Category: Business

NAIROBI, KENYA — A Kenyan recycling company is improving sanitation for slum dwellers in Nairobi and turning the waste products into fertilizer for farmers.

Anita Mutinda walks to a small structure located inside the cluster of makeshift houses that she calls home, in the heart of Mukuru kwa Ruben, a poor neighborhood in Kenya’s capital Nairobi.

The structure is one of the toilets installed by a company providing the much-needed service here. It is one of the reasons that Mutinda rented and has lived here for five years.

She says life where she lived before was hard because she had to pay five shillings every time she needed to use a public toilet, and it was far from the house. Here, she doesn’t have to pay a single cent to access this facility.

Her landlady, Deborah Kerubo, says the availability of the toilet facility on her property has become a major selling point.

She says tenants want a facility that has both day and night access. If they don’t get that, they will keep moving, she says, until they get what they are looking for.

No sewage system

Mukuru kwa Ruben, like many other slum areas in Kenya’s capital, is not connected to a sewage system. An estimated 60% of the population lives with this lack of sanitation.

Elijah Gachoki, a clinical officer at a local community health center, says these conditions are a major cause of communicable diseases. “We start getting water wash diseases, conjunctivitis, and skin diseases, so there is a need for proper safe and adequate provision of sanitation,” he expressed.

It is a gap that Sanergy, a company providing sanitation solutions, says it is bridging. Sanergy provides toilets that separate liquid and dry waste and help with waste management in the informal settlements.

Sheila Kibuthu, Sanergy Kenya’s external relations manager, says the company believes in not wasting any waste. On a regular basis, she notes “we make sure that we provide a waste management service where all of the sanitation waste is generated is then safely removed and transported to our organics recycling factory for processing along with other forms of organic waste.”

Turned into fertilizer

The toilet waste is collected daily and mixed with other organic waste from the community. It is then processed at Sanergy’s plant on the outskirts of Nairobi and turned into organic fertilizer and other agricultural inputs like high protein feed for livestock.

“One of the biggest challenges farmers are facing today is soil infertility, so what the organic fertilizer does is that it helps restore the soil fertility and that way farmers can improve their yields.”

Sanergy believes more and more farmers will be served as it keeps the cycle of turning waste into useful products going, while providing a necessary service.

Currently, the company has more than 5,000 toilets spread across 11 informal settlement areas in Nairobi, serving over 140,000 residents.

Source: Voice of America

Manama, Auditor General of the National Audit Office (NAO) Shaikh Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, received employees with continuous service of more than 10 years, and employees who recently qualified as Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) and Certified Anti-Money laundering Specialist (CAMS) to honor their achievements and their contributions to the NAO’s development.

Shaikh Ahmed congratulated the employees and wished them further success in their future endeavors. He stressed the NAO’s ongoing efforts to provide a work environment that supports initiative and achievement as part of its strategy to achieve excellence in the field of auditing and advance and conduct its work in a highly professional manner.

The auditor general Shaikh Ahmed emphasized the importance of continued investment in the development of employees and national competencies as they are the real capital of any successful institution.

He said that the NAO is dedicated to support and motivate all its employees by enhancing their professional and technical capacity through ongoing training and professional courses as part of its development program to obtain internationally accredited professional qualifications in auditing and accounting.

Source: Bahrain News Agency

U.S. retail sales surged in October, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday, in a signal that at least at the start of the annual holiday shopping season, consumers were not scared off by sharply increasing prices.

Retail sales increased 1.7% last month, more than twice the advance of eight-tenths of a percent in September. Sales have now increased three straight months.

Brian Deese, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, touted the favorable report, saying, “In short, families have seen an increase in real disposable income, and stores and restaurants have the supplies to drive this recovery.”

He said that the retail sales report showed “that even as we work to address the real challenge that elevated inflation from supply chain bottlenecks poses for Americans’ pocketbooks and outlook, the economy is making progress.”

With U.S. consumer price inflation at a three-decade high, it is an open question whether robust consumer spending will continue during the holiday shopping season through the end of 2021.

The government reported last week that consumer prices increased at an annualized rate of 6.2% in October, with sharply higher prices for gasoline and food affecting consumers the most.

The Commerce Department said that October spending was up 4% at online retailers, along with big gains at electronics, appliance and hardware stores. Gas price increases pushed up the sales total at service stations by 3.9% while vehicles sales revenue increased 1.8%.

Aside from higher prices, U.S. consumers are facing shortages of many items they may want to buy.

Several dozen container ships filled with consumer goods from Asia are anchored off the U.S. Pacific coast waiting for docking and unloading at California ports, a supply chain snarl that government officials are gradually unraveling but are far from fully resolving

Source: Voice of America

The Syrian private Cham Wings Airlines, said that, it suspended flights to Belarus’ Minsk airport on Saturday, Belarusian media reported.

