Business

AMMAN —Jordan Investment Commission (JIC) President Thabet Al Wir on Saturday expressed the commission’s readiness to assist Greek investors to set up their own investment projects in Jordan as he called for further commercial and economic cooperation between the two countries.

At a meeting with a delegation of Greek businessmen, he urged them to benefit from investment opportunities available in promising economic sectors in the Kingdom, mainly in the pharmaceutical, information and communication technology, transport, mining, medical tourism, infrastructure, energy, industrial and agricultural sectors, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Demetrios Matthews, head of the Greek delegation, expressed hope that the joint trade volume between Amman and Athens will further increase as he commended the Kingdom's stability and legislative reform. 

BRUSSELS — European Union President Donald Tusk warned the bloc would be incapable of negotiating new trade deals if Belgium failed to approve the accord with Canada by Friday.

The deal, known as CETA, "could be our last free trade agreement, if we are not able to convince people that we negotiate to protect their interests", Tusk said as he arrived on Thursday for a two-day EU summit to discuss trade issues.

Tusk spoke as the head of the Belgian region of Wallonia still refused to sign off on the EU-Canada trade accord and asked that a signature next week with Canadian premier Justin Trudeau be delayed indefinitely.

"I hope that Belgium will once again prove that it is a true champion in compromise making, that on Friday we will have an agreement that paves the way for CETA," Tusk said.

The parliament of the region of Wallonia last week voted to block CETA, meaning that Belgium cannot sign up to the pact and leaving the deal in limbo after seven years of negotiations.

Paul Magnette, the outspoken head of government of Wallonia, has said differences remained too wide on a contested investor protection system that has become a hot-button issue for the anti-free trade movement.

EU leaders fear that if CETA were to fail, it would send a signal to the world that it is difficult if not impossible to reach trade deals with Europe.

The struggle to close the deal is also a worry for Britain, with many seeing CETA as a potential model for EU ties with the UK after Brexit.

CETA is opposed by a wide array of groups, who say it is a test model to push through the even more controversial EU-US trade deal called TTIP, still in negotiation.

Activists believe both deals threaten environmental and consumer protection and offer unfair benefits to multinationals.

KUWAIT CITY — A Dubai-based investor group led by the head of property giant Emaar on Thursday completed the nearly $2.4 billion acquisition of a majority stake in Kuwaiti food company Americana, Kuwait's stock exchange said.

Emaar Chairman Mohamed Al Abbar's investment firm Adeptio and Kuwait's Al Khair National for Stocks and Real Estate signed the deal for a 66.8 per cent stake in Americana worth 711.5 million Kuwaiti dinars, the bourse said in a statement.

Al Khair manages equity and real estate stakes for Kuwait's wealthiest business family, Al Kharafi.

Established in 1964, Americana is the parent group that brought to the Middle East more than a dozen major food brands like Pizza Hut, KFC, Costa Coffee and TGI Friday's.

The bourse said Adeptio paid 10 per cent of the value of the deal and will pay the rest on Sunday.

Under Kuwaiti law, Adeptio is obliged to offer the same price to the holders of the remaining 33.2 per cent stake.

The 268.5 million shares were sold for 2.65 dinars ($8.8) per share, the bourse statement said.

Americana owns more than 1,690 outlets and employs 63,000 workers in the Middle East and North Africa region. It also has 17 factories and produces various food products.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia plans to raise up to $17.5 billion from its first international bond issue, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing two people familiar with the offering.

It would make the Saudi issue the largest ever from an emerging-market nation, said Bloomberg News, whose sources were not identified.

The figure exceeds the $15 billion which an analyst had previously told AFP could be the value of the issue.

Experts say it should attract strong buyer interest.

The kingdom, the world’s largest oil exporter, projected a deficit of $87 billion this year after a fall in oil revenues, which still accounts for most of its income.

To cover the shortfall, Saudi Arabia has imposed unprecedented subsidy cuts, slowed government projects, and in September cut Cabinet ministers’ salaries, among other measures.

The kingdom last week began meetings with potential investors ahead of the bond issue.

According to the sources cited by Bloomberg News, the kingdom plans to sell dollar-denominated five-year bonds yielding about 140 basis points above United States Treasuries with similar maturity.

Saudi Arabia will also issue 10-year notes and 30-year securities at a premium, the report said.

Christopher Dembik, global head of macroeconomic research at France’s Saxo Bank, told AFP the kingdom’s offer “is going to arouse strong interest on the part of investors” desperately looking for yield.

“Although the country can legitimately hope to borrow at an attractive rate, it will be certainly slightly above that of its neighbours because of its less favourable sovereign debt rating and a recent global trend towards higher sovereign rates,” he said.

Saudi Arabia has already issued domestic bonds but that has led to a tightening of bank liquidity, according to Patrick Dennis, lead Middle East economist at Oxford Economics in London.

“So that’s the main reason why they’re now borrowing overseas,” he told AFP.

