Search - covid 19

The ongoing war in Ukraine and the fighting in Gaza must not distract the world from our collective priorities: reducing our CO2 emissions, aiming for carbon neutrality by 2050, preserving biodiversity, and fighting poverty and inequality.This is the doctrine France is implementing at an international level, through the Paris Pact for People and the Planet and the One Planet summits. The cornerstone of our strategy must be to speed up the ecological transition as well as the fight against poverty. After all, it is now crystal clear that no country will work to protect the planet if the price it must pay leads its citizens into a socioeconomic dead-end.The world’s most advanced economies, which have also been the main CO2 emitters since the industrial revolution, must move away from fossil fuels. If we want to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement, this is nonnegotiable.Science has set the trajectory: we must move away from coal by 2030, from oil by 2045, and from gas by 2050. While the G7 countries bear the greatest responsibility, China, which is now the second-largest emitter in history, must be fully committed, too.The threat posed by coal must be addressed first. Today, the 2,000 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity emit enough CO2 to take us above 1.5C. While the International Energy Agency recommends withdrawing 92GW per year, 500GW of additional capacity is already planned.While it is the G7’s responsibility to move away from coal by 2030 (France will have done so in 2027), emerging economies are now the biggest coal consumers. In these countries, we need to speed up the financing of renewables, as well as nuclear power, which, as a manageable and a decarbonized energy source, must play a key role.We must also put private financing and trade at the service of the Paris agreement. The cost of investment must be higher for players in the fossil-fuel sector. We need a green interest rate and a brown interest rate. Similarly, we need a climate clause in our trade agreements, because we cannot simultaneously demand that our industries become greener while supporting the liberalisation of international trade in polluting products.For the most vulnerable countries, we must create conditions that enable them to finance their climate-change mitigation and adaptation efforts and access the green technologies that are the new engines of growth. This implies going further than traditional “official development assistance” and doing for vulnerable countries what rich countries did for themselves during the Covid-19 pandemic: pursue an unorthodox fiscal and monetary policy.The results are already there: in two years, following the initiative we took in Paris in the spring of 2021, we have released over $100bn in special drawing rights (SDRs, the International Monetary Fund’s reserve asset) for vulnerable countries. By activating this “dormant asset,” we are extending 20-year loans at near-zero interest rates to finance climate action and pandemic preparedness in the poorest countries. We have begun to change debt rules to suspend payments for such countries, should a climate shock occur. And we have changed the mandate of multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank, so that they take more risks and mobilise more private money.We are going to continue working on this, including within the framework of the new loss and damage fund, where we must mobilise new private insurance mechanisms in the face of climate risk. We will start from the specific needs of the hardest-hit countries. In the first half of 2024, France and Bangladesh will sign an agreement to finance climate-change adaptation and loss and damage, with the French development agency contributing €1bn ($1.1bn) in investment, and the IMF extending up to $1bn worth of SDRs in new loans.This also implies identifying, on a global scale, governance mechanisms for the most crucial challenges we will have to face in the coming years, access to water being one of the most pressing. In this regard, France and Kazakhstan will convene a One Water Summit during the United Nations General Assembly in September 2024.Moreover, we must focus on building the basis of a “bio-economy” that will pay for the services provided by nature. Nature is our best technology to sequester carbon on a large scale. The countries with the most important carbon and biodiversity reserves, especially in the three main tropical forest basins, must obtain much greater resources, determined on a country-by-country basis, in exchange for their stewardship of these vital reserves. France has already launched three contracts of this type at COP28, with Papua New Guinea, the Republic of the Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.But reform of the voluntary carbon market is essential. We need to create an international carbon and biodiversity exchange that will allow governmental and private actors to organise voluntary carbon credit swaps, based on sufficiently ambitious criteria to avoid greenwashing, and to remunerate local communities.The ocean is our most important carbon sink, and we must protect it. France and Costa Rica will convene the third United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice in June 2025, with the aim of updating international law, including on the prohibition of plastic pollution and on protection of the deep sea and seabed. These reforms would also enable the development of national strategies for seaboard protection by countries with exclusive economic zones.Finally, we will not succeed if we cannot reform the World Bank and the IMF, which play a prominent role in establishing the norms and financing the green transition on a global scale. Eighty years after their creation, these institutions remain underfunded, relative to the size of the global economy and population, and emerging and developing countries continue to be shut out of their governance. But we will not be able to agree on goals and financing until every country negotiating is on an equal footing. To this end, we must review Bretton Woods governance, and ask emerging countries to assume their share of accountability in financing global public goods.— Project SyndicateEmmanuel Macron is president of France.

