According to the report, mostly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were bearing the brunt of the closures in 2023. Businesses, employing up to 250 people, accounted for vast majority of the total, with 55,435 closures. Meanwhile, medium and large firms with over 250 employees, also saw an increase in closures, the regulator noted, adding that their numbers reached 57, doubling from 2022. The negative trend became the most notable in the restaurant and hotel business, where the number of busts surged 44.6% year-on-year, while the sector of information and communication technologies saw an increase of 44.4%. The country’s agricultural sector was the only one recording a drop of 1.3% in the number of bankruptcy filings.
In December, the Financial Times reported that the number of corporate bankruptcies across the world exceeded levels reached during the 2008 global financial crisis. Analysts attribute the surge to higher key rates, as well as self-liquidation of so-called ‘zombie firms,’ which had pulled through the Covid era only thanks to government support.
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Sales of champagne in France have dropped by more than 20% this year due to skyrocketing prices for the sparkling beverage, the BFM Business TV channel reported on Tuesday.
The average price for a liter of champagne is reportedly hovering around €30 ($32), causing the French to opt for alternatives such as Alsace cremant and prosecco, which are up to five times cheaper. “Champagne is going through tough times because it’s too expensive for many French people,” Dominique Schelcher, CEO of retail cooperative Systeme U, told the media. “Other sparkling wines, such as Cremant d’Alsace, are on the rise.” Earlier this year, France’s Champagne Committee predicted that production of the sparkling beverage in the country would decline by about 6% to 130 million bottles by 2023, compared to 138.4 million bottles in 2022. The organization also forecast that champagne sales and exports would see a dramatic drop this year, pressured by inflation and a return to more typical trends after record demand in the past two years due to the lifting of pandemic-related curbs. If the pattern observed over the first 11 months of the current year continues in the coming weeks, champagne sales could decline to 110 million bottles for the whole of 2023, marking the lowest level in years. Food and energy have been particularly affected by inflation in France, which peaked at 6.3% in February, having been on the rise since the end of 2020. Although inflation has begun to ease in recent months, standing at 3.4% in November, food prices in France continue to increase.
A lack of water has created expensive challenges for companies as vessels have faced wait times of up to three weeks to pass through the canal. Container ships, which transport consumer goods, typically reserve passage well in advance, and have not faced long delays. But vessels carrying bulk commodities generally don’t book passage. The shipping snarl comes at the peak season for American crop exports, and the higher costs are threatening to dent demand for US corn and soy suppliers, who have already ceded market share to Brazil in recent years, the outlet said. A number of US grain exporters were forced to reroute their crop shipments to Asia from Gulf Coast ports to Pacific Northwest ports. But that came at a higher cost as those facilities source grain mostly via rail as opposed to the cheaper barge-delivered loads supplying Gulf Coast exporters.
“Commercial companies have been finding ways to navigate around the problem. But undoubtedly it costs the end-user more money,” said Dan Basse, president of Chicago-based consultancy AgResource Co. Only five US grain ships bound for Asia transited the Panama Canal in October compared to 34 ships last year, according to a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) report. “It’s causing quite a disruption both in expense and delay,” said Jay O’Neil, proprietor of HJ O’Neil Commodity Consulting. The current disruption of one of the world’s main maritime trade routes is the most severe in half a century of monitoring global shipping, he added. The Panama Canal Authority restricted vessel transits this autumn as a lack of water hampered canal operations. It cut daily transits to 22 vessels from the usual 35 and is planning to reduce transits to 18 by February. Further reductions could come if water levels remain low. Protracted disruptions at the canal could continue to impede grain shipments well into 2024, when the region’s wet season may begin to refill reservoirs and normalize shipping in April or May, analysts said.
According to Basha, the Russian bank recorded an exponential growth in transactions settled in national currencies passing through VTB’s infrastructure within the subsidiaries and branches abroad. She added that the bank also works in India and China and operates a chain of banks across the Commonwealth of Independent States.
The global trend towards using national currencies in cross-border trade instead of the US dollar began to gain momentum in 2022, shortly after Ukraine-related sanctions saw Russia cut off from the Western financial system and its foreign reserves frozen. The five current members of the BRICS group increased trade by 56% from 2017 to 2022, reaching some $422 billion worth of turnover last year, Bloomberg reported on Friday.
