isn't an option.

 

Sarah Braithwaite's company, Forage Plus, specialises in nutritional products for horses, which have proved to be very popular with European customers in recent years. They're based in North Wales, but up until January, they were able to ship their goods to 20 European countries within a matter of days. Not anymore. One package she sent to Sweden in January still hasn't arrived, with customs officers there requesting additional documentation to clear it, from manufacturing flow charts to photos of individual products. But there are other issues too.

 

"It's been frustrating, demoralising, upsetting. For a while we just thought it was a hold-up at customs, just the sheer volume of shipments and they couldn't cope. And then we realised we weren't going to be able to get our parcels into Europe without our customers paying quite big import duties," she says.

 

Rather than shipping to other businesses in Europe, Sarah sends her goods directly to customers, who have been faced with unexpected duties and taxes, as high as 40% of the original price, depending on which EU country it goes to. Together with customs delays, it's meant that orders have dried up, and she's had to refund thousands of pounds.

 

"For us, as a company shipping into Europe, a typical month would be around 160, 170, 180 orders into 18 to 20 different countries. Today, when I asked my staff how many we have into Europe, there are none. How many orders have we had this month? Two or three," she says.

 

"If a customer orders from Europe today, we can't actually get it to them. In some instances we can't get it to them at all, and in others, they're charged such a large amount of import duty that they're just not going to do that. We're going to lost that custom."

 

Sarah hasn't given up entirely and is trying to find ways to keep supplying her customers. A Dutch warehouse isn't on the cards though.

 

Sarah Braithwaite


"It's unrealistic to say, set up some kind of European warehouse when you haven't got the finances or the manpower. We would have to employ new people. How are we going to employ new people when we've just lost £300,000 worth of business? It's just not realistic, it really isn't."

 

The government has set up a £20m Brexit Support Fund for small and medium-sized businesses and is also providing export helplines, and webinars with a network of 300 international trade experts.

 

This assistance has been welcomed and the Federation of Small Businesses has called for an increase in the size of the support fund.

 

But the provision of this support is perhaps a tacit acknowledgement on the part of the government that something that was once easy and cheap is now difficult and expensive. Given that the EU accounts for nearly half of all UK exports, that is a reality that cannot be good for the UK economy.

 

'Match fit'

Much-vaunted trade deals with countries including the US, Australia, New Zealand and others have not yet arrived and the government's own analysis said deals with all of them would add less than 1% to UK GDP in 15 years' time and fail to offset the hit to trade with the EU.

 

The tariff-free trade with the EU that the Brexit deal secured is welcomed by business but tariffs are only a small part of the picture. What many businesses are discovering is that exporting requires time, investment and expertise. For decades, sending goods to Berlin was as easy as sending goods to Birmingham - as a member of a single market without trade borders or barriers, it wasn't really exporting at all.

 

Michael Gove said he hoped the exporting expertise firms are acquiring (reluctantly in many cases) will make them "match fit" to grasp new opportunities beyond the EU.

 

But back in west London, Scott says the last three months have highlighted the challenges businesses face in sending their goods anywhere around the world.

 

"One of the great irritations for me is the idea that we're going to suddenly be free to export more around the world. It's just not true. Exporting is really difficult. I think if anything, people will now know how difficult it is."--BBC

 

 

 

Investors pursue Liberty Steel owner over unpaid debts

Liberty Steel's owner, Sanjeev Gupta, is facing further pressure after two investors began legal action to have parts of his metals group wound up.

 

Citigroup, acting on behalf of Credit Suisse, began the action in London's insolvency court to recoup unpaid debts from Mr Gupta's GFG Alliance.

 

GFG has been struggling to finance its UK operations after its main financial backer went bust last month.

 

The group, which has 5,000 UK workers, plans to "vigorously defend" itself.

 

It also said it had enough capital across its wider global operations to get through its current crisis in the UK.

 

It comes a day after the government said it was considering "all options" to keep GFG's biggest subsidiary, Liberty Steel going, including nationalisation.

 

The government has also rejected a request from Mr Gupta's group for £170m of emergency funding, saying the internal structure of the company was "too opaque".

 

Liberty runs 12 steel plants in the UK, including at Rotherham, Motherwell and Newport, and employs 3,000 people. A further 2,000 work for GFG in other UK metals businesses.

 

'Constructive discussions'

Citigroup and Credit Suisse both declined to comment on the legal action.

 

They are understood to be pursuing GFG over debts that were repackaged as bonds by Greensill, formerly its main financial backer. Greensill went into administration earlier in March, sparking the current crisis.

 

Using a winding up order, the banks would try to show that GFG cannot pay what it owes, in which case its assets should be sold to repay them.

 

GFG said it was in "constructive" discussions with Greensill's administrators, Grant Thornton, about finding "a consensual and amicable solution" to its financial problems.

 

A company spokesperson added: "This dispute will take many months to play out in the courts, and in the meantime we are working hard on taking prudent steps to manage our cash and refinance our business.

 

"Most of GFG Alliance's businesses across its global portfolio are performing well and generating positive cash flow, supported by the operational improvements we've made and strong steel, aluminium and iron ore markets."

 

The investors are seeking a winding up order against Liberty Commodities, a metals trading company owned by Mr Gupta that reported £4.2bn of revenue in 2020.—BBC

 

 

 

Mastercard fined £31m for breaching competition law

Mastercard and four other companies have been accused of running a cartel to reduce competition in the market for pre-paid cards.

 

Allpay, PFS, Sulion and APS ran schemes to distribute welfare payments for local authorities.

 

The Payment Systems Regulator claims for six years, the firms agreed not to poach clients or compete for bids.