A string of emerging economies are in default, or teetering on the edge, and need to strike deals with creditors or refinance their debt.Egypt, North Africa’s largest economy, needs to repay some $100bn of hard-currency debt over the next five years, and Cairo spent 45% of revenues on interest payments in the year to June. Ethiopia, East Africa’s most populous nation, took a dual hit from Covid-19 and a two-year civil war wreaking havoc on its economy and knocking its nascent textiles industry.Ghana defaulted on most external debt in late 2022 amidst its worst economic crisis in a generation, becoming the fourth country to seek a Common Framework debt rework; and Kenya’s high public debt and lack of access to bond markets concerns creditors.Pakistan needs upwards of $22bn to service external debt and pay bills in fiscal 2024, while Sri Lanka defaulted on international debt in May 2022 after Covid-19 drained its tourism-dependent economy of cash for imported food, fuel and medicine.Principle payments of emerging markets’ sovereign Eurobonds will spike to $78.4bn in 2024, from $43.6bn last year, according to JPMorgan.The bill due for lower-rated emerging sovereigns will surge to over $65bn in total for 2024 and 2025 combined, up from just over $8bn this year.Countries will need to either find the cash to pay, or a new lending source to refinance.Investors, however, say the US Federal Reserve’s recent pivot away from monetary tightening is likely to unleash more cash for riskier assets, including emerging market debt.The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the debt problem that was already weighing down the world’s poorer countries. In response, richer countries, meeting in the Group of 20 forum in 2020, created a coordinated plan for debt relief called the Common Framework.It was designed to reflect a new reality: China now lends far more to developing countries than the mostly Western nations of the Paris Club, the body that had overseen international debt negotiations for decades.As 2023 ended, the Common Framework had yet to produce any meaningful relief. Economists worry that a failure to resolve the stalemate could lead to or deepen economic stagnation for large swaths of the globe.In 2022, developing countries faced a collective debt stock of about $9tn, with annual service payments hitting a record $443bn, according to the World Bank, which estimates that the service burden will continue to grow.The situation has left roughly 60% of the world’s 75 poorest countries in or near debt distress.The Common Framework was designed to co-ordinate debt relief offered by public and private lenders and set debt treatment standards across both traditional Western lenders and major new creditors like China, India and Saudi Arabia.The plan was for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to analyse the needs of any country that sought assistance, which would pave the way for debt deals from governmental or government-backed lenders. The hope was that private lenders like banks would sign on using similar terms.But as of December, no country had received substantive relief through the Common Framework.Despite its rising economic clout, China still has a limited role in the IMF and the World Bank, long dominated by Europe and the US.The deeper problems in the emerging economies stem from the excessive financialisation of the global economy that has occurred since the 1990s.The resultant policy dilemmas – rising inequality, greater volatility, reduced room to manage the real economy – are seen continuing to preoccupy policymakers in the decades ahead.The World Bank and others have warned about a “lost decade” for poorer countries, as debt payments and lack of access to capital diminish resources that could otherwise be used for education, health and the environment.

