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DOROHUSK, Poland — Polish farmers on Friday staged blockades at border checkpoints with Ukraine to protest competition from its neighbour as Warsaw hinted it could impose new import bans on Ukrainian agricultural products.

Farmers protested at over 250 locations across Poland, blocking highways and snarling traffic with columns of slow-moving tractors converging on major cities.

"We have no other choice," Marcin Wilgos, an organiser of the protest in Dorohusk at the border with Ukraine, told AFP next to a banner calling on the European Union to ban Ukrainian grain and sugar.

The protests come shortly after Polish truckers staged a two-month blockade of major border crossings to demand the reintroduction of restrictions to enter the EU for their Ukrainian competitors.

The hauliers have suspended the blockade until March, but warned that they would return to the border if their demands were not met.

Poland has been among Ukraine's staunchest supporters during Russia's nearly two-year invasion, but frictions over grain import restrictions introduced by Poland and four other EU countries in June have further strained ties between the allies. 

Polish Agriculture Minister Czeslaw Siekierski told state radio on Friday that "complete" bans on imports could be imposed on other groups of products as well.

"It may be needed for sugar, if the influx is too large. It may be needed for poultry," Siekierski said, adding that the government intended to raise the issue in talks with Kyiv.

Asked about the protests, Siekierski said the farmers had "legitimate expectations and demands" to limit imports from Ukraine, which farmers say are unfairly driving down prices.

Siekierski also said he planned to meet with protest organisers later Friday before hosting them at the ministry next week.

'Huge burden' 

The protest, called by Poland's main farming union, is slated to continue for a month, part of growing farmer discontent across Europe over tanking prices across the continent.

Europe's farmers say the competition has battered their earnings because Ukrainian producers are not bound by EU rules such as animal welfare.

"The glut of products from Ukraine, produced not in accordance with EU standards and procedures, is a huge burden for us," Wilgos said.

The EU-approved ban on grain imports by the five countries expired in September, when the previous populist Law and Justice (PiS) Party still governed Poland.

But the ban was extended and maintained even after the new pro-EU coalition government came to power after Polish elections in October. 

Polish officials have nonetheless urged the resignation of EU agriculture commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, a Polish national who gained the post with the support of the PiS. 

On Friday, the powerful PiS Chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski unexpectedly joined the calls, saying he would ask Wojciechowski "to end his mission" while acknowledging that he had "no influence" on whether he would continue in the post.

LONDON — British consumer goods giant Unilever last week said its profit after tax dropped 15 per cent last year to 6.5 billion euros ($7 billion) as sales flattened. 

Chief Executive Hein Schumacher said in the earnings statement that "competitiveness remains disappointing and overall performance needs to improve" at the group whose products include Magnum ice cream, Cif surface cleaner and Dove soap.

Group revenue dipped 0.8 per cent to 59.6 billion euros last year compared with 2022. 

Businesses and consumers worldwide continue to battle higher costs as inflation remains stubbornly high, especially in the UK. 

Schumacher became Unilever CEO last year, replacing Alan Jope who had come under fierce pressure from activist investors. 

Jope had led Unilever's failed $50 billion bid for the former healthcare unit of drug maker GlaxoSmithKline.

Schumacher, the former head of Dutch dairy and nutrition firm Royal FrieslandCampina, launched in October an action plan to grow Unilever.

"The new leadership team has embedded the action plan at pace," he added in Thursday's results statement.

"We are at the early stages of this work and there is much to do but we are moving with speed and urgency to transform Unilever into a consistently higher performing business," he added.

BEIJING — Chinese consumer prices fell in January at their quickest rate in more than 14 years, data showed on Thursday, as the country's leaders struggle to revive buying sentiment in the world's second-biggest economy.

The reading will likely add to calls for officials to do more to breathe life into the economy, with central bank interest rate cuts and measures to boost lending having little impact so far. 

The 0.8 per cent drop in the consumer price index, revealed by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), marked the fourth straight month of deflation and was much bigger than the 0.5 per cent fall forecast in a survey by Bloomberg News.

The reading was the worst since the second half of 2009, during the global financial crisis.

And a 2.5 per cent plunge in the producer price index (PPI) — which measures the cost of goods leaving factories — signalled continued weakness.

The NBS said the figures reflected the "high base of the Spring Festival holiday in the same period last year".

China slipped into deflation in July for the first time since 2021 and — apart from a brief rebound in August — has been in constant decline since.

"The primary drag on inflation continued to be food prices, which fell by 5.9 per cent year-on-year, the lowest level on record," Lynn Song, chief economist, Greater China, at bank ING, said in a note.

She also pointed to figures showing costs rising month-on-month.

"While a far cry from the above-target inflation levels seen in many other economies, these numbers do not imply China is stuck in a deflationary spiral," Song said.