 

Mastercard and two others have admitted involvement and agreed to pay fines of up to £32m.

 

The schemes were designed to help local authorities provide pre-paid cards for vulnerable people such as asylum seekers, the homeless and victims of domestic violence.

 

Mastercard ran the payment systems, and funded a forum where the card providers met potential clients - and each other.

 

The Payment Systems Regulator was set up in 2015 to oversee the market for electronic payments.

 

It alleges that from 2012 to 2018 the card providers agreed not to try and poach each other's clients, or compete when bidding for local authority contracts.

 

APS and PFS also had an additional arrangement from 2014 to 2016.

 

'Collusion'

"By colluding in this way, we consider the parties were acting as a cartel," said Chris Hemsley, Managing Director of the Payment Systems Regulator.

 

Reduced competition meant local authorities could have missed out on better services and lower prices.

 

"Collusion in payments is absolutely unacceptable. Where we see it happening, we will take action, stop it, and seek to impose significant penalties," Mr Hemsley added.

 

This the PRS's first anti-trust case.

 

'Earliest opportunity'

The findings are still provisional but Mastercard, Allpay and PFS have all admitted involvement and agreed to pay fines if in due course the regulator decides the law was broken.

 

Mastercard placed the blame on two former employees, and said it settled the matter "at the earliest possible opportunity."

 

It would pay almost all of the £32m fines, which reflects its much larger size, not the degree of culpability.

 

Allpay claims its staff were the ones who blew the whistle on the alleged cartel.

 

APS, also known as Cashplus, has not admitted liability. It is evaluating the decision, but says that its actions did not cause customer detriment.

 

A small consultancy, Sulion, which was also named in the case, has not admitted liability. It did not return requests for comment.--BBC

 

 

 

Amazon v the union: The vote the online giant fears

Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, have voted in a historic poll to decide whether they want to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

 

The results are not expected until next week - but if they say yes, it will become Amazon's first US union.

 

Amazon argues its wages and benefits are industry-beating and has gone into battle to persuade workers to vote no.

 

Most agree the outcome could have major implications for US labour laws.

 

Peter Romer-Friedman, principal of law firm Gupta Wessler PLLC, said: "The key question in America at the moment is are we going to have fair treatment of workers in the businesses that will dominate our future?

 

"There will be ramifications for the real economy but also for tech firms.

 

"The concept that workers get a seat at the table is a radical concept for people in Silicon Valley."

 

In the US, Amazon has 800 facilities staffed by 950,000 full- and part-time workers - and it should be said many do not feel the need to join a union.

 

And for those who do, this is not primarily a wages issue - in fact, Amazon pays workers an average of $15 (£11) a hour, plus benefits.

 

But most agree conditions in its warehouses can be hard - the job is very demanding and lots of workers complain of back pain or other physical niggles as a result of working long hours, often standing in the same position.

 

Others talk about the mental-health toll of repeated tasks or feeling like they are a cog in a very big machine that does not always listen to their problems.

 

And there are a lot of things workers feel they do not have control of, such as shift patterns, time off, sick leave and being fired.

 

One of the most controversial features is time off task (TOT).

 

When a worker is clocked in, Amazon's computer system calculates which hours of a shift are on or off task, based on whether or not an item is scanned.

 

And some say they feel dehumanised by technology watching their every move.

 

Do workers really have to urinate in bottles?

Amazon issued an extraordinary tweet last week, in response to US congressman Mark Pocan repeating an oft-heard complaint workers sometimes urinated in bottles because they did not feel they had time to visit the toilet.

 

"Paying workers $15 an hour doesn't make you a 'progressive workplace' when you union-bust and make workers urinate in water bottles," he wrote.

 

Amazon News replied: "You don't really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you?

 

"If that were true, nobody would work for us."

 

Amazon's tweet was shared thousands of times, with most people saying it reflected badly on the company.

 

The claim can be traced back to James Bloodworth, who worked undercover at a UK warehouse while researching his book on low-paid British workers.

 

And he responded to the Amazon News tweet by tweeting: "I was the person who found the pee in the bottle.

 

"Trust me, it happened."

 

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

 

In a typical 10-hour shift, workers are allowed two half-hour breaks.

 

Is Amazon union-busting, as is claimed?

 

A series of allegations levelled at Amazon over its attempts to disrupt the union include:

 

It altered a traffic-light system outside the warehouse, to give union officials less time to leaflet workers

It unsuccessfully tried to appeal against a National Labour Relations Board ruling allowing workers to vote by mail

It bombarded workers with texts, posters and signs encouraging them to vote no

It ran anti-union ads on its streaming platform, Twitch, which were later removed

At the time, RWDSU president Stuart Appelbaum said: "Amazon is leaving no stone unturned, including ads on Twitch - in its efforts to deceive and intimidate their employees into voting against the union."

 

In September, the company briefly advertised for two intelligence analysts whose work duties would include keeping an eye on union activity - but after becoming national news, the advert was removed.

 

What does Amazon say?

Amazon told BBC News: "RWDUS membership has fallen 25% during Stuart Appelbaum's tenure - but that is no justification for Mr Appelbaum to misrepresent the facts.

 

"Our employees know the truth - starting wages of $15 or more, health care from day one, and a safe and inclusive workplace.

 

"We encouraged all of our employees to vote - and their voices will be heard in the days ahead."

 

How else has it responded?

In recent days, Amazon has stepped up its public-relations drive - but with fairly mixed results.

 

One of its security engineers had even thought the Amazon News account had been hacked, as its tweets seemed "unnecessarily antagonistic", The Intercept reported.

 

As well as the tweet about urinating in bottles, it also fired back aggressively at Democratic Party politicians, including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Saunders.