More than 70 national elections are scheduled for 2024, including in eight of the ten most populous countries. But one group is likely to be significantly underrepresented: women. A major reason is the disproportionate amount of abuse female politicians and candidates receive online, including threats of rape and violence, and the rise of artificial intelligence, which can be used to create explicit deepfakes, is only compounding the problem.And yet, over the past year, platforms such as Meta, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube have de-emphasised content moderation and rolled back policies that previously kept hate, harassment, and lies in check. According to a new report, this has fuelled a “toxic online environment that is vulnerable to exploitation from anti-democracy forces, white supremacists, and other bad actors.”Online attacks against women in politics are already on the rise. Four out of five female parliamentarians have been subjected to psychological violence such as bullying, intimidation, verbal abuse, or harassment, while more than 40% have been threatened with assault, sexual violence, or death.The 2020 election in the United States was particularly revealing. A recent analysis of congressional candidates found that female Democrats received ten times more abusive comments on Facebook than their male counterparts. And immediately after presidential candidate Joe Biden named Kamala Harris as his running mate, false claims about Harris were being shared at least 3,000 times per hour on Twitter.Similar trends have been documented in India, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe. Minority women face the worst abuse, together with those who are highly visible in the media or speak out on feminist issues. In India, one in every seven tweets about female politicians is problematic or abusive, with Muslim women and women belonging to marginalised castes bearing the brunt of the vitriol.The disproportionate targeting of women discourages them from running for office, drives them out of politics, or leads them to disengage from online discourse in ways that harm their political effectiveness – all of which weaken democracy. In Italy, “threats of rape are used to intimidate women politicians and push them out of the public sphere,” says Laura Boldrini, an Italian politician who served as president of the country’s Chamber of Deputies, adding that political leaders themselves often issue these menacing remarks. This creates a vicious cycle, as a dearth of women in government has been shown to result in policies that are less effective in reducing violence against women.Tech companies should take four steps to counter this trend. For starters, they should publish guidelines on what constitutes hate speech and threatening and intimidating harassment on their platforms. Some tech giants have included, and even provided examples of, gendered hate speech in their policies. Google’s YouTube policy is one example.Second, platforms need to reinvest in effective content moderation for all countries, not just the US and Europe. That means using a combination of human capital and improved automated systems (during the Covid-19 pandemic, when tech companies relied more heavily on algorithms, campaigners in France noticed that hate speech on Twitter increased by more than 40%). Equally important is training human moderators to identify online violence against women in politics and more equitable investment in effective content moderation. Until now, the unpleasant job of finding and deleting offensive content has typically been outsourced to regions where labour is least expensive.Third, “safety by design” principles should be embedded in new products and tools. That could mean building mechanisms that “increase friction” for users and make it harder for gendered hate speech and disinformation to spread in the first place. Companies should improve their risk-assessment practices prior to launching products and tools or introducing them in a new market. Investing in innovation, such as the ParityBOT, which serves as a monitoring and counterbalancing tool by detecting problematic tweets about women candidates and responding with positive messages, will also be important.Lastly, independent monitoring by researchers or citizen groups would help societies keep track of the problem and how well tech platforms are handling it. Such monitoring would require companies to provide access to their data on the number and nature of complaints received, disaggregated by gender, country, and responses.In the context of social-media companies’ rollback of content policies and lower investment in moderation, it is important to note that the percentage of women in tech leadership roles is currently 28% and falling. If, as in politics, female tech leaders are more likely to address violence against women, this trend could create a similar vicious cycle.Crucially, governments must also take steps to prevent gendered online abuse from undermining democracy. Tunisia and Bolivia have outlawed political violence and harassment against women, while Mexico recently enacted a law that punishes, with up to nine years in prison, those who create or disseminate intimate images or videos of women or attack women on social networks.In the UK, legal guidelines issued in 2016 and in 2018 enable the prosecution of internet trolls who create derogatory hashtags, engage in virtual mobbing (inciting people to harass others), or circulate doctored images. In 2017, Germany introduced a law that requires platforms to remove hate speech or illegal content within 24 hours or risk millions of dollars in fines (a similar measure was struck down in France for fear of censorship).But even when laws exist, female politicians speak of “virtually constant” abuse and report that law-enforcement officials do not take online threats and abuse seriously. In the UK, for example, less than 1% of cases reported to Scotland Yard’s online-hate-crime unit have resulted in charges. Police officers and judges need better training to understand how existing laws can be applied to online violence against female politicians; too many think that it is simply “part of the job.”Tech companies and governments must act now to ensure that both men and women can participate equally in this year’s elections. Unless they do, representative democracies will become less representative and less democratic. — Project SyndicateNgaire Woods is Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.

