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Middle Eastern countries should pursue fiscal policies to support growth and build broader tax bases to fund infrastructure projects and social spending, the head of the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday. "A key priority is building broader and more equitable tax bases. All must pay their fair share, while the poor must be protected," IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told an economic conference in Marrakech, organized by the Washington-based fund and the kingdom. That would allow them to spend more on social safety nets, health and education services than the current 11 percent of gross domestic product in the region. "Fiscal policy can and must be redesigned to support inclusive growth in the region," Lagarde said. More efforts are also needed to support the private sector, she said. The state, the dominant…

Venezuela is abandoning the most-overvalued of its two official foreign exchange rates, which had been used for state imports of food and medicine amid a worsening economic crisis.   The move could potentially encourage businesses to import more and put more goods on store shelves and in pharmacies, but only if the government carries it out as written, said Francisco Rodriguez, a former Venezuelan official who is now chief economist at the New York-based Torino Capital.   "This is not a place where there's a good tradition of following the letter of the law,'' Rodriguez said Tuesday. "I don't think that one should get too optimistic."   Oil-rich Venezuela is in the fifth year of a deepening economic crisis that has brought scarcities of basic foods and medicine after nearly…

Tourism to Cuba, one of the few bright spots in its ailing economy, has slid in the wake of Hurricane Irma and the Trump administration's tighter restrictions on travel to the Caribbean island, a Cuban tourism official said on Monday. Although the number of visitors rose nearly 20 percent in 2017, it fell 10 percent on the year in December, and is down 7-8 percent this month, Jose Manuel Bisbe York, the president of Cuban state travel agency conglomerate Viajes Cuba, said. Arrivals from the United States, which had surged in the wake of the U.S.-Cuban detente in 2014, took the worst hit, dropping 30 percent last December, he told Reuters. "Since Hurricane Irma, we've seen arrivals shrink," Bisbe York said on the sidelines of the event organized by U.S.…

The European Union says that if U.S. President Donald Trump initiates unfair trade measures against the 28-nation bloc, it would stand ready "to react swiftly and appropriately."   In a weekend interview, Trump said he was annoyed with EU trade policy since he claims the U.S. cannot sufficiently export to the EU. He said his problems with the EU "may morph into something very big" from a trade standpoint.   EU spokesman Margaritis Schinas retorted Monday that "while trade has to be open and fair it also has to be rules-based."   Schinas said: "The EU stands ready to react swiftly and appropriately in case our exports are affected by any restrictive trade measure from the United States."     ...

Top trade representatives from Canada, Mexico and the United States are set to give an update Monday on the process of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, while people familiar with the process say a final deal could be pushed far beyond a March target date. The three nations had tried to complete the talks by the end of 2017, but delayed the informal deadline as they worked to find common ground on several contentious issues. The latest round of talks in Montreal included work on a dispute resolution mechanism and rules for the auto industry. The United States wants to largely eliminate the dispute settlement panels and increase the percentage of U.S. content required to be in a vehicle. It has also proposed a clause that would end…

Ingvar Kamprad, who founded Sweden's IKEA furniture brand and transformed it into a worldwide business empire, has died at the age of 91. Kamprad died Saturday of pneumonia in the southern Swedish region of Smaland where he grew up on a farm, and with some modest financial help from his father, starting selling pens, picture frames, typewriters and other goods. It was the start of what became IKEA, now with 403 stores across the globe, 190,000 employees and $47 billion in annual sales. His brand became synonymous with the simplicity of Scandinavian design, modest pricing, flat-pack boxing and do-it-yourself assembly for consumers. It turned Kamprad into an entrepreneur with a reported net worth of $46 billion. The company name was an acronym of his initials, the name of his farm,…

Why has Mumbai's largest slum, which packs some one million people in about two square kilometers, emerged as an unlikely stop for foreign tourists? The draw is not images of squalor and poverty in the heart of India's largest city, but a place where thriving entrepreneurship and stories of hope and success break many stereotypes of a slum. Anjana Pasricha reports. ...

