Category: Business

There was no way Jose Ramon Garcia, a food transporter in Venezuela, could afford new tires for his van at $350 each. Whether he opted to pay in U.S. currency or in the devalued local bolivar currency at the equivalent black market price, Garcia would have had to save up for years. Though used to expensive repairs, this one was too much and put him out of business. "Repairs cost an arm and a leg in Venezuela," said the now-unemployed 42-year-old Garcia, who has a wife and two children to support in the southern city of Guayana. "There's no point keeping bolivars." For a decade and a half, strict exchange controls have severely limited access to dollars. A black market in hard currency has spread in response, and as once-sky-high…

The sauvignon blanc boasts brassy, citrus notes, but with one whiff, it's apparent this is no normal Sonoma County wine. It’s infused with THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that provides the high.  Move over, pot brownies. The world’s largest legal recreational marijuana market kicks off Monday in California, and the trendsetting state is set to ignite the cannabis culinary scene.  Chefs and investors have been teaming up to offer an eye-boggling array of cannabis-infused food and beverages, weed-pairing supper clubs and other extravagant pot-to-plate events in preparation for legalization come Jan. 1.  Legal pot in states like Oregon, Washington and Colorado and California’s longstanding medical marijuana market already spurred a cannabis-foodie movement with everything from olive oil to heirloom tomato bisques infused with the drug. Cannabis-laced dinners with celebrity…

Authorities in eastern Libya have announced a conference in March to drum up support to rebuild the country's second-largest city Benghazi heavily damaged during three years of fighting between military forces and Islamist fighters. The announcement signals a desire to demonstrate a return to normality in the port, where top military commander Khalifa Haftar declared the end of a campaign to oust Islamist fighters in July. Clashes have sporadically continued in some isolated areas, while life has returned in the rest of the city, though some districts were almost completely destroyed by shelling and air strikes. A forum titled "International Conference and Exhibition for rebuilding Benghazi city" will be held from March 19-21, the organizers said in an invitation posted online, adding that a six-day exhibition would be held the…

Oil moved higher above $65 a barrel on Tuesday, within sight of its highest since mid-2015, supported by an explosion on a crude pipeline in Libya and voluntary OPEC-led supply cuts. The move towards restart of a key North Sea pipeline, Forties, capped the rally. The pipeline is being tested after repairs and full flows should resume in early January, its operator said on Monday. Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil prices, rose 19 cents to $65.44 a barrel at 1447 GMT. Prices hit $65.83 on December 12, the highest since June 2015. U.S. crude added 24 cents to $58.71. "The confirmation that Forties is coming back ... has the potential for capping Brent," said Olivier Jakob, analyst at Petromatrix. Trading activity was thin due to the Christmas holiday…

Sudan is to devalue its currency to 18 Sudanese pounds per dollar in January from the current exchange rate of 6.7, the finance minister said on Tuesday. The International Monetary Fund urged Sudan earlier this month to float its currency to boost growth and investment, but the government has ruled out a market-determined exchange rate. The devaluation which includes the customs exchange rate — the rate used to calculate customs duties —  is timed to take place when the 2018 budget begins, in the first week of January, Finance Minister Mohamed Othman Rukabi told Reuters. Traders said the black market rate jumped to 27 SDG per dollar from 25 SDG per dollar on Tuesday after the devaluation was announced. "The whole budget for the new year is based on a…

Many Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh facing diminished income are supplementing their needs with work in the camps. Steve Sandford talks to a few young and old entrepreneurs who have set up new businesses in the refugee zones. ...

Israel's markets regulator said on Monday he will propose regulation to ban companies based on bitcoin and other digital currencies from trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). Shmuel Hauser, the chairman of the Israel Securities Authority (ISA), told the Calcalist business conference he will bring the proposal to the ISA board next week. If approved, it would be subject to a public hearing and then the TASE bylaws would need to be amended. "If we have a company that their main business is digital currencies we would not allow it. If already listed, its trading will be suspended," Hauser said, adding the ISA must find the appropriate regulation for such companies. Bitcoin plunged by 30 percent to below $12,000 on Friday as investors dumped the cryptocurrency after its…

Management experts are always coming up with innovative ideas to improve the work environment, inspire employees and raise productivity. Big companies in Germany, like Lufthansa, Siemens, Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen's Audi, are bringing harmony to the workplace by having symphony orchestras and encouraging employees to play music together. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates. ...