As Western democracies become increasingly polarised, rural and small-town voters are regularly pitted against their counterparts in larger urban centres. While this is not a new phenomenon – and certainly not the only factor affecting voting patterns – the rural-urban divide is a significant driver of today’s culture wars. This dynamic, which economist Andrés Rodríguez-Pose evocatively described as the “revenge of the places that don’t matter,” suggests that the ongoing populist surge largely reflects geographic disparities.How did the rural-urban divide come to dominate so many countries’ political discourse and development, and how can we address it? Part of the answer lies in structural economic shifts that have made urban living more lucrative. In today’s knowledge-based economy, where value is increasingly derived from intangible sources, gathering people in densely populated urban areas often results in positive spillovers, creating so-called “economies of agglomeration” that offset the inconveniences of city life. While cities have clusters of low-paid service jobs and pockets of severe poverty, they are magnets for highly paid professionals and university graduates.The economic upheavals of the past 15 years – the Great Recession of 2008-09, fiscal austerity, the Covid-19 pandemic, the energy crisis, and the inflationary surge of 2022 – have accelerated this trend. People living in “places that don’t matter” have seen quality jobs disappear, public services eroded, and their economic prospects rapidly diminish. Seen in this light, today’s populist backlash is hardly surprising, especially when many politicians are part of the thriving urban elite.To address these ongoing failures and weaken the appeal of populist narratives, Western countries must revitalise small towns and rural communities and ensure universal access to essential public services. But this must be part of a broader national effort that unites citizens from all segments of society around the common cause of enhancing collective well-being.In a recent report that Diane Coyle co-authored with Stella Erker and Andy Westwood, we document deep disparities in access to essential amenities such as buses, broadband, hospitals, and higher education across English local authorities have been documented and how to revive small towns and rural areas in the United Kingdom by investing in universal basic infrastructure explored. What is also identified are infrastructure and services – both public and privately owned – that are vital for enabling residents to commute to work or medical appointments, provide education for their children, maintain good health, and enjoy a decent quality of life.The provision of public services and infrastructure has a greater redistributive effect than taxation. Hence, by ensuring access to a basic level of infrastructure and services, we can provide everyone with opportunities to improve their own lives and those of their families.While governments are responsible for delivering public services and infrastructure such as roads and ports, utility-type services like broadband are often provided by private companies. Public infrastructure, however, has been grossly underfunded for decades, and private infrastructure is increasingly exploited by asset managers and private equity owners who hike service charges and cut back on maintenance. This has contributed to a widespread sense that broad social and economic progress stopped in the late twentieth century.Given the corrosive effect of this narrative, it is crucial to reinvest in the future. As Robert J Shiller and others have argued, positive narratives have the power to improve economic outcomes. A shared sense of optimism can boost public morale and fuel GDP growth.This is especially true in today’s complex economies. As economist Paul Seabright notes in his 2004 book The Company of Strangers, humans today are increasingly interdependent. Economic production is now spread across vast and dispersed ecosystems, and virtually every item we use, from our shirts to our smartphones, comprises materials and components sourced from many countries. Many of us regularly purchase items from strangers online, despite having no idea who they are or where they live, and, for the most part, this process unfolds without a hitch.But the transition to an intangible digital economy has underscored the complexity and fragility of these economic ecosystems. The rise of data-driven digital services has made our lives increasingly intertwined, resulting in network effects that make individual gains contingent on the actions of others. Consider, for example, a ride-sharing platform: the more drivers there are, the more users benefit, and vice versa.Ultimately, the case for prioritising a country’s collective interests over profits is primarily political, given that deeply polarised societies such as ours often face a bleak future. Still, there is an economic case to be made for investing in public services and the infrastructure that sustains them.