BRICS currently comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, but will be joined by Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE this coming January. The decision to accept the new members was made during the group’s August summit in Johannesburg. According to analyst estimates, the expanded group will represent nearly half of global output by 2040, doubling the share of the Group of Seven (G7), which consists of the US, Canada, UK, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan. Earlier this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that BRICS already outpaced the G7 states in terms of the purchasing power parity (PPP) of their populations. Experts project the combined gross domestic product (GDP) of the expanded BRICS in terms of PPP to amount to roughly $65 trillion. This would push the group’s share of global GDP up from the current 31.5% to 37%. In comparison, the share of the G7 is currently around 29.9%. BRICS was originally ‘BRIC’, a term coined by economists using the first letter of four nations – Brazil, Russia, India, and China – that were seen as having the potential to dominate the world economy in the 21st century. These countries first came together in 2006 and later welcomed South Africa as a new member, adding the letter ‘S’ to the acronym. Originally formed largely for the purpose of highlighting investment opportunities among members, the group has become instrumental in building a new “multipolar” world order that will help give a stronger voice to the Global South. In 2014, the BRICS group launched its own international lender, the New Development Bank (NDB), which was seen as an alternative to US-dominated financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. It provides funding for infrastructure and sustainable development projects. The bank formally opened for business in 2015, and was later joined by Bangladesh, the UAE, Egypt, and Uruguay. American tech companies have for years employed thousands of North Koreans who worked remotely to raise money for leader Kim Jong-un’s weapons program, according to the FBI.
Speaking at a press conference in St. Louis, Missouri, FBI special agent Jay Greenberg explained that Pyongyang supplies these workers with false documents allowing them to travel to countries including China and Russia. Once there, they apply for remote work with American companies, using VPN software to convince their employers that they are based in the US or third countries, and often hiring middlemen in other countries to sign contracts with employers. “This scheme is so prevalent that companies must be vigilant to verify whom they’re hiring,” Greenberg said. “At a minimum, the FBI recommends that employers take additional proactive steps with remote IT workers to make it harder for bad actors to hide their identities.” Greenberg did not reveal the names of any companies that hired these remote workers, but said that any firm hiring freelance IT staff “more than likely” had someone involved in the scam on its payroll. The scheme has been operational since at least 2019, the US State Department, Justice Department, and FBI warned in a report issued last year. In a separate statement on Wednesday, the Justice Department announced the seizure of $1.5 million and 17 domain names as part of an investigation into the scheme. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has asked Tesla CEO Elon Musk to pick Türkiye as the location for his electric vehicle company’s next gigafactory, according to state-owned Turkish news agency Anadolu.
During the meeting on Sunday, Erdogan described Ankara’s “technological breakthroughs as well as the ‘Digital Türkiye’ vision and the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy,” the country’s communications directorate said in a statement cited by Anadolu. Besides urging Musk to establish Tesla’s next factory in Türkiye, Erdogan also described other “opportunities for collaboration with SpaceX may arise through the steps taken and to be taken as part of Türkiye’s space program.” The US entrepreneur has yet to comment on the results of the talks. He was seen entering the Turkish House skyscraper across the street of the UN headquarters on Sunday, carrying his son on Sunday.Tesla currently has six ‘gigafactories’ in the US, Germany, and China, and is building a seventh in Mexico. The automaker could pick a location for its next major production facility by the end of 2023, Musk indicated earlier this year. Last month, the company expressed interest in building a factory in India to produce a low-cost EV model, after Musk pledged significant investment in India following a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the US in June. On the sidelines of the G20 Summit at the weekend, the United States and India unveiled proposals for what has been termed the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) with the backing of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Jordan, as well as officials from the EU.