 

And it has also been accused of using fake Twitter accounts to put a positive spin on working at the company.

 

Amazon itself admitted one of these accounts was not that of an actual worker, without saying whether the company had created it.

 

Has Covid played a part?

The company's net sales in 2020 increased by 38% - and it hired more than 500,000 additional staff.

 

But behind the scenes there has been huge pressure on warehouse staff to keep supplying the goods so many people in lockdown were ordering.

 

Chris Smalls, one of a handful of employees to raise questions in the early days of the pandemic about how safe conditions in warehouses were, was sacked, with Amazon saying he had broken social-distancing rules.

 

And in February, New York state's attorney general sued Amazon, claiming it failed to adequately protect its warehouse workers from Covid risks.

 

What about the rest of the world?

 

Union membership in the US is unusually low - just 6.3% of the private-sector workforce, according to the labour department.

 

In comparison, Amazon workers in Japan, the UK, Germany, Italy , France and Poland are all unionised.

 

In Germany a recent four-day strike was called over pay and conditions, while in Italy Amazon workers held a 24-hour strike over what they described as exhausting work rates and "management by algorithm".--BBC

 

 

 

Trading relationships three months after Brexit

Three months on, new trading relationships are being sought, but the disruption to European trade has been significant.

Starting with fish, it extends across the food sector, and a different set of problems beset Scottish engineering firms.

Smaller companies face the biggest problems with multiple consignments in one truck. And without guaranteed delivery, customer sentiment is shifting, to find more reliable trading partners.

Duncan Ross is a specialist at growing biodynamic and organic herbs in a walled garden on the Black Isle, overlooking the Cromarty Firth.

 

In the pure Highland air, he could get premium prices in Germany for plants such as arnica. But even before he encountered the paperwork for consignments being sent to the European Union, he stopped the trade - cutting off around a fifth of his business.

 

For a small business, the certification each time a consignment was required wasn't worth his time.

 

So he didn't have to encounter another obstacle to sending plants - that every product with Great British soil attached to it is simply banned from entering the EU. It was trusted as safe in December, but no longer.

 

At Glendoick nursery near Perth, Ken Cox supplies planted flowers such as rhododendrons to a gold-plated customer base of display gardens. He says he has lost 30% of sales that used to go to the rest of the EU. Without it, he told BBC Scotland: "I don't think it's going to be sustainable.

 

"We've been sending plants to Europe for 30 years. If there are bugs in the soil, they'll have got them a long time ago, so this is really just a bureaucratic thing."

 

Those rules should apply to Northern Ireland too; nothing with earth attached, no live sheep, no seed potatoes and no minced meat. However, the anomalies at the Cairnryan to Larne and Belfast crossing are among those rules to which the British government signed up but is now refusing to implement.

 

The grace period for introducing customs checks in the province has been unilaterally extended by Whitehall. The EU is crying foul, and suing under the terms of the Christmas Eve deal. With chief negotiator Lord David Frost now installed as Brexit minister, and telling Brussels to get over its resentment of Brexit, abrasive relations have been getting rawer.

 

'Global Britain'

Three months since Britain left the single market and customs union, and Brexit continues to be a headache for exporters and some importers. On the upside, there are no backlogged queues at ferry ports in Kent. Vast car parks prepared for slowed customs processes have been stood down.

 

Some international companies are choosing to locate bases in Britain, where they previously operated from the EU. Investment in British technology and science is looking healthy, helped by the success of its pharma sector in developing a Covid vaccine.

 

There are other signs of progress, with the UK government making moves towards trade talks in the Pacific. The new Biden administration in Washington sounds more positive about a deal than some in Britain had feared. One legacy trans-Atlantic trade battle over airliners has been paused by the US, EU and UK, giving space to get it resolved.

 

But as the senior UK minister Michael Gove was told in a recent meeting with Scottish engineering firms, "it's much easier to sell to an existing European customer than to find a new one elsewhere".

 

The Brexiteer dream of a shift beyond Europe to "global Britain" is ringing hollow for those who find it more difficult to sell to the European Union, without seeing new opportunities coming from elsewhere. Many who could sell beyond Europe were already doing so, and Brussels offered little hindrance.

 

Much of the trade in services remains in limbo. Due to Covid, those that require specialist workers to get to clients on the continent have found it difficult, if not impossible, to move people around. That has delayed the onset of problems with work permits.

 

At the start of the year, the finance sector in London quickly lost the dominance in European share trading to Amsterdam. Rules for other specialist financial services are still being fought over.

 

The pledge to get a Memorandum of Understanding for the basis of financial trade post-Brexit resulted last week in a technical agreement to set up a forum for further "dialogue".

 

Smaller-scale exports

The trade in goods remains the focus for a lot of the difficulties. So far, we only have official figures for export of goods to the EU during January, down by 41% overall. For food, they were down 63%. Meat was down 59% and seafood by 83%.

 

That looks catastrophic and Brexit critics seized on it as evidence of the problems they had forecast. But the numbers fail to take account of a return to lockdown on both sides of the English Channel, or to the extensive stockpiling that preceded the end of the Brexit transition period. Future export numbers will be closely watched.

 

Unable to stockpile, seafood was first into the border customs clearance in early January. The industry is working through the difficulties with form-filling for Export Health Certificates, but is still struggling with rules being applied in different and sometimes contradictory ways at different ports and by different customs officials.

 

Larger companies can get their consignments through in single truckloads. That is true of Scottish salmon, but delays mean it cannot guarantee delivery times for early-morning markets. Fish in trucks for longer are worth less. And without guaranteed delivery times, the risk is of EU customers looking elsewhere, to suppliers who can be relied upon.