In 2017, China's Xi Jinping rose to become the country's most powerful leader in decades. And as he shoulders more responsibility, analysts say the government in Beijing is likely to take more risks in 2018 at home and overseas, even as it deals with economic challenges at home, a nuclear North Korea and the looming threat of trade tensions with the United States. VOA's Bill Ide has this report. ...

Americans are traveling in record numbers this season, according to the American Automobile Association's (AAA) annual estimate, which forecasts more than 107 million will travel by road, rail or air between now and the start of 2018. Despite higher gas prices, travel volume is expected to be 3.1 percent higher than last year's holiday season, the association said. AAA said this season marks the ninth consecutive year of rising year-end holiday travel in the United States. Since 2005, it said, holiday travel has grown by 21.6 million, an increase of 25 percent. The majority of travelers, 97.4 million, will make their way to their destinations by road, while 6.4 million people are expected to fly to see family and friends or to take holiday vacations. Only 3.6 million are expected…

Nestle, which sells Arrowhead bottled water, may have to stop taking millions of gallons of water from Southern California's San Bernardino National Forest because state regulators concluded it lacks valid permits.   The State Water Resources Control Board notified the company on Wednesday that an investigation concluded it doesn't have proper rights to pipe about three-quarters of the water it currently withdraws for bottling.   "A significant portion of the water currently diverted by Nestle appears to be diverted without a valid basis of right," the report concluded.   Nestle Waters North America was urged to cut back its water withdrawals unless it can show it has valid water rights to its current sources or to additional groundwater.   The company, a division of the Swiss food giant, also was…

Bitcoin plunged by a quarter to below $12,000 on Friday as investors dumped the cryptocurrency in manic trading after its blistering ascent to a peak close to $20,000 prompted warnings by experts of a bubble. It capped a brutal week that had been touted as a new era of mainstream trading for the volatile digital currency when bitcoin futures debuted on CME Group Inc, the world's largest derivatives market on Sunday. Friday's steep fall bled into the U.S. stock market, where shares of companies that have recently lashed their fortunes to bitcoin or blockchain — its underlying technology — took a hard knock in early trading. The biggest and best-known cryptocurrency had seen a staggering twentyfold increase since the start of the year, climbing from less than $1,000 to as…

For retailers, Christmas can be a make or break season, but for a small Czech family owned business, Christmas means it is time to start looking ahead to next Christmas. VOA's Kevin Enochs reports. ...

The U.N. Security Council is expected to vote Friday on another round of targeted sanctions aimed at further restricting North Korea's crude oil imports, which fuel its illicit weapons programs. The proposed sanctions come in response to Pyongyang's November 28 launch of a newly developed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) called a Hwasong-15, which the North Koreans claim is capable of delivering nuclear warheads anywhere in the continental United States.  It was Pyongyang's third ICMB test this year and its 20th ballistic missile launch of 2017. The United States drafted the text and negotiated it with China. It was circulated to the wider council membership on Thursday, and a vote is scheduled Friday at 1 p.m. EST (1800 UTC). "We hope there will be a consensus and vote — the sooner,…

Papa John's founder John Schnatter will step down as CEO next month, about two months after he publicly criticized the NFL leadership over national anthem protests by football players — comments for which the company later apologized. Schnatter will be replaced as chief executive by Chief Operating Officer Steve Ritchie on Jan. 1, the company announced Thursday. Schnatter, who appears in the chain's commercials and on its pizza boxes, and is the company's biggest shareholder, remains chairman of the board. Earlier this year, Schnatter blamed slowing sales growth at Papa John's — an NFL sponsor and advertiser — on the outcry surrounding players kneeling during the national anthem. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick had kneeled during the national anthem to protest what he said was police mistreatment of…