"We see a high likelihood that January's data could mark the low point for [year-on-year] inflation in the current cycle."

While deflation suggests goods were cheaper, it poses a threat to the broader economy as consumers tend to postpone purchases, hoping for further reductions.

A lack of demand can then force companies to cut production, freeze hiring or lay off workers, while potentially also having to discount existing stocks — dampening profitability even as costs remain the same.

Officials have unveiled a series of measures aimed at boosting the economy — which has failed to rebound even after strict zero-COVID policies were lifted at the end of 2022 — with analysts warning a "bazooka" stimulus plan was needed to restore confidence. 

"China needs to take actions quickly and aggressively to avoid the risk of deflationary expectation to be entrenched among consumers," Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, said.

China's sinking prices are in stark contrast with the rest of the world, where inflation remains a persistent bugbear, forcing central banks to ramp up interest rates.

PARIS — French group TotalEnergies reported on Wednesday the highest profit of its history for 2023, underpinned by performances in its liquefied natural gas and electricity divisions.

Net profit came in at $21.4 billion, an increase of 4 per cent over 2022.

Its bottom line put the French energy conglomerate ahead of its global peers Shell, BP, Exxon-Mobil and Chevron which all reported lower earnings in the face of weaker energy prices.

But TotalEnergies's 2022 net profit had been weighed down by a huge exceptional charge — $15 billion — from its withdrawal from Russia following that country's invasion of Ukraine.

Once non-recurring items were stripped out, profits suffered a sharp downturn last year, with adjusted net profit falling 36 per cent to $23.2 billion.

Oil and gas prices dropped some 10 percent on average last year from 2022 when spiking oil prices had boosted earnings at energy companies worldwide.

Chairman Patrick Pouyanne called the results "robust", saying in a statement they had been achieved in "an uncertain environment". Hydrocarbons had performed well, he said.

Still, the 2023 net profit figure fell short of forecasts by financial analysts, who had been looking for a figure of up to $23.7 billion.

The company's share price dropped around 1.5 per cent in early Paris stock exchange trading in reaction.

Controversial projects 

TotalEnergies has pursued its diversification towards low-carbon electricity production, but continues to be criticised by environmental groups for its ongoing investment in fossil fuels because of their climate impact.

The group announced in September that it would increase hydrocarbon production by an annual 2 to 3 per cent over five years.

Several court cases against the company are pending, including for its land acquisition practices for controversial projects in Uganda and Tanzania slammed by environmentalists.

TotalEnergies is pushing ahead with its Tilenga drilling project in Uganda and the 1,443-kilometre East African Crude Oil Pipeline to transport crude to the coast in Tanzania.

Tilenga targets oil under the Murchison Falls nature reserve in western Uganda with a planned 419 wells, triggering fears for the region's fragile ecosystem among the people who live there and environmentalists.

Drilling began in mid-2023 and production is slated for 2025.

TotalEnergies has argued that such projects are needed to meet world demand for energy, and points to its efforts to transition to low-carbon production, notably in solar and wind energy.

The energy giant proposed a 7.1 per cent increase in its annual dividend paid out to shareholders.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia drew 27 million foreign tourists in 2023 and has more than doubled its goal for the end of the decade, an official said on Tuesday. 

The announcement came less than five years after the Gulf kingdom fully opened up to tourism and as fears persist that the ongoing Hamas-Israel war could engulf the wider region. 

"We have reached 100 million tourists this year, 77 million from home, 27 million from abroad, over 100 million," Tourism Minister Ahmed Al Khateeb said at a conference organised by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, describing the 2023 figures. 

Authorities now hope to hit 150 million tourists by 2030, up from an earlier goal of 100 million, with 70 million of those coming from abroad, up from an earlier goal of 30 million, he said. 

Tourism is an important element of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman's Vision 2030 reform agenda, which aims to help the world's biggest crude exporter transition away from fossil fuels and prepare for an eventual post-oil future. 

Home to Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia has long welcomed pilgrims as well as business travellers, but it inaugurated a general tourism visa only in 2019, just months before the coronavirus pandemic decimated the industry globally. 

New resorts along the Red Sea coast are expected to be a major draw, though recent attacks on Red Sea shipping by Houthi rebels in neighbouring Yemen have revived security concerns in the area. 

The Houthis, who have been at war with a Saudi-led military coalition since 2015, say their attacks are an act of solidarity with Palestinians and a protest against the Hamas -Israel war that has been raging in the Gaza Strip since October.

ROME — A convoy of tractors was poised on Saturday to descend on Rome as farmers' protests caused disruptions across Europe, though they wound down in France following government concessions.

Farmers have expressed anger at what they say are excessively restrictive regulations on agriculture and unfair competition, among other grievances.