 

Smaller-scale fish exporters take a pallet or five at a time, and multiple consignments require multiple certificates. Just one of them using the wrong page numbering or ink colour can hold up the others.

 

So prices of shifting pallets have gone up. Some hauliers simply refuse to take produce from Britain back into France, because it's easier to go empty than to get delayed. That is the hauliers' explanation for traffic flows returning close to normal levels. The lorries are often far from full.

 

Three months on, delays to seafood carry a new risk. With spring, temperatures are rising, and shellfish is at higher risk of going off.

 

Caught in catch talks

Upstream in the fishing industry, Elspeth Macdonald of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, says the Covid impact on demand for fish from restaurants has allied with unpredictability of wholesaler customers getting their produce into the European Union as two parts of a continued slowdown of fishing effort.

 

The other part is that quota negotiations are still going on - the first of their kind between the EU and UK. An overall deal was approved on Christmas Eve, which dismayed the industry by retaining European boats in UK waters for more than five years. That left a lot still to be thrashed out, and that process is taking longer than the industry expected.

 

"Vessels are working with provisional quota, and there's caution ahead of that negotiation concluding" says Ms Macdonald. "Because of prices, logistics and quotas, some boats are taking the opportunity to get repairs."

 

Appetite for meat

The red meat exporters have similar problems, though there are fewer smaller companies using "groupage" of multiple loads on one truck. One company that does is specialist butcher supplier MacDuff in Lanarkshire.

 

With an estimate of only around 30% of the usual red meat exports going to European markets, the puzzle for economists is why that hasn't left a glut in the market, and a cut in prices. To farmers, sheep and cattle prices are looking unusually healthy.

 

The answer seems to be that lockdown has increased the British appetite for home-grown butcher meat, though some slaughter has been delayed, at the risk of animal welfare issues.

 

But it's not all about food. At Engineering Scotland, chief executive Paul Sheerin cannot find any positives that have come out of Brexit, and some of his members feel their plight is being ignored in favour of the food sector.

 

Engineered goods obviously don't have the same short shelf-life, and trucks carrying them are often passed by those with more urgent need to unload. Scottish engineering firms tend to be smaller and send exports in a few pallets of groupage. Similar problems to food arise with that. I'm told one truckload from Scotland was delayed for three and a half weeks by problems at EU customs. The price of transporting a pallet into the EU went up about five-fold earlier this year. That has subsided, but prices remain two to three times higher than they were last year.

 

Shift in sentiment

At Terasaki Electric, subsidiary to a Japanese parent firm, 115 workers make components for the energy sector, selling 80% of output for export to the EU and beyond. They located on Clydebank to be near the shipyards. That was 50 years ago, and the company has stayed longer than the yards did.

 

Managing director Vaughan Turner says Brexit has been "hectic and difficult to manage. We had prepared for Brexit quite well, but when the deal came along, it was different to what we expected.

 

"Product standards are the same in the UK as in the EU, so that's a positive point. However since Brexit, the requirements for documentation, procedures for clearing goods, in and out, have changed. That takes longer. That costs more. Freight takes longer, so we have to invest more in inventory."

 

There are also complex Rules of Origin. A component with materials from outside the EU or UK can carry tariffs, at varying rates, depending how much the materials are altered before being re-exported. So importing an item from Germany, processing it and returning it, can bring a hefty charge on the final leg of that journey.

 

"Our customers have been quite positive, given that we've been with them for many years," says the factory boss. "But you can definitely see a sway in sentiment towards procuring in the EU. It's costing our clients more too. It's easier, it's cheaper, and this is a big risk for us. If that sentiment takes hold, potentially some of our clients will require to trade with us in the EU, so some of our activity should shift from here to the EU".

 

"I don't see any advantage in Brexit. Our non-EU business has remained the same, and there is nothing coming down the road to support that business."

 

Brexit remains a work in progress - its effects often masked by the Covid crisis. With more movement of people, and opening up of commerce, the impact of this enormous shift in Britain's economy are likely to become clearer in the coming months.--BBC

 

 

 

Deliveroo shares tumble on stock market debut

Deliveroo shares have plummeted on its stock market debut after a number of major UK investors expressed concerns about its gig economy worker model.

 

Shares in the food delivery business had been offered to investors at 390p each, but closed 14% lower at 284p per share, having fallen 30% initially.

 

The company had initially hoped for a share price of up to 460p.

 

But in recent weeks a number of high-profile fund managers said they would not be buying the shares.

 

The Deliveroo share sale is London's biggest stock market launch for a decade and the sharp fall on its first day of trading is a blow to the UK's ambitions to persuade more big tech companies to list in the UK.

 

Chancellor Rishi Sunak said earlier this month that the listing of the Amazon-backed company was a "true British tech success story" that could clear the way for more initial public offerings by fast-growing technology firms.

 

'Shares go up, shares go down'

When ITV political editor Robert Peston asked on Wednesday whether he was embarrassed by the plunge in Deliveroo shares,Mr Sunak said: "Gosh, no... share prices go up, share prices go down."

 

Mr Sunak cited Facebook's mixed start after its initial public offering in 2012, and its subsequent success.

 

But some analysts were not so complimentary. AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said:

 

"Deliveroo has gone from hero to zero as the much-hyped stock market debut falls flat on its face.

 

"Initially there was a lot of fanfare about the Amazon-backed company making its shares available to the public, including the ability for customers to buy stock. Sadly, the narrative took a turn for the worst when multiple fund managers came out and said they wouldn't back the business due to concerns about working practices."

 

Investor backlash

Deliveroo, which has not yet made a profit, said on Monday it had chosen to "price responsibly" and sell its shares at the bottom of its planned price range at 390p due to "volatile" market conditions.