The project, billed as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), seeks to build a commercial route from India through to Europe via the Arabian Peninsula, Israel, and then the Mediterranean Sea. Unsurprisingly, the project’s significance was inflated by the press as “historic” and a “blindside” challenge to Beijing that would doom China’s own mega-infrastructure project. But such conclusions are misleading, for many reasons. First, not every participant in this new initiative is squarely opposed to China and sees it, as the US does, as a zero-sum game. The Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan, are not anti-Beijing at all and are part of the BRI themselves. These countries, seeking to diversify their economies from dependency on oil revenue, are seeking new options to consolidate their wealth and thus courting large-scale foreign investments, including from China itself. They want to make themselves the “crossroads” of the world, they do not see such a project through the lens of containment or even geopolitical rivalry, but as creating more benefits for themselves. If Saudi Arabia can get Chinese and Indian cargo going through their country, that’s a double win – it never had to be an “either-or” arrangement for Riyadh.Second, parts of this new route are co-opted from China itself. The Haifa Port in Israel was, until recently, mostly under China’s control (India’s Adani Group acquired 70% of the stake in July), while Piraeus Port in Athens was controlled by Chinese shipping company, Cosco. The railroad infrastructure linking Greece with Central Europe is also part of the BRI. Another Chinese-owned commercial port exists on that same route in the Indian Ocean – Gwadar Port in Pakistan, which is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). This means that China itself can use multiple parts of the proposed transport route, and the IMEC project does not really undercut Beijing to the extent it’s being portrayed – and all of the co-opted countries would be pretty happy for that. Third, this project could end up in the growing graveyard of pledged, and failed, BRI alternatives, which come at a rate of approximately one per year. It wasn’t that long ago that the US and its allies in the G7 were launching Build Back Better W (B3W), or the Global Partnership for Infrastructure Investment, or the Blue Dot Network. None of these projects have the coordinated hierarchical superstructure that the Chinese state does, which allows projects to be cooperated and rolled out at breakneck pace, nor do they have the readily accessible financial resources to take off. If China seeks to build a high-speed railway, for example, the Communist Party can coordinate a bank to fund it, a railway company to build it, and a supply chain to stock it, all in one organized motion. The US does not have the power to do that, unless of course it comes down to military and defense spending, such as the bottomless pit of aid to Ukraine, and therefore is unable to compete. All other spending in Washington is part of the never-ending political battle in the Congress, where every single non-military penny must be fought for, tooth and nail, in a serious process. It’s why its own national infrastructure is increasingly shoddy, and, to use the above example for comparison, American high-speed railways remain underdeveloped by generous definition and non-existent compared to China.Finally, the IMEC is tiny compared to what the BRI aims to achieve. While IMEC wants to connect the Middle East to the Indian subcontinent (which also benefits China), the BRI has been working on not just one, but multiple economic corridors all over the planet. This includes comprehensively connecting the Eurasian landmass through huge railways spanning Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, making it possible for a train from Shanghai to arrive in London, but also creating a new route to the sea through Pakistan (CPEC), connecting South East Asia by land through new railroads going through Laos and into Thailand, as well as a route which spans West Asia through Turkey and another Indian subcontinent foray with the China-Myanmar Corridor. In conclusion, the US has been desperate to rival the Belt and Road Initiative, but has never been able to produce anything of the same scale or vision, all the while repeatedly ignoring the reality that transcontinental infrastructure routes are not “zero-sum games” because their results ultimately benefit everyone, which in China’s perspective has always been the focus of the BRI itself as a “win-win” initiative. Despite that, each new branded “alternative” comes with the same hype that “this time” China’s project has met its match. No, it really hasn’t, but thanks for creating a new route which Chinese cargo can use in the meantime. Chinese carmakers sold 1.76 million vehicles in foreign countries in the first five months of 2023, marking growth of 81.5% compared to the same period last year, according to statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).
Industry experts highlighted that the Chinese vehicle market has begun to accelerate since April, but cautioned that challenges remain for carmakers to achieve sales growth for the entire year. Statistics released by the CAAM on Friday showed that passenger vehicles accounted for the majority of exports from China. From January to the end of May, sales increased by 96.6% and totaled 1.46 million units. Meanwhile, exports of commercial cars amounted to 291,000 units, marking growth of 30.9%. Exports of new energy vehicles – including electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and hydrogen vehicles – increased by half to 457,000 units in the first five months of the year. The CAAM noted that the year-on-year growth rates are mostly attributed to lower comparative bases in 2022, which resulted from the considerable impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on production and sales. Car sales in China totaled 26.86 million units in 2022, marking modest growth of 2.1% compared to the previous year. Vehicle sales and production began to bounce back in June 2022, following Covid-19 outbreaks which effectively disrupted supply chains for almost two months and led to a shortage of components across the country, especially in Shanghai, which faced the most severe lockdowns.
Along with other EU members, Italy has been caught up in rising tensions between the US and China that have been exacerbated due to Beijing’s close ties with Moscow. “Given the state of relations between the US and China, we cannot remain an ally of the US and at the same time remain in the BRI,” Stefano Stefanini, Italy’s former ambassador to NATO, was cited as saying by the FT. “We have to try to negotiate a peaceful — or [the] least damaging possible — exit with the Chinese.” Bloomberg reported last month that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni intended to make an announcement on Italy’s participation in the BRI before the G7 summit in May, but was still undecided as to whether the memorandum of understanding should be scrapped or renewed. Reports earlier this week claimed that the Italian premier had previously assured US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy that her government was in favor of an exit. The purported plans have triggered deep concern in Italy’s business community, already reeling from sanctions on Russia, as the post-Covid reopening of the Chinese market is viewed as offering significant prospects. Italian exports to China saw a year-on-year surge of 92.5% in the first quarter of 2023, mostly boosted by a short-term increase in sales of pharmaceuticals.