China’s “reunification” with Taiwan is inevitable, President Xi Jinping said in his New Year’s address yesterday, striking a stronger tone than he did last year with less than two weeks to go before the Chinese-claimed island elects a new leader.Taiwan’s January 13 presidential and parliamentary elections are happening at a time of fraught relations between Beijing and Taipei.China has been ramping up military pressure to assert its sovereignty claims over democratically governed Taiwan.China considers Taiwan to be its “sacred territory” and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under Chinese control, though Xi made no mention of military threats in his speech carried on state television.“The reunification of the motherland is a historical inevitability,” Xi said, though the official English translation of his remarks published by the Xinhua news agency used a simpler phrase: “China will surely be reunified.”“Compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” he added.The official English translation wrote “all Chinese” rather than “compatriots”.Last year, Xi said only that people on either side of the strait are “members of one and the same family” and that he hoped people on both sides will work together to “jointly foster lasting prosperity of the Chinese nation”.China has taken particular exception to current Vice-President Lai Ching-te, the presidential candidate for Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Party (DPP) and leading in opinion polls by varying margins, saying that he is a dangerous separatist.Responding late on Saturday to Lai’s comments at a live televised presidential debate earlier in the day, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said that Lai had “exposed his true face as a stubborn ‘worker for Taiwan independence’ and destroyer of peace across the Taiwan Strait”.“His words were full of confrontational thinking,” spokesperson Chen Binhua said in a statement.Since 2016 – when President Tsai Ing-wen took office – the DPP-led government has promoted separatism and is the “criminal mastermind” in obstructing exchanges across the strait and damaging the interests of Taiwan’s people, Chen said.“As the leading figure of the DPP authorities and current DPP chairman, Lai Ching-te cannot escape his responsibility for this,” he added.Tsai and Lai have repeatedly offered talks with China, but have been rebuffed.The DPP says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future, as does Lai’s main opponent in the election, Hou Yu-ih from Taiwan’s largest opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT).The KMT traditionally favours close ties with China but strongly denies being pro-Beijing.Hou has also denounced Lai as an independence supporter.The defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists who founded the People’s Republic of China. The Republic of China remains Taiwan’s formal name.Lai said on Saturday that the Republic of China and People’s Republic of China “are not subordinate to each other”, wording he and Tsai have used previously which has also riled Beijing.In his address yesterday, Xi also said that china’s economy had weathered a storm and grown “more resilient and dynamic”.Xi has endured a challenging 2023 at the helm of the world’s second-largest economy.His administration has struggled to sustain an economic rebound since rapidly dumping its onerous zero-Covid policy a year ago.However, said that 2023 had seen the economy “weather the storm” and become “more resilient and dynamic than before”.Record youth unemployment and a persistent debt crisis in the crucial property sector have also hemmed in China’s growth.Official figures released yesterday showed a nationwide factory activity decline deepened in December, the third straight month of contraction.Analysts have said Beijing may struggle to achieve its stated annual growth target of around 5%, the lowest such ambition in years.

South Korean automobile exports to the United States exceeded 1 million units during the January-November period, already beating its previous all-time annual record from eight years ago, industry data showed Sunday.In the first 11 months of this year, South Korea's car shipments to the US reached 1,172,612 units, according to the data from the Korea Automobile & Mobility Association.The annual tally is expected to grow when counting December shipments. The 11-month total is already larger than the previous annual record of 1,066,164 units in 2015.Auto shipments to the US, which peaked in 2015, later dropped to as low as the 800,000-unit range in 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic and protectionist US trade policy introduced during the former US President Donald Trump administration. (QNA)