 

Some of the UK's biggest investment fund managers, including Aberdeen Standard, Aviva Investors, BMO Global, charity fund manager CCLA, Legal and General Investment Management and M&G said recently they would not buy shares in Deliveroo, citing concerns over including the working conditions of its riders and lack of investor power.

 

This was supposed to be a landmark day for Deliveroo, the wider UK tech sector and the London Stock Exchange. A British business founded just eight years ago had shown it could grow and prosper here without falling into overseas hands and by choosing London rather than New York for its stock market debut, setting an example for others to follow.

 

But the sharp fall this morning in shares - already priced at the conservative end of the planned range - showed that faith in Deliveroo's prospects was somewhat shaky. It was as if investors had suddenly woken up to something which should have been obvious all along - Deliveroo might have grown rapidly during the pandemic but it is still racking up big losses in what is a competitive food delivery market,

 

Then there's the question of whether the company might have to improve pay and conditions for its delivery drivers following Uber's defeat before the Supreme Court. However loudly Deliveroo insisted that the Uber ruling had no relevance to its business, some investors weren't so sure, worrying that the path to profitability might be even tougher.

 

As the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has said, pointing at Facebook, a shaky debut does not mean the shares won't soar in the longer term. Then again, Facebook didn't have to compete with Uber Eats and Just Eat in a market that looks a far more challenging place to make money than online advertising.

 

Founder Will Shu will have shares that give him 20-times the voting power of other investors.

 

Chief executive Will Shu said he was "very proud" that Deliveroo was listing in London.

 

"In this next phase of our journey as a public company we will continue to invest in the innovations that help restaurants and grocers to grow their businesses, to bring customers more choice than ever before, and to provide riders with more work," he added.

 

'Tech success'

Deliveroo's self-employed drivers have seen a boom in demand during the Covid-19 pandemic, bringing food from restaurants to housebound customers.

 

Initially, Deliveroo hoped to see that value as high as £8.8bn, based on a share price of 390-460p. It scaled that back to £7.6bn, but the share price drop wiped £2.28bn off that.

 

The firm is making a portion of its stock available for customers, with delivery riders and restaurant partners also able to buy shares.

 

Deliveroo is selling just over one-fifth of the group, while institutional investing trading started on Wednesday, the general public can start trading in its shares from 7 April.

 

Private companies, as a way of raising cash, can start a process to list on a stock exchange.

 

In an initial public offering (IPO) companies offer shares to investors before listing.

 

The price of the shares is typically set by investment banks hired by the company to run the process.

 

But once the shares start to be publicly traded, prices are set by supply and demand.

 

The value of the shares, multiplied by how many there are, gives the market value of the company.

 

'Plain mis-priced'

Sophie Lund-Yates, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the biggest concern from investors was about worker rights: "The flexible employee model of Deliveroo's riders is a huge pillar of the group's plans for success.

 

"If forced to offer more traditional employee benefits, like company pension contributions, Deliveroo's already thin margins would struggle to climb, and the road to profitability would look very tough indeed."

 

She said it was difficult to value the firm as it had yet to turn a profit.

 

Neil Wilson, chief market analyst for Markets.com, said that "even pricing the initial public offering at the bottom of the range, Deliveroo was demanding too high a price tag for a loss-making delivery platform in a very competitive space with a questionable path to profitability.

 

"The books were covered, it was just plain mis-priced."--BBC

 

 

 

London Southend Airport to pay out £86k over runway extension noise

An airport has been ordered to pay compensation to the owners of neighbouring homes over noise caused by a runway extension.

 

Dozens of homeowners near London Southend Airport claimed the property values were diminished following the extension which opened in 2012.

 

The claims were denied by the airport.

 

But nine were upheld by the Upper Tribunal's Lands Chamber, which ordered the airport should pay out a total of £86,500.

 

The court in London considered 10 exemplar cases after 190 current and former owners of houses near the airport made claims under the Land Compensation Act 1973.

 

Claimants said the value of their homes had been reduced by "physical factors caused by the use of the runway extension, and in particular by the increased noise they experience from the larger aircraft which now take off and land".

 

'A noisy environment got noisier'

The airport denied that the value of any of the lead properties had been "diminished by relevant physical factors resulting from the use of the runway extension and it values each of the claims at nil".

 

In its ruling, the tribunal said daytime noise data showed between 2011 and 2014 "what was already quite a noisy environment got noisier".

 

It said: "We are satisfied from the evidence of fact, the expert noise evidence and our site inspection that the use of the runway extension has caused depreciation in the value of most of the lead properties due to noise."

 

The tribunal ordered payments ranging from £4,000 to £17,000 to be made in respect of nine homes, and a claim for a 10th property was dismissed.

 

A spokesman for the airport said: "London Southend Airport respects the decision of the independent judicial tribunal.

 

"The airport takes its role in the community extremely seriously and will continue to engage with residents so that we can all enjoy a sustainable future founded on responsible airport operations and creating long-term job opportunities."--BBC

 

 

 

Huawei’s business damaged by US sanctions despite success at home

Chinese telecoms giant Huawei has admitted that sanctions imposed on it by the US in 2019 have had a major impact on its mobile phone business.

 

The US took action amid claims that the company posed a security risk and last July, the UK said it would exclude the company from building its 5G network.

 

Growth elsewhere in the company meant that it did make a profit overall.

 

But chairman Ken Hu, referring to the impact of the sanctions, told the BBC: "It has caused a lot of damage to us."

 

Mr Hu, speaking at the launch of Huawei's 2020 report, called for a review of the global supply chain of critical technology.

 

Huawei has also tried to explain more about its ownership structure arguing that it will not allow interference from the Chinese state.