“A possible withdrawal would lead to a cooling of bilateral relations at a historic moment in which companies and professionals are experiencing a frenzy and a desire to return to the Chinese market,” Mario Boselli, president of the Italy China Council Foundation, told the FT. The Belt and Road Initiative, unveiled by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, envisages linking China with Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas through a network of seaports, railways, roads, and industrial parks. It is expected to provide effective connectivity and boost China’s cooperation with more than 80 countries around the world. The main goal of the project is stated as promoting peace through trade and development. China and Saudi Arabia have discussed the creation of a free-trade zone between Beijing and the member states of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), Al-Arabiya reported on Friday, citing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“We have discussed the creation of a free-trade zone between China and the countries of the Persian Gulf,” the crown prince announced, speaking at a Chinese-Arab summit that kicked off in Riyadh. The Gulf states and Beijing are also planning to cooperate on solving “problems of food and energy security,” and “...exploring the possibility of cooperation with China in the field of supply chains,” bin Salman added. China's President Xi Jinping arrived in the Saudi capital on Wednesday, holding separate talks with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi the following day. He is attending the Sino-Arab summit that will reportedly bring together 30 leaders of Arab nations and organizations. China and Saudi Arabia have signed 12 agreements and memorandums of understanding on co-operation in hydrogen energy, judiciary, language education, housing, direct investment, broadcast media, digital economy, economic development, standardization, news coverage, tax administration, and anti-corruption. The collapse of the FTX exchange threatens to topple more cryptocurrency companies, BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink warned during the New York Times DealBook summit. BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, is among the financial firms affected by the bankruptcy of the Bahamas-based crypto exchange. Fink’s company manages $10 trillion in assets on behalf of clients ranging from huge pension funds to high-net-worth individuals.
“I actually believe most of the companies are not going to be around,” the long-time sceptic of cryptocurrencies stated. Fink also disclosed that his company had invested roughly $24 million in FTX. “Could we have been misled?” he asked. “Until we have more facts, I will not speculate.” According to the businessman, there were “misbehaviours of major consequences” at FTX, but he still sees potential in the technology underlying crypto, despite all the problems. The collapse of the FTX exchange has set off a chain reaction, triggering a crisis of confidence in the cryptocurrency market. This week, leading cryptocurrency lender BlockFi, which was financially entangled with FTX, filed for bankruptcy. Embattled brokerage Genesis is currently trying to avoid the same fate. Major exchange Kraken said on Wednesday it would lay off 1,100 employees despite having “no material exposure” to FTX. According to Bloomberg, more than 130 FTX-affiliated entities have already gone bust. The Argentine foreign ministry has confirmed that Chinese mining company Tibet Summit Resources will invest $2.2 billion in two lithium exploration projects in the South American country. The Shanghai-based company is expected to create around 10,000 jobs in Argentina, according to the statement released on Friday. The ministry noted that the plans were shared by Jianrong Huang, the president of Tibet Summit Resources, with Argentine ambassador Sabino Vaca Narvaja at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai. Under the plan, the Chinese firm will invest around $700 million into the Salar de Diablillos project in Salta province, which is expected to produce 50,000 tons of battery-grade lithium carbonate starting next year. Meanwhile, another $1.5 billion will be used for construction of a plant at the Arizaro salt flat, also located in Salta, which is expected to produce between 50,000 and 100,000 tons of lithium carbonate by 2024.
Argentina, along with Bolivia and Chile, is part of the Lithium Triangle, a region of the Andes that accounts for around 54% of the world’s white metal reserves. Globally, the South American nation is ranked the fourth biggest lithium producer, after Australia, Chile and China, according to a report from the Argentine Chamber of Mining Entrepreneurs (CAEM). Bitcoin fell sharply on Monday, as the sell-off across cryptocurrencies showed no sign of abating and US firm Celsius Network froze withdrawals. The cryptocurrency lending platform, which has around 1.7m customers, also froze swap and transfers between accounts, blaming “extreme conditions market conditions". In a blogpost, it said: “We are taking this action today to put Celsius in a better position to honour, over time, its withdrawal obligations. “We’re taking this necessary action for the benefit of our entire community in order to stabilise liquidity and operations while we take steps to preserve and protect assets. “There is a lot of work ahead as we consider various options, this process will take time, and there may be delays.”