Construction of a long-awaited Thai-Chinese railway line that will link Thailand, Laos and China officially began on Thursday with a ground-breaking ceremony in the northeastern Thai province of Nakhon Ratchasima. The first phase of the project, a 250-km (155 mile) high-speed rail line linking Bangkok to Nakhon Ratchasima, is expected to be operational in 2021. The full line is expected to stretch 873 km (542 miles), linking Thailand and Laos at the northeastern Thai city of Nong Khai. It is part of Beijing's ambitious Belt and Road infrastructure drive, which aims to build a modern-day "Silk Road" connecting China to economies in Southeast and Central Asia by land and the Middle East and Europe by sea. But the Thailand project, which began in 2014 with formal talks, has been beset…

This remote town in Peru's southern Andes was supposed to serve as a model for how companies can help communities uprooted by mining. Named Nueva Fuerabamba, it was built to house around 1,600 people who gave up their village and farmland to make room for a massive, open-pit copper mine. The new hamlet boasts paved streets and tidy houses with electricity and indoor plumbing, once luxuries to the indigenous Quechua-speaking people who now call this place home. The mine's operator, MMG Ltd, the Melbourne-based unit of state-owned China Minmetals Corp, threw in jobs and enough cash so that some villagers no longer work. But the high-profile deal has not brought the harmony sought by villagers or MMG, a testament to the difficulty in averting mining disputes in this mineral-rich nation.…

The United States needs to encourage domestic production of a handful of minerals critical for the technology and defense industries, and stem reliance on China, U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Tuesday. Zinke made the remarks at the Interior Department as he unveiled a report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which detailed the extent to which the United States is dependent upon foreign competitors for its supply of certain minerals. The report identified 23 out of 88 minerals that are priorities for U.S. national defense and the economy because they are components in products ranging from batteries to military equipment. The report found that the United States was 100 percent net import reliant on 20 mineral commodities in 2016, including manganese, niobium, tantalum and others. In 1954, the U.S.…

Greece's parliament on Tuesday approved the 2018 state budget, which includes further austerity measures beyond the official end of the country's third international bailout next summer.    All 153 lawmakers from the left-led governing coalition backed the budget measures in a late vote, while the 144 opposition lawmakers present rejected them. Three were absent from the vote. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras promised that the country would smoothly exit the eight-year crisis that has seen its economy shrink by a quarter and unemployment hit highs previously unseen during peacetime. Tsipras argued that international money markets — on whose credit Greece will have to depend once its rescue loan program ends — are showing strong confidence in the country's prospects, with the yield on Greek government bonds dropping to a pre-crisis low…

One of the most prominent people convicted in Latin America's largest corruption scandal left prison Tuesday for house arrest after serving two-and-a-half years behind bars at a time when many Brazilians are becoming disillusioned with the graft investigation once hailed as a political game-changer. Marcelo Odebrecht's release came a day after Brazil's top court halted investigations into several lawmakers, underscoring the limitations of the "Car Wash" investigation that uncovered nearly institutionalized corruption involving senior politicians in several countries and several major Brazilian companies. Odebrecht, who was CEO of his family's company of the same name, cooperated with prosecutors and testified that executives routinely paid bribes and made illegal campaign contributions to politicians in exchange for favors. He was originally sentenced to 19 years in prison but, once he began cooperating,…

A planned massive Republican tax overhaul has led Wall Street strategists to revise their 2018 corporate earnings forecasts sharply higher, but the jury is out on how long the accelerating effect on profits will last. The tax bill, which the U.S. House of Representatives approved on Tuesday, will cut the corporate income tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, beginning Jan. 1, and would be the biggest positive factor for U.S. earnings in 2018. A Senate vote was still awaited. Although there is a wide range of profit estimates for 2018, the expected tax plan benefit has strategists now calling for double-digit profit gains in 2018 over 2017, compared with their forecasts for mid-single-digit gains without the tax cuts. S&P 500 earnings growth for 2017 was an estimated 11.9…

Nepali migrant workers are trapped in a vicious cycle of debt and exploitation due to a failure by authorities to crack down on recruitment firms that charge illegally high fees for jobs abroad, human rights group Amnesty International said on Monday. Wages sent back by an estimated four million Nepalis - mainly employed working in construction or as domestic workers in the Middle East, Malaysia and South Korea - make up more than a quarter of the poor Himalayan nation's gross domestic product. Nepal permits recruitment agencies to charge 10,000 rupees ($100) from each migrant as a service charge for finding them work with foreign firms, who pay for workers' travel and visa. But a survey of over 400 Nepali migrants by Amnesty found workers are not only forced up…