 

Mr Hu described 2020 as a year of challenges, with a significant hit to the mobile phone business and slowing revenue growth.

 

"Life was not easy for us," he said.

 

Chinese strength

Strength in other sectors and in the Chinese market meant overall revenue was up 3.8% at $136.7bn (£99.3bn) and profits up by 3.2% at $9.9bn.

 

Mr Hu said restrictions had hurt US suppliers and global consumers as well as Huawei. "We think this is a very unfair situation," he told the BBC at a press conference.

 

In response, the company has stockpiled chips, invested in research and development, and diversified its supplies.

 

It has also reportedly been developing its own chip production within China. Building domestic capacity for the most-advanced chips is currently a high priority for China.

 

There is currently a worldwide shortage of chips, and Mr Hu called for a "rethinking" and a "review" of the globalised semi-conductor supply chain.

 

US authorities have argued that using Huawei's 5G equipment opens up countries to the possibilities of data being accessed by the Chinese state, or becoming vulnerable to being switched off.

 

Huawei has defended its independence from the Chinese state by trying to explain its unusual model of ownership.

 

Jiang Xisheng, chief secretary of the board at Huawei, told the BBC that its employee-shareholders "will not allow external interference into the company's operations".

 

The company gave the BBC a remote video tour of the vault where more than 30 large cabinets contain records of the employees who own shares, listing when each individual bought them and for how much.

 

Critics have said the system is opaque, and is more of a profit-sharing scheme than a mechanism of real control.

 

Mr Jiang compared the model to the partnership model of UK department store John Lewis, arguing it means the interests of employees are closely bound up with those of the company and it shares in its success.

 

Ownership questions

Technically there are two owners of Huawei's holding company - its founder Ren Zhengfei, who owns 0.9%, and a trade union body which owns the rest.

 

The company says the union is the platform for the more than 121,000 employees who own shares. These are not like normal shares, however. Non-Chinese staff are not allowed to own them and the shares cannot be publicly traded or kept when someone leaves.

 

Holding a share offers a chance to vote for the representative commission which is technically the highest authority in the company. Candidates come from within different sectors of the company, and staff can watch a recorded presentation before voting.

 

The process, Mr Jiang says, is competitive, although not as much as the US general election, he said when asked to compare it.

 

This commission selects the board of directors which report to it every year. Its reports have always been approved.

 

Mr Ren retains a veto over key issues, including candidates for the board of directors and a supervisory board. The model for this, Mr Jiang explains, is partly that of the British constitutional monarch. He says the veto is designed to be a "deterrent and constraint" rather than to be regularly exercised.

 

Mr Jiang joined the company in 1989, two years after it was founded, when it consisted of only about 40 staff.

 

He says the employee-ownership model came about to bring in capital as well as to attract and retain staff, and has allowed Huawei to focus on long-term research and development.

 

To try to emphasise the company's openness, Mr Jiang picked up his phone during the interview to explain that all employees have an app on which they can post comments and ideas. He says that before our interview, he had seen one post that criticised him.

 

Mr Jiang, right, holds up a phone to the camera during an interview

image captionMr Jiang shows the BBC what he says is open criticism of him from within the company

Half of the 70 replies had backed the criticism and half had defended him, he said.

 

External critics, especially in the US, have argued that the representation committee is no more than a rubber-stamp and real power lies elsewhere, leaving the way open for hidden direction from the state.

 

That is an idea Mr Jiang seeks to dispel.

 

"For sure, we can say no to the state," he told the BBC. "Even if some individual government officials wanted to intervene in our company's operations we have the right to say no to that."--BBC

 

 

 

Nigeria: Despite Govt's Repeated Promises, Importation of Dirty Fuels Continues in Nigeria

The Nigerian government has since 2016 been making repeated promises to end the importation of dirty fuels.

 

In June 2016, members of the Economic Community of West African States convened for a two-day workshop in Abuja.

 

The sole aim was to chart ways to transit into using low sulphur fuels in their respective countries.

 

At the end of the event, Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Côte D'Ivoire agreed to ban the importation of Europe's dirty fuels, thus limiting sulphur in fuels from 3000ppm to 50ppm.

 

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said the move would help to drastically reduce vehicle emissions and help over 250 million people to breathe safer and cleaner air.

By the end of that year, Nigeria again hosted a sub-regional high-level ministerial meeting on low sulphur fuels, which was held in Abuja and hosted by former minister of environment, Amina Mohammed.

 

Joined by Ghana, Togo, Benin and Côte D'Ivoire, the countries agreed to adopt low sulphur diesel fuel standards of 50 ppm, and a target of July 2017 was set. Only Ghana met the deadline.

 

By the set date, Mrs Mohammed, now deputy secretary-general of the United Nations, again reiterated the Nigerian government's goal to reduce the sulphur in fuels imported into the country, starting from July 2017.

 

"Everybody knows that this is going to take some efforts, which is why we gave the six-month notice," she said at the time. "What is more important is that we are working with the refineries on a long-term approach."

The deadline would be shifted by another year.

 

A year after the last deadline was set, officials at the major importer of petroleum products, Nigeria's public oil company, NNPC, rehashed Nigeria's resolve to end the importation of dirty fuels into the country by July 2018.

 

At another high-level ministerial meeting organised by ECOWAS, which was held between February 5 and 7, 2020, in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, 15 environment and energy ministers of the regional bloc, including that of Nigeria, met again.

 

Nigeria alongside others adopted a comprehensive set of regulations for introducing cleaner fuels and vehicles in the region in order to ensure that their fuel's sulphur content meet global standard peaks at 50 ppm.