All Eurostar trains were cancelled yesterday due to flooded tunnels in southern England, causing misery for New Year travellers in the second major disruption in 10 days. The latest cancellations follow a wildcat strike by French unions days before Christmas and weather warnings from the UK’s Met Office for rain, snow and ice across large parts of the country.Hundreds of travellers were left stranded at London’s St Pancras station after Eurostar cancelled all services for the entire day. Newly-weds Nicole Carrera, 29, and her husband Christopher, 31, visiting from New York said their plans to spend New Year’s Eve at Disneyland Paris had been “ruined”.“Now we won’t get into Paris tomorrow until about 6pm,” Carrera said, adding that instead they would just walk around the French capital. After earlier cancelling all trains up to 4pm UK time (1600 GMT), Eurostar said that flooding in two tunnels had “not improved”.“Eurostar has therefore had to take the unfortunate decision to cancel all services for the rest of the day,” it said. It added that it was “extremely sorry” for the impact it would have on customers at “a vital time to get home at the end of the festive season”. Another couple, Christina David, 25, and Georgina Benyamin, 26, from Sydney, had planned to make Paris their final stop in Europe before flying home.David said she felt “frustrated, angry, sad”, adding that “there were lots of people crying” and that they now had nowhere to stay.The services were cancelled after tunnels near Ebbsfleet International station in Kent were flooded.Eurostar runs services from London to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam via Ashford, midway between London and the southern English coast. In a statement, Southeastern Railway said the flooding meant “all lines are blocked”.Simon Shaw, 36, and his wife Heather, 37, from central England, had been due to travel to the French Alps for a skiing holiday with friends and family. “We just arrived and saw everything was cancelled this morning...it was chaos,” Simon Shaw said. The disruption comes after French unions ended a wildcat strike that had stranded holidaymakers and held up freight just days before Christmas.The surprise walkout by workers that blocked the tunnel sparked hours of chaos at rail hubs in Paris and London. Eurostar train services resumed on December 22 after an agreement was reached, with unions saying negotiations had yielded “results that satisfy us”.Saturday’s cancelled services top off a year of travel disruption for UK travellers due to strikes, storms and other problems. Travellers to France in April endured waiting times of up to 16 hours at Dover due to larger than expected numbers and weather conditions.The then Interior Minister Suella Braverman denied the delays were a consequence of Brexit. In August, flights to and from the UK were hit by a technical fault affecting air traffic control systems while in November Storm Ciaran saw ferry crossings and flights cancelled.More than a year of walk-outs by rail workers over pay and conditions amid a cost of living crisis has also impacted travellers.Although the RMT rail union last month said its members had voted in favour of a pay deal, the Aslef union, which represents drivers, has yet to come to an agreement. Eurostar is owned 55.75% by French state-owned SNCF Voyageurs. It almost went bankrupt during the Covid-19 pandemic but was saved with a 290mn-euro ($320.6mn) bailout from shareholders including the French government.

Novak Djokovic called Australia his “happy place” on Saturday as he prepared to kick off his season at the United Cup with a tricky clash against China’s fast-improving Zhang Zhizhen.The world number one holds no grudges heading into the mixed team event nearly two years after being refused entry to the country over his stance on Covid-19 vaccinations.“Always felt like...(Australia) was my happy place where I felt great, other than that situation two years ago where obviously it wasn’t really enjoyable,” he said.“But other than that, I have always enjoyed myself, played the best tennis, and so my feelings coming into Australia this year are really positive.”The 36-year-old said he is looking forward to facing the 58th-ranked Zhang in Sunday’s group tie in Perth.Djokovic is targeting a record 11th Australian Open title next month, but his focus for now is on Zhang, vowing to give “always 100 percent”.China laid down a marker on Saturday with a defeat of the Czech Republic, which featured Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova.“I never faced Zhang,” he said. “I think he now is probably the most successful Chinese male player of all time.“That’s great, as well, because we want to see the men’s tennis in China picking up. They are a strong team, very strong team.”But the 24-time Grand Slam winner warned: “Hopefully I can start the new season with a win.”The Serbs, trained by former player and Djokovic friend Viktor Troicki, have been in the city for several days trying to acclimatise.“Australia is not really around the corner for us Europeans, so we need a little bit of time to get used to the time difference,” said Djokovic.“Obviously different conditions here than any other place where I trained or played an exhibition recently.“China had a clean sweep today,” he added. “There’s a big Chinese community here and also Serbian community, so hopefully we can feel the energy in the stands and support for both nations.”