How do you explain the abstract concepts of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies? With adorable, digital kittens of course. CryptoKitties, an online game and marketplace featuring virtual kittens, has become an entry point for curious outsiders looking to dabble in cryptocurrencies - decentralized digital monies that rely on blockchain technology to enable peer-to-peer transactions. Company reps say their main goal is to teach people how to use blockchains; open, distributed ledgers of cryptocurrency transactions. Bitcoin is the most famous cryptocurrency and blockchain protocol, but there are others. “As part of launching this project, we were really trying to educate people who haven’t perhaps bought Ethereum before, people who aren’t in the crypto space.” said Elsa Wilk, marketing director at Axiom Zen, the Canadian tech consultancy that created CryptoKitties. That may have…

A Supreme Court justice on Monday approved an agreement to compensate bank depositors for losses caused by government policies several decades ago, settling more than a million legal disputes that have hung over Brazil's banking system since the 1980s. Depositors who lost their savings due to economic programs applied in the 1980s and 1990s to tackle hyperinflation will have two years to sign up for the compensation deal, Justice Dias Toffoli ruled. Those who are owed up to 5,000 reais ($1,520) will be fully reimbursed, while those with larger liabilities will get between 8 percent and 19 percent less. Around 60 percent of the depositors covered by the agreement are owed up to 5,000 reais, according to the Brazilian Federation of Banks (Febraban). The total value of reimbursements will depend…

Another security based on the price of bitcoin, the digital currency that has soared in value and volatility this year, began trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Sunday. The CME Group, which owns the exchange, opened up bitcoin futures for trading at 6 p.m. EST on Sunday. The futures contract that expires in January opened higher at $20,650, then declined steadily. The futures were trading at $18,775 at 9:00 p.m. EST, down $725. The CME futures, like the ones that CME competitor the Cboe started trading last week, do not involve actual bitcoin. The CME's futures will track an index of bitcoin prices pulled from several private exchanges. The Cboe's futures track the price of bitcoin prices on the particular private exchange known as Gemini. Each contract sold on…

Vietnam is set to auction up to a $5 billion stake in top brewer Sabeco on Monday, with Thai Beverage the only potential bidder to have expressed interest in a majority stake. The keenly anticipated sale of the state-owned maker of Bia Saigon gained momentum in recent months after being hampered for years by political resistance, fickle policy-making and complications over valuations. The government has set a minimum sale price of 320,000 dong or $14.10 a share for Saigon Beer Alcohol Beverage Corp (Sabeco), whose shares have nearly trebled to 309,200 dong since its listing a year ago. Thai Beverage, through a partly owned Vietnam unit, is the only company that has expressed interest in owning more than 25 percent of the company, which has roughly 40 percent of the…

U.S. President Donald Trump continued to tout the Republican tax bill Saturday, saying "everybody's going to benefit" if it is signed into law. "But I think the greatest benefit is going to be for jobs and for the middle class, middle income," Trump said to reporters on the White House South Lawn before departing for the presidential Camp David retreat in Maryland. Republican Senate and House negotiators finalized a final version Friday of their compromise $1.5 trillion tax bill, after appeasing Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who demanded an expansion of the child tax credit that provides benefits for low-income families. Republican lawmakers hammered out differences Wednesday between the House and Senate versions, and both chambers of Congress plan to vote on the final bill early next week, with the intent…

British Finance Minister Philip Hammond said Saturday it is likely Britain will want to negotiate a bespoke arrangement for a future trade deal with the European Union, rather than copying existing arrangements like the Canada-EU deal. The European Union agreed Friday to move Brexit talks onto trade and a transition pact, but some leaders cautioned that the final year of divorce negotiations before Britain’s exit could be fraught with peril. Summit chairman Donald Tusk said the world’s biggest trading bloc would begin “exploratory contacts” with Britain on what London wants in a future trade relationship, as well as starting discussion on the immediate post-Brexit transition. No off-the-shelf deal Speaking in Beijing, Hammond it was probably not helpful to think in terms of off-the-shelf models like the Canada-EU deal. “We have…