 

However, petrol and kerosene remain over 20 times (1000 ppm) and diesel 30 times what is required to be within safe limits.

Oil-rich, but not oil independent

 

Nigeria's production of crude oil, which is sweet because of its low sulphur content, non-acidic because it contains less CO2 and has high API gravity, is put at about 2.5 million barrels daily.

 

Energy giants like Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil do the drilling in the Niger Delta region of the country and they in turn pay production entitlements, taxes, royalties and fees, and other remittances to the Nigerian government.

 

Of the volume drilled, little is refined in state-owned refineries, which for several years have not been functioning despite draining billions of naira, and this little cannot meet the volume for national needs.

 

To bridge the deficit, the country turns to foreign refineries, including European refineries, from where refined and highly sulphured fuels - because they are cheaper - are imported into Nigeria, much to the chagrin of health and environmental campaigners and at the detriment of the well-being of Nigerians.

 

According to the statistics bureau, NBS, in 2019, imported petrol reached 20.89 billion litres, up from 20.14 billion litres in 2018 and 17.3 billion litres in 2017. Petroleum imports cost the country N289.46 billion in Q1 2019, almost tripling to N837.67 billion by Q2.

 

When these fuels are imported into Nigeria through each refinery jetty, they are blended to Nigeria's standard (as set by the Standard Organisation of Nigeria) for cost optimization, Saheed Abolaji, a quality control personnel at Schneider and Schroeder Services Limited, an Edo-based energy firm, explained.

 

He said the blending processes include dewatering, re-gassing and desulfurization.

 

In spite of these processes, fuels consumed in the country still contain as high as 1,000 ppm of sulphur content, unlike neighbouring Ghana and other East African cousins like Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda who have transitioned to 50 ppm fuel standard, the acceptable threshold in Europe.

 

"There is a serious problem with our environmental control which is seriously affecting us," Mr Abolaji noted.

 

He added that "the contention with environmental pollution has to mostly do with the practices of waste management and also the combustion of our exhaust vehicle design" as most of the used vehicles imported into Nigeria are not up to the standard in Europe.

 

Lax regulations to restrict the quality of the vehicles being imported into the country, coupled with the aforesaid poor fuel quality, has ensured that air pollution continues to dog the country.

 

Nigeria is home to the highest fleets of used light-duty vehicles after Serbia and the United Arab Emirates, according to a 2020 report by UNEP.

 

The imported fuels cost Nigerians huge outlays with NBS saying Nigerians spent 5 per cent, or some ₦2 trillion, of their incomes on fuel and electricity in 2019.

 

According to the NNPC, 2.26 billion litres of petroleum products were sold and distributed in the country in December as against 1.72 billion litres in November.

 

Better fuel will cost more

 

As identified by a world bank study, the top three sources of PM2.5 (tiny dangerous pollutants) in Nigeria's commercial centre of Lagos (where, against the 10 μg/m3 guideline set by WHO for annual mean PM2.5 concentration level, it can be as high as 68 μg/m3) are overstretched road transport, industrial emissions and generators.

 

Generators made the list because of erratic electricity, which the world bank says 80 million Nigerians do not have access to, an albatross that pushed them to spend an estimated $14 billion a year on small-scale generators, and made Nigeria lose $29 billion in 2019.

 

By implication, local consumption of fuel will continue to surge in a country like Nigeria with a teeming population of over 200 million.

 

With fuel subsidies soon to be stopped as promised by the government, for Nigerians to get cleaner fuels to meet their massive demands, they may have to pay more.

 

However, this may be a tall order for many in a country where about a quarter of the population live on less than N377 daily and about a third are unemployed.

 

Yet, it is a choice that has to be made.

 

A litre of petrol averaged 5.36 Ghanaian cedi (which is about N355 at N66 to a cedi) between February and March in Ghana, a price that increased by over 50 per cent since 2017.

 

In Kenya, petrol currently retails at about 125 Kenyan shilling, which, at N3.46 to a Kenyan shilling, is equivalent to N432.5.

 

An effort to raise the pump price of petrol (currently N162) as high as this is likely to be met with heavy pushback from Nigerians; except their purchasing power improves just as significantly, analysts believe.

 

Ghana for one has been able to reduce deprivations from access to healthcare, education, and improved living standards by nine percentage points from 55 per cent in 2011 to about 46 percent in 2017.

 

When this was compared to the purchasing power of the 31 million population, about 6 million Ghanaians (or about 1 in 5) are concurrently poor in both measures of poverty.

 

There are, nonetheless, indications that the pump price of petrol will increase in Nigeria in the coming months after NNPC boss, Mele Kyari, announced that the government was unwilling to continue subsidising petrol.

 

With the cost of importation and handling charges amounting to N234 per litre, the government has pegged the selling price at N162 per litre, a variation that the British government said cost Nigeria N10 trillion between 2006 and 2018; and could cost the country about N102.5 billion, according to an analysis by PREMIUM TIMES.

 

 

 

South Africa: Turbulent Times - SAA Pilots Plan Unprecedented Strike After They Demand to Be Formally Retrenched

SAA pilots, about 90% of whom belong to the SAA Pilots' Association, have given the state-owned airline 48 hours' notice of a strike. The association said the strike is the first in its more than 50-year history.

 

On the day South African Airways was expected to announce the completion of its 15-month business rescue process, it faced a new threat from its pilots that might further delay the airline's return to the skies.

 

The pilots -- most of whom are members of the SAA Pilots' Association -- said they would embark on a strike over a dispute about outstanding salary payments and the conditions of their retrenchment.

 

The pilots have been locked out of SAA since December 2020 as the dispute has intensified. The association said a majority of its members (98.7%) voted in favour of a strike and for SAA to retrench them, which might pave the way for their salaries and other remuneration benefits to be paid by the airline.