The movement erupted in France last month and there have also been protests in Germany, Belgium, Poland, Romania, Greece and The Netherlands.

Farmers have blocked motorways and disrupted traffic in key cities with convoys of tractors.

In Italy on Saturday, around 150 tractors massed in Orte, about an hour north of Rome.

Protesters there called for better pay and conditions and announced their imminent arrival in the Italian capital, an AFP reporter saw.

"Italian agriculture has woken up," said protester Felice Antonio Monfeli.

"It's historic and the people here are proving it. For the first time in their history, farmers are united under the same flag, that of Italy."

The demonstrators have for days been calling for talks with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government, without having had a response so far.

"The situation is critical, we cannot be slaves in our own companies," said another protester, Domenico Chiergi.

Greek farmers

consider escalation 

In Greece, around 2,000 farmers protested in the country's second-largest city of Thessaloniki on Saturday calling for increases in aid.

Their action came a day after Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced further support measures.

Some farmers from the mountain villages of Thessaly threw chestnuts and apples that had spoiled because of the natural disasters that hit the region.

"We have no food, we cannot put our lives in discount," Kostas Tzelas, president of the Rural Associations of Karditsa, told AFP.

"We want to stay on our land and not become migrants." 

Mitsotakis has already extended the refund of a special consumption tax on oil and a discount on rural electricity from May to September.

It is among a package of measures whose cost Mitsotakis put at more than one billion euros ($1.1 billion).

But Tzelas dismissed these measures as "peanuts".

The president of a union of agricultural associations, Rizos Maroudas, told reporters a meeting was scheduled next week "to decide the escalation of blockades".

German, Belgium,

The Netherlands 

In Germany, hundreds of farmers on tractors disrupted access to Frankfurt airport, the country's busiest, in opposition to a reform of diesel taxation, police said.

A Hesse farmers' association estimated vehicle numbers at around 1,000, while police said 400 tractors took part before the protest ended in the early afternoon.

A protest on the Dutch-Belgian border that had shut down a main motorway was wound down on Saturday evening, the Belga news agency reported.

Farmer discontent has also affected non-EU Switzerland, where around 30 tractors paraded in Geneva on Saturday in the country's first such protest since the movement started elsewhere in Europe.

"As a young person, it scares us a lot not knowing if there is a future in our profession," Antonin Ramu, a 19-year-old apprentice winegrower, told AFP.

He welcomed the transition to a more environmentally friendly agriculture but asked for more help in the face of competition from countries without the same standards.

In Spain, the three main farmers' unions have announced more protests in the coming weeks, with a major demonstration planned for Barcelona on February 13.

In France, security forces cleared the few remaining blockades of motorways a day after the main agricultural union called for them to be lifted following government concessions.

Their mobilisation had forced new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal's government to pause a plan to reduce pesticide and insecticide use and offer an aid package of 400 million euros.

Romanian farmers and hauliers also announced the end of their road-block protest on Saturday following an agreement with the government.

The EU is scrambling to address concerns ahead of European Parliament elections this year.

The European Commission on Thursday promised measures to defend the "legitimate interests" of EU farmers, notably the much criticised administrative burdens of the bloc's Common Agricultural Policy.

BEIJING — China's economic slowdown is likely to persist in the coming years as the Asian giant struggles with sagging productivity and a rapidly ageing population, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said recently.

The world's second-largest economy last year saw some of its slowest growth in decades, as a debt crisis in the property sector added to geopolitical tensions and weakening global demand.

And an IMF report on Friday forecast growth to decline further to 3.5 per cent by 2028 "amid headwinds from weak productivity and population aging", adding that "uncertainty surrounding the outlook is high".

It previously forecast growth of 4.6 per cent for this year.

Driving the slowdown is a years-long crisis in the country's real estate market, once a key growth pillar but now mired in debts that may threaten China's financial system.

Property giant Evergrande has become a symbol of the sector's woes, racking up astronomical debts of more than $300 billion.

A court in Hong Kong this week issued an order that should kickstart the liquidation of Evergrande's overseas assets, though the company insisted the decision would not affect its domestic operations.

And the IMF report warned a continued slowdown in the property market "could further weigh on private demand and worsen confidence".

Sonali Jain-Chandra, Mission Chief for China at the IMF's Asia and Pacific Department, told a media briefing Friday that the sector was "in the midst of a multi-year transition to a smaller and more sustainable size".

"Some of this adjustment has happened, but we're still in the midst of it," she explained, adding that "more needs to be done" to prop up the ailing sector.

China's economy grew by 5.2 per cent last year, according to official statistics, beating a modest target of around five per cent.

Exports — long a key driver of growth — notched their first decline in seven years, dragged down by notable tensions with Western countries and a decline in global demand.

Chinese officials are due to release their growth target for 2024 in March.