The year 2023 was dominated by positive macro surprises in the US, euro area and China, which led to better than expected global growth, although it started on a negative note, QNB said in an economic commentary.Market sentiment was downbeat as investors faced sharp drawdowns in both equities and bonds. This reflected the “stagflationary” shock that took hold in 2022, when much lower than expected growth was coupled with much higher than expected inflation, QNB noted.In fact, at the beginning of the year, Bloomberg consensus forecasts pointed to a tepid global growth of 2.1% in 2023, significantly below the long-term average of 3.4% and the 2.5% mark that commonly defines a “global recession.”However, global conditions proved more resilient than anticipated throughout the year. As a result, a recession indeed did not materialise, despite continuous monetary tightening, the US banking woes and industrial weakness across continents. Instead, growth expectations were consistently upgraded.The estimated global growth of close to 3% for 2023 is a significant achievement, particularly given the initial growth expectation of 2.1%. Importantly, the better than expected performance was broad-based, affecting all major economies, including the US, the euro area and China.QNB is discussing in the article three key drivers of 2023 that caused such upward revisions in global growth expectations.First, US growth proved to be significantly more robust than previously anticipated. With growth estimated to close at 2.4% for the year, the US economy has even re-accelerated from last year, when it ran close to its long-term trend at 2%. This took place despite the continuation of aggressive monetary policy tightening by the US Federal Reserve (Fed) throughout most of the year, which led the policy rate to the current 5.5% level.Robust consumption, in particular, which represents around 70% of the country’s GDP, helped to explain the US economic performance. US households are still benefiting from strong balance sheets, high levels of financials savings available for spending, and healthy income growth.As most US households re-financed their obligations at record low interest rates during the immediate post-pandemic period, they are mostly sheltered from the ongoing financial tightening. Therefore, consumption created a strong baseline for US GDP growth, QNB said.Second, in the euro area, while growth sharply slowed from a strong showing in 2022, a deep recession was avoided. The energy crisis proved to be less severe than previously anticipated, due to a mild winter, more effective energy saving mechanisms, and the accumulation of high energy inventories from the previous summer. Fiscal policies remained loose to support higher subsidies and direct transfers to more vulnerable industries, households and regions. Moreover, the European Central Bank (ECB) continued with its two-pronged policy of tightening rates to fight inflation while reallocating quantitative tools to provide a backstop to highly indebted euro area sovereigns, particularly in the southern part of the continent.This provided further financial stability, preventing the existing stagnant conditions from deteriorating into the sharper downturn that most analysts feared in the beginning of the year.Third, after a 2022 of subdued activity and “stop-and-go” Covid prevention policies, China fully re-opened this year. China also gradually started to pivot away from restrictive fiscal and monetary policies, a tightening of the real estate sector and the regulatory clampdowns across industries.Taken together, and despite some persistent negative sentiment amongst Chinese businesses and households about the economy, these pivots provided a partial re-igniting of activity in the country, leading to moderate growth of 5.2% in 2023, above the early consensus of 4.8%, QNB added.

The estimated global growth of close to 3 percent for 2023 is a significant achievement, particularly given the initial growth expectation of 2.1 percent. Importantly, the better-than-expected performance was broad-based, affecting all major economies, including the US, the Euro area and China, Qatar National Bank (QNB) said in its weekly commentary. In this article, QNB dived into three key drivers of 2023, First, US growth proved to be significantly more robust than previously anticipated. With growth estimated to close at 2.4 percent for the year, the US economy has even re-accelerated from last year, when it ran close to its long-term trend at 2 percent. This took place despite the continuation of aggressive monetary policy tightening by the US Federal Reserve (Fed) throughout most of the year, which led the policy rate to the current 5.5 percent level. QNB added that robust consumption, in particular, which represents around 70 percent of the countrys GDP, helped to explain the US economic performance. US households are still benefiting from strong balance sheets, high levels of financials savings available for spending, and healthy income growth. As most US households re-financed their obligations at record low interest rates during the immediate post-pandemic period, they are mostly sheltered from the ongoing financial tightening. Therefore, consumption created a strong baseline for US GDP growth. While the second factor is related to the Euro area, growth