Shortly afterwards, cryptocurrency exchange Binance halted the withdrawal of bitcoins. The company insisted customer funds were safe, and blamed the move on a backlog in the company’s systems. As at 1430 BST, bitcoin had lost 12% and was trading at its lowest levels since the end of 2020, tumbling below $24,000 to reach $23,375.9. Ethereum, the second largest token after bitcoin, was 16% lower, at $1,205.15. The value of the digital asset market has now fallen below $1trn to touch a low of $940bn. Like traditional assets, cryptocurrencies have become vulnerable to the weakening global economic outlook alongside concerns about the market's stability. The sell-off then ramped up on Friday, following weaker-than-expected inflation numbers in the US, and after ethereum’s developers announced that a long-awaited transition to version 2.0 had been postponed. Marcus Sotiriou, analyst at GlobalBlock, said: “Despite the fear, uncertainty and doubt the Celsius debacle has caused, the sell-off started at the beginning of the weekend after US inflation data was released. “I think this is a bigger contributor to the decline, as its results in a more hawkish Federal Reserve. It is now forced to remove more liquidity from the market, to bring down inflation. When liquidity is removed, risk-on asets are hit the hardest, which includes crypto.” Walid Koudmani, chief market analyst at xtb, said: “Almost all altcoins are wiping out gains made in 2020 as sentiment around cryptocurrencies was worsened on Friday by alarming data from the US economy. “It is not very surprising to see such a strong downturn as we have noticed an increased correlation over the last few years between traditional stocks, which have also tanked recently, and the cryptocurrency market.” US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer on Wednesday said it would sell its patented drugs on a not-for-profit basis to the world’s poorest countries, as part of a new initiative announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “The time is now to begin closing this gap” between people with access to the latest treatments and those going without, chief executive Albert Bourla told attendees at the exclusive Swiss mountain resort gathering.“An Accord for a Healthier World” focuses on five areas: infectious diseases, cancer, inflammation, rare diseases and women’s health-where Pfizer currently holds 23 patents, including the likes of Comirnaty and Paxlovid, its COVID vaccine and oral treatment. “This transformational commitment will increase access to Pfizer-patented medicines and vaccines available in the United States and the European Union to nearly 1.2 billion people,” Angela Hwang, group president of the Pfizer Biopharmaceuticals Group. Five countries: Rwanda, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal and Uganda have committed to joining, with a further 40 countries — 27 low-income and 18 lower-middle-income-eligible to sign bilateral agreements to participate. “Pfizer’s commitment sets a new standard, which we hope to see emulated by others,” Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame said. But he added that “additional investments and strengthening of Africa’s health systems and pharmaceutical regulators” would also be needed.
Seven years behind Developing countries experience 70 percent of the world’s disease burden but receive only 15 percent of global health spending, leading to devastating outcomes. Across sub-Saharan Africa, one child in 13 dies before their fifth birthday, compared to one in 199 in high-income countries. Cancer-related mortality rates are also far higher in low and middle-income countries-causing more fatalities in Africa every year than malaria. All this is set to a backdrop of limited access to the latest drugs. Essential medicines and vaccines typically take four to seven years longer to reach the poorest countries, and supply chain issues and poorly resourced health systems make it difficult for patients to receive them once approved. “The COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the complexities of access to quality healthcare and the resulting inequities,” said Hwang. “We know there are a number of hurdles that countries have to overcome to gain access to our medicines. That is why we have initially selected five pilot countries to identify and come up with operational solutions and then share those learnings with the remaining countries.” ‘Very good model’ Specifically, the focus will be on overcoming regulatory and procurement challenges in the countries, while ensuring adequate levels of supply from Pfizer’s side. The “not-for-profit” price tag takes into account the cost to manufacture and transport of each product to an agreed upon port of entry, with Pfizer charging only manufacturing and minimum distribution costs. If a country already has access to a product at a lower price tier, for example vaccines supplied by GAVI, a public-private global partnership, that lower price will be maintained. Hwang acknowledged that even an at-cost approach could be challenging for the most cash-strapped countries, and “this is why we have reached out to financial institutions to brief them on the Accord and ask them to help support country level financing.” Pfizer will also reach out to other stakeholders-including governments, multilateral organizations, NGOs and even other pharmaceuticals-to ask them to join the Accord. It is also using funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to advance work on a vaccine against Group B Streptococcus (GBS), the leading cause of stillbirth and newborn mortality in low-income countries. “This type of accord is a very good model, it’s going to help get medicines out,” Gates told the Davos conference, adding that “partnerships with companies like Pfizer have been key to the progress we have made” on efforts like vaccines. |
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