The arrival screen yesterday at the Minsk international airport showed flights from Damascus having been cancelled.

The European Union is considering imposing new sanctions on carriers connecting Minsk with destinations in the Middle East, as migrants came to the Polish border through Minsk.

Cham Wings Airlines said that, “Since the majority of Cham Wings passengers flying to Minsk are of Syrian nationality … Cham Wings Airlines has taken the decision to suspend its flights to Minsk.”

President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview that, there is no one plane of the national Belarusian air carrier Belavia, that brought migrants from the Middle East to Belarus.

Source: Nam News Network

Thailand, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) chair next year, is committed in ensuring the continuity of the APEC Putrajaya Vision 2040 by pursuing the forum’s three economic drivers.

The three drivers are – trade and investment, innovation and digitalisation, and strong, balanced, secure, sustainable and inclusive growth.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan o-cha said Thailand will continue APEC’s work to keep markets open through the rules-based multilateral trading system.

“At the same time, we will take advantage of the opportunity to re-think APEC’s conversation on trade and investment…that reflects the evolving needs and interests of businesses and our wider communities,” he said at the APEC CEO Summit 2021 held virtually on Friday.

“This is the engine driving our APEC host year priorities,” he said.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is to chair APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting (AELM) virtually later tonight with all 21 APEC Economic Leaders expected to participate in the meeting themed “Join, Work, Grow, Together”.

“I believe that our theme and priorities echo the call by the business community to revitalise our economies, and make them stronger and more resilient,” he said.

Meanwhile, in facilitating trade and investment, Prayuth said the region must be reconnected again.

“It is our priority to safely and seamlessly resume cross-border travel.

“Progress towards reconnecting the region is essential to APEC’s path to recovery. Therefore, restoring connectivity will be one of our priorities next year, and we will pursue APEC’s recommendation to come up with a way to strengthen coordination and drive APEC-wide work on safe passage,” he said.

He added that APEC needs to be ever more connected in the longer term, harnessing digitalisation and innovation to further facilitate cross-border movements within APEC to ensure a healthy flow of goods, services, business people and the public at large.

APEC launched the Putrajaya Vision 2040 in November 2020, under which the world’s most dynamic regional economies will cooperate toward building an open, dynamic, resilient and peaceful Asia-Pacific.

Source: Nam News Network

MADRID — The European Commission lowered its forecast for Spanish growth this year as the country’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic lagged behind other European nations.

The commission said Thursday it estimates that the rise of Spanish gross domestic product will be 4.6% this year and 5.5% next year, almost two points less than earlier forecasts of 6.5% this year and 7% in 2022.

Spain was the European economy hit hardest by COVID-19, and its recovery has been slower than those of its continental neighbors.

At the end of the third quarter, Italy’s GDP was 1.4% below its level at the end of 2019.

Germany has narrowed the gap to 1.1% compared with pre-pandemic levels, and France has reduced the difference to just 0.1%.

However, in Spain — the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy — GDP is 6.6% below 2019 levels.

Unemployment remains stubbornly high at 14.9%, while youth joblessness, for those under age 24, is the worst in Europe at 30.6%.

Inflation has soared to 5.5% compared to October 2020, the highest figure since 1992 when the peseta was paired with the German deutschmark. Soaring energy costs, as well as the rising cost of summer holidays, pushed up inflation, analysts said. Core inflation stood at 1.4%.

The nation’s budget deficit is expected to hit 8.4% by the end of the year, way above the European Union target of 3%, which has been relaxed until 2022.

Spain’s coalition government is staking its hopes on the arrival of EU recovery funds to revive the economy.

Under the 2022 budget, Spain plans to spend a record $46 billion of state funds on investments that analysts say will boost growth and lower the deficit to a projected 5% in 2022 and 4% in 2023.

Nadia Calviño, Spain’s economy minister, told a meeting of European finance ministers Tuesday the nation was on course to cut its deficit.

“We have adopted a prudent attitude when preparing the budgets for 2021 and also for 2022 so that, in fact, tax revenues allow us, even in a not-so-positive macroeconomic situation, to reduce the public deficit in 2022,” she said.

Macroeconomics aside, on the streets, some are still waiting for the recovery from the pandemic.

Oscar Díaz, managing director of Mundopalet, a company that makes pallets to transport goods, is a worried man. He told VOA on Thursday he had to stop half of his production lines at his company’s factory in Toledo, 55 miles south of Madrid.

The company, which employs 100 people, is struggling to find enough wood to make its products, as countries such as Brazil, China and Lithuania have raised prices from $1,382 per truckload earlier this year to $10,362.