 

The association has given SAA 48 hours' notice of the strike -- a first for the trade union in its more than 50-year history.

 

The SAA business rescue practitioners recently informed Parliament's Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa)...-Daily Maverick.

 

 

 

How Bitcoin is Threatening the Stability of Conventional Banking?

Cryptocurrency use, as well as the release, is a threat to the stability of central banks and countries. Anyone should have the ability to break free from a compartmentalized environment as a simple right. An all financial system, rather than one with borders and uniqueness, would help entrepreneurs in particular.

 

Although many people think of Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin as risky investments their true worth is hidden. This technology has piqued the interest of entrepreneurs all over the world.

 

Even though the digital currency produced for this endeavor had no actual value, the idea sparked a mental shift in the participants. The currency, which has now been adopted by nearly 70 nations, continues to inspire people to assist others. It's only one example of what this new and creative technology can do without involving governments or banks.

 

Nevertheless, by launching domestic cryptocurrencies, banks are interested in keeping control. In Russia, Japan, and other nations, experiments are being conducted to prevent investors and customers from obtaining economic parity.

 

Why Investors Should Adopt Digital Currencies?

 

As an investor, there are some compelling reasons to adopt digital currencies. It could be used to secure financing and boost your brand, for starters. Bitcoin, unlike conventional financial systems, does not require permission from anyone. Any investor may build their digital currency, which can be useful or profitable to those who purchase it.

 

You might have to follow any financial reporting depending on these advantages. Even today, it is a necessary choice to dealing with a constrained banking sector.

 

Secondly, cryptocurrencies give bold investors the ability to break free from the constraints enforced by an ineffective system. Middleman services, providers, and other participants create their segmented environments, suffocating entrepreneurship.

 

Cryptocurrencies - Bubble Economy

 

Virtual currencies are, at their heart, easy cash. It is a multinational corporation so governments and banks may discourage investors from participating in this “bubble economy" over which they have no control.

 

This is an odd tactic, given that government money has already caused a great deal of harm on a national scale. Because the existing system is unrealistic, the damage can only get worse in the future.

 

How People Can Trade Bitcoins?

 

Bitcoin is a type of virtual currency that can be used as both a surplus currency and a trading platform. Although it is only now becoming popular as a legitimate method of payment, it's already established itself as a capital asset over the last decade.

 

Even though the general public cannot use cryptocurrencies to purchase goods, many individuals choose to convert their cash into bitcoin because they believe it is a safer form of money storage and a devaluation buffer due to its drop in value. Several platforms have started and garnered support to make cryptocurrency exchange more accessible.

 

Bitcoin Circuit is a platform that allows you to trade bitcoins intelligently. It collaborates with reputable robotic dealers. Robot dealers, unlike conventional brokers, provide strong order execution mechanisms that guarantee fast order fulfillment. All of this can be accomplished by merely registering at bitcoincircuit.biz.

 

Final Thoughts 

 

Purchasers have become digital servants to organized corporations and technology businesses in the last decade and more. Investors should seize this opportunity to seize control from someone who does not deserve it. Rather than being "guided" by a centralized authority, each individual must decide their lifestyle, thought, and actions.

 

By drifting free from this strategy and embracing blockchain technology for a better tomorrow, any independent investor can make a positive impact. The options are limitless, and your imagination is a vital tool for making a positive difference.

 

Our culture is disjointed and needs to bring together. That would never happen in the contemporary financial and political climate. Virtual currencies have demonstrated a way to attain solidarity and reclaim authority and influence without the use of intermediaries.

 


 


 


 

 

 

 


 

INVESTORS DIARY 2021

 


Company

Event

Venue

Date & Time

 


 

 

 

 

 


CFI

AGM

Farm & City Boardroom, 1st Floor Farm & City Complex, 1 Wynne Street

31/03/21 | 11am

 


 

Good Friday

 

02/04/21

 


 

Easter Sunday

 

04/04/21

 


 

Easter Monday

 

05/04/21

 


 

Independence Day

 

18/04/21

 


 

Public Holiday in lieu of Independence Day falling on a Sunday

 

19/04/21

 


 

 

 

 

 


Companies under Cautionary

 

 

 


 

 

 

 


ART

PPC

Dairibord

 


Starafrica

Fidelity

Turnall

 


Medtech

Zimre

Nampak Zimbabwe

 


 

 

 

 


 <mailto:info at bulls.co.zw> 

 


 

 


DISCLAIMER: This report has been prepared by Bulls ‘n Bears, a division of Faith Capital (Pvt) Ltd for general information purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy or subscribe for any securities. The information contained in this report has been compiled from sources believed to be reliable, but no representation or warranty is made or guarantee given as to its accuracy or completeness. All opinions expressed and recommendations made are subject to change without notice. Securities or financial instruments mentioned herein may not be suitable for all investors. Securities of emerging and mid-size growth companies typically involve a higher degree of risk and more volatility than the securities of more established companies. Neither Faith Capital nor any other member of Bulls ‘n Bears nor any other person, accepts any liability whatsoever for any loss howsoever arising from any use of this report or its contents or otherwise arising in connection therewith. Recipients of this report shall be solely responsible for making their own independent investigation into the business, financial condition and future prospects of any companies referred to in this report. Other  Indices quoted herein are for guideline purposes only and sourced from third parties.

 


 

 


(c) 2021 Web: <http://www.bullszimbabwe.com>  www.bullszimbabwe.com Email:  <mailto:info at bulls.co.zw> info at bulls.co.zw Tel: +263 4 2927658 Cell: +263 77 344 1674

 


 

 

 

 

 

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