sharply slowed from a strong showing in 2022, a deep recession was avoided. The energy crisis proved to be less severe than previously anticipated, due to a mild winter, more effective energy saving mechanisms, and the accumulation of high energy inventories from the previous summer. The report pointed out that fiscal policies remained loose to support higher subsidies and direct transfers to more vulnerable industries, households, and regions. Moreover, the European Central Bank (ECB) continued with its two-pronged policy of tightening rates to fight inflation while reallocating quantitative tools to provide a backstop to highly indebted Euro area sovereigns, particularly in the southern part of the continent. This provided further financial stability, preventing the existing stagnant conditions from deteriorating into the sharper downturn that most analysts feared in the beginning of the year. Regarding the third factor, the report indicated that after a 2022 of subdued activity and "stop-and-go" Covid prevention policies, China fully re-opened this year. China also gradually started to pivot away from restrictive fiscal and monetary policies, a tightening of the real estate sector and the regulatory clampdowns across industries. Taken together, and despite some persistent negative sentiment amongst Chinese businesses and households about the economy, these pivots provided a partial re-igniting of activity in the country, leading to moderate growth of 5.2 percent in 2023, above the early consensus of 4.8 percent. (QNA)

World number one Novak Djokovic is hoping his latest trip to Australia is not the last, but admits that at 36 he is now taking it “season by season”.The Serbian superstar is the king of the Melbourne Park hard courts, winning the Australian Open a record 10 times, with an 11th in his sights next month.He gets his preparations under way in Perth at the ATP-WTA United Cup on Sunday after another incredible season that brought three more Grand Slam titles for a record 24. That included another Australian Open, taming Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-3, 7-6 (7-4), 7-6 (7-5) in the 2023 final. So dominant is Djokovic that he has won four of the last five Australian Opens with the only exception being 2022, when he was kicked out of the country for refusing to get the Covid-19 vaccine.“I hope it’s not the last, to be honest,” he said of being in Australia again after his arrival in Perth and a late training session.“Coming back to Australia, I’ve always felt like I played my best tennis over the years and had great support. So I’m not sure, I don’t really have a plan (for) what’s going to happen next year.“I’m kind of taking season by season to see how far it takes me.”Djokovic’s absence from the 2022 Australian Open saw long-time rival Rafael Nadal add to his only other title at Melbourne Park in 2009. Nadal, 37, returns after a year away from the sport at the Brisbane International this week following hip surgery, with the two greats set to cross paths in Australia one more time.Djokovic, who has largely escaped injuries over the years, said he expects the 22-time Grand Slam winner to be as competitive as ever. “He’s not a kind of a player that will come back to the tour just to play - let’s say - on a medium level, play a few matches,” Djokovic said at an exhibition match in Saudi Arabia before heading to Perth. “He wants to win titles, he wants to be the best, that’s why he is who he is: a legend of our sport.”

The Eiffel Tower, one of the world’s top tourist attractions, was closed on Wednesday after staff went on strike, the landmark’s operator said.The one-day stoppage on the 100th anniversary of the death of engineer Gustave Eiffel, who built the tower, was to protest against “the current way it is managed”, the hard-left CGT union said in a statement.The tower’s operator SETE was “headed for disaster”, it said.The CGT said management was running the Eiffel Tower according to a business model that was “too ambitious and unsustainable” and that it said was based on an inflated estimate of future visitor numbers, while under-estimating construction costs.SETE apologised to visitors, advising anyone with electronic tickets for on Wednesday “to check their email” for more information on their booking.The Eiffel Tower — Paris’s most famous landmark — attracts nearly 7mn visitors a year, around three-quarters of them foreigners, according to its website.During the Covid pandemic numbers dropped sharply due to closures and travel restrictions, but recovered to 5.9mn in 2022.The CGT said the tower’s management was basing its future budget on 7.4mn annual visitors, although “this level has never been reached”.Stephane Dieu, a CGT union rep at the Eiffel Tower, told AFP that the monument was not sufficiently funded to pay for “very large maintenance work” that was needed.“The Eiffel Tower is old, it’s an old lady of 130 years,” he said. “We have lifts here that were built in 1899.”Unless a financial deal could be made with the city of Paris, “we will run out of cash in 2025, despite our visitor numbers”.Some visitors who had hoped to go up the 1,083-feet structure expressed their frustration when they were turned away.“We came here this morning to visit this magnificent Eiffel Tower,” said Alessandro Monaco, 40, an Italian tourist.