Major economies such as the United States, China and Germany have also raised their demand for timber as their economies start to recover from the pandemic, further pushing up the prices.

“Yes, I am concerned. Some of our clients’ companies have stopped working. We have halted work on 10 of our 20 production lines. We are in danger,” Díaz told VOA from his factory.

Mundopalet is by far not alone, as Spanish companies grapple with supply chain problems, typical of other sectors, from winemakers to farmers.

To make things worse, Spain’s truck drivers plan to strike for three days the week before Christmas, the National Road Transportation Committee in Spain said Wednesday.

In the run-up to one of the busiest periods of the year, the drivers are threatening to disrupt supply chains if the Spanish government does not meet its demands, which include safer rest areas and a ban on requiring truckers to load and unload goods.

However, analysts say the health of Spain’s labor market shows the effects of the pandemic are fading.

The number of employed workers rose in the third quarter of 2021 by 359,300 workers, according to the National Statistics Institute, bringing the total to over 20 million, the first time this figure has been reached since 2008, when the global financial crisis began.

During the same summer period, the ranks of the jobless decreased by 3.59%, according to data from the institute.

Javier Díaz, an economist at IESE business school in Madrid, said Spain has suffered more from the pandemic than other European countries because of its reliance on tourism and the automotive sector, which is struggling because of a global chip shortage and lower consumer demand.

“What is important to look at is not the unemployment level but the employment. That shows the economy is not in such a bad way,” he told VOA.

Spanish inflation has gone up because of the global rise in fuel and energy prices, and a lack of demand in key sectors such as tourism and the car industry, which are still recovering from the shock of COVID-19, he said.

“Spain is not really struggling. Growth of between 6% and 4% this year is actually better than it was before the pandemic,” Díaz said.

Source: Voice of America

South African electricity public utility, Eskom, apologised yesterday, for continued rolling blackouts in the country.

Andre de Ruyter, CEO of Eskom, also announced that, load shedding will be reduced to stage three from stage four.

“We understand this is a huge inconvenience to the country, we apologise for the negative impact this had had, not only on the business industry but also on those students, who are currently writing matric exams,” de Ruyter told media.

The CEO said, stage four will be downgraded to stage three, which will last until Friday. After maintenance has been completed on several units, load shedding will cease Saturday morning.

Power outages started last month. Eskom escalated load shedding from stage two to stage four, due to unplanned breakdowns this week.

Eskom implements load shedding due to high demand or urgent maintenance at certain power stations.

Stage two load shedding means that up to 2,000MW of capacity needs to be shed. Consumers can expect to be shed up to six times over a four-day period for two hours at a time.

During Stage four load shedding, consumers can expect to be shed up to 12 times over a four-day period. These blackouts exerted devastating effects on small businesses and the overall economy.

CEO of Business Unity South Africa, Cas Coovadia, said, “economic impact” of load shedding was dire.

“New capacity must urgently be added to the grid,” he said, “we call on the president and his cabinet to demonstrate decisiveness in this crisis. The president must demonstrate to the nation that the government is doing everything in its power to address this crisis.”

Source: Nam News Network

GENEVA — A pair of diamond bracelets that once belonged to Marie Antoinette, the famed wife of French King Louis XVI who met her fate at the revolutionary guillotine, sold for 7.46 million Swiss francs ($8.34 million) on Tuesday.

The opulent bracelets, among the rare pieces of jewelry from the ill-fated French royal that are still up for public sale today, were among standout features to a Christie’s auction in Geneva.

They feature 112 diamonds and each weighs 97 grams (3.4 ounces) and include silver and gold.

The pair sold for much more than the presale estimate of between 2 million and 4 million Swiss francs ($2.2 million to $4.4 million). The final price included taxes and fees on top of the hammer price. The buyer was not identified.

After Marie Antoinette’s death in the French Revolution in 1793, the bracelets that had been commissioned some 17 years earlier were passed on from her daughter Marie-Therese and kept within royal lineage for over 200 years, Christie’s said.

On Wednesday, as part of regular Geneva jewelry auctions, rival house Sotheby’s is set to put under the hammer a 26.8-carat oval sapphire surrounded by diamonds, and matching ear clips that once belonged to Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia — pieces that were whisked out of Russia during the country’s 1917 revolution.

The trio is expected to garner as much as 480,000 francs ($525,800).

On Thursday, Sotheby’s will auction a pair of high-top Nike sneakers from Kobe Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard who died in a helicopter crash in California last year. The basketball shoes are expected to fetch up to 35,000 Swiss francs ($38,400).

Bryant wore the sneakers in a March 17, 2004, victory over the L.A. Clippers, according to the auction house.

Source: Voice of America