U.S. President Donald Trump touted the continued growth of the U.S. economy on Sunday, saying it is "better than it has been in many decades." "Businesses are coming back to America like never before," Trump said in a Twitter remark, a likely theme of his State of the Union address on Tuesday. "Unemployment is nearing record lows. We are on the right track!" He said, "Chrysler, as an example, is leaving Mexico and coming back to the USA," an exaggeration of Chrysler's expansion plans. Fiat Chrysler, the world's eighth biggest auto manufacturer, says it is investing $1 billion to manufacture its profitable Ram pickup trucks in the midwestern state of Michigan, shifting the production from Mexico, but at the same time is not cutting any of its vehicle manufacturing jobs…

Officials trying to settle differences over how to update the North American Free Trade Agreement have made some progress and hope politicians decide the talks should continue, Steve Verheul, Canada's chief negotiator, told Reuters on Saturday. The United States, Canada and Mexico are due to finish the sixth of seven planned rounds of NAFTA discussions on Monday, with several major issues far from being resolved. U.S. President Donald Trump, who describes the $1.2 trillion pact as a disaster, has frequently threatened to walk away from it unless major changes are made. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo will hold a news conference later Monday to announce the next steps. Asked whether he thought the three ministers would decide there is enough…

In a surprise move, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reversed itself Friday and stopped the approval process for the proposed Pebble Mine copper and gold mine project in southwest Alaska’s Bristol Bay region. “It is my judgment at this time that any mining projects in the region likely pose a risk to the abundant natural resources that exist there,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in a statement. President Donald Trump has championed increased domestic mining, and the EPA’s decision to halt the Pebble Mine’s approval process comes as a surprise. “Until we know the full extent of that risk, those natural resources and world-class fisheries deserve the utmost protection,” Pruitt said. The Obama administration blocked the proposed mine in 2014 over environmental concerns. Last year, Pruitt reversed that decision, allowing…

President Donald Trump's "America First" policy on trade aims to reverse decades of lopsided exchange by withdrawing from international trade deals, renegotiating others and raising tariffs on foreign-made goods destined for the U.S. But, in a connected global economy, analysts warn the U.S. could find itself increasingly isolated as other countries rush forward to embrace new trade deals. Mil Arcega reports. ...

Alaska’s all-Republican congressional delegation three weeks ago praised Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke after he announced nearly all federal waters off the state’s coast could be offered for petroleum lease sales. But after hearing from critics who do not want drilling in their home waters, U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Rep. Don Young are backtracking. In a letter Friday to Zinke, the delegation requested that most Alaska waters from the state’s Panhandle to the Bering Strait be removed from the proposed five-year drilling plan. Instead, they urged lease sales in only three areas: Cook Inlet, where petroleum platforms have extracted oil and natural gas for decades, and the Arctic waters of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. “We believe the strongest near-term offshore program in Alaska is one that…

A U.S. trade commission on Friday handed an unexpected victory to Bombardier Inc. against Boeing Co., in a ruling that allows the Canadian company to sell its newest jets to U.S. airlines without heavy duties, sending Bombardier's shares up 15 percent. The U.S. International Trade Commission's unanimous decision was the latest twist in U.S.-Canadian trade relations that have been complicated by disputes over tariffs on Canadian lumber and U.S. milk and President Donald Trump's desire to renegotiate or even abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Trump, who did not weigh in on the dispute personally, took his "America First" message to the world's elite on Friday, telling a summit that the United States would "no longer turn a blind eye" to what he described as unfair trade practices. The ITC commissioners voted 4-0 that Bombardier's prices did not harm…

President Donald Trump has warned that the United States will no longer tolerate unfair trade practices and will always put America first in future trade deals. Giving the closing speech at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos on Friday, Trump lauded the performance of the U.S. economy under his leadership. The speech, however, was overshadowed by further controversy over alleged links between the president's campaign team and Russia. Henry Ridgwell reports. ...

Around the world, an area larger than all of South America has been deforested, eroded, drained or salinized. A new report says there's money to be made restoring that land. VOA's Steve Baragona has more. ...

The U.S. economy likely maintained a brisk pace of growth in the fourth quarter, driven by an acceleration in consumer and business spending, which could set it on course to attain the Trump administration’s 3 percent annual growth target this year. Gross domestic product probably increased at a 3.0 percent annual rate also boosted by a rebound in homebuilding investment and a pickup in government outlays, according to a Reuters poll of economists. The strong growth pace would come despite anticipated drags from trade and inventory investment. It would follow a 3.2 percent pace of expansion in the third quarter and mark the first time since 2004 that the economy enjoyed growth of 3 percent or more for three straight quarters. The Commerce Department will publish its advance fourth-quarter GDP…