Saudi banks’ loan-to-deposit ratio rose for the fifth consecutive month in August, reaching 90.8 per cent, because of faster growth in credit relative to deposits, Riyadh’s Jadwa Investment said in a report this month.

AMMAN — The Jordan Investment Commission (JIC) on Tuesday held  the first meeting of the preparatory committee for the Jordanian-Japanese Business Forum, which is slated for October 27. 

At the meeting, JIC President Thabet Al Wir commended Japan’s support for the Kingdom in the fields of investment, trade and economy and highlighted the importance of the upcoming forum.

The forum will focus on ways to achieve further growth in Jordan and in the Middle East and North Africa market, he noted.

It will also highlight the country’s favourable investment environment and its strategic position, rendering it a business hub from which industrial products can penetrate MENA and European markets, especially in light of the recently adopted plan by the EU to simplify the rules of origin for made-in-Jordan products, Wir said. 

The forum will also highlight the role of the Hashemite leadership in entrenching security and stability, in spite of difficult surrounding regional conditions.

It will showcase promising investment opportunities available in the Kingdom in the fields of information and communication technology, pharmaceuticals, therapeutic tourism and agriculture, Wir added. 

The Jordanian-Japanese Business Forum will be held on the sidelines of His Majesty King Abdullah’s state visit to Japan on October 26, according to a JIC statement.

SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo’s quarterly profits shot up by more than double to $163 million even as it prepares for a takeover by Verizon.

“We remain very confident, not only in the value of our business, but also in the value Yahoo products bring to our users’ lives,” the company’s Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said in the earnings release, which beat expectations despite only a slight rise in revenue.

Yahoo skipped its usual quarterly earnings call with analysts due to the pending takeover by the US telecommunication company, for which Mayer said Yahoo is busy preparing despite recent revelations about a major data breach that may affect the deal.

Shares were up 1.3 per cent to $42.22 in after-market trades following the earnings report release, reflecting confidence the breach is not prompting a significant number of users to abandon Yahoo.

Revenue for the quarter that ended on September 30 came to $1.3 billion, up from $1.2 billion in the same period a year earlier.

Mobile revenue during the quarter reached $396 million, up from $271 million the previous year.

“We launched several new products and showed solid financial performance across the board,” Mayer said.

The Internet pioneer agreed in July to sell its core assets to Verizon for $4.8 billion, ending a 20-year run as an independent company.

The deal would separate the Yahoo Internet assets from its more valuable stake in the Chinese online giant Alibaba.

However, Verizon said last week that a recently revealed hack affecting 500 million Yahoo customers worldwide could have a “material” effect on the $4.8 billion deal.

The comments from Verizon general counsel Craig Silliman suggest the telecom company could seek to reduce the purchase price or walk away from the deal.

Although the hack took place in late 2014, Yahoo announced it only last month, dealing the faded Internet star a fresh blow.

The attack was probably “state sponsored”, the company said, although some analysts have questioned the source.

“We’re working hard to retain their trust,” Mayer said of Yahoo’s users, “and are heartened by their continued loyalty as seen in our user engagement trends”.

The company has made several attempts to refocus after falling behind Google and Facebook in key segments of online advertising.

AMMAN — Arab banks are capable of solving economic problems in the Arab world with their "huge financial assets”, Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs and Minister of State for Investment Affairs Jawad Anani said on Tuesday. 

Speaking at a forum, titled "Financial Inclusion: Towards Strategic Economic and Social Stability”, Anani said banks are meant “to share benefit, not to monopolise it”. 

The two-day forum, in which several bankers are participating, highlights the importance of financial inclusion to achieve economic development and financial and social stability.

Addressing the participants, Anani commended recent measures taken by the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ), backed by the government, to provide for further financial inclusion. 

He noted that representatives of shareholders should be on the board of banking entities, saying “board monopoly will adversely affect credit offering and lead to poor credit distribution”.  

Under these measures, young people and women, in particular, should benefit from financial tools at a low cost so as to empower these segments and contribute to combating poverty and unemployment, he explained. 

CBJ Governor Ziad Fariz said that the latest global financial crisis revealed a structural shortcoming in the global financial and banking systems, noting that more than half of the world’s population does not get to benefit from banks’ services. 

He explained that the majority of the population in Arab countries are young people, and those who are below the age of 18 cannot start their own bank accounts to save for the future.

The CBJ governor added that small- and medium-scale enterprises in Arab countries, especially the ones that receive large numbers of refugees, go through great hassle to access appropriate funding at a reasonable cost.

“Information asymmetry represents a huge obstacle for a group of the population and for small enterprises to obtain credit,” he told the forum. 

Other speakers, including Association of Banks in Jordan President Musa Shehadeh, underscored the importance of having a stable financial system in order to achieve financial inclusion.

Organised by the Union of Arab Banks, in cooperation with the Council of Arab Economic Unity, the CBJ and the Association of Banks in Jordan, the forum is scheduled to also examine the role of Islamic banks. 

Participants will also deal with ways to combat money laundering and eliminate the funding of terrorism, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

CAIRO — Borrowing a cup of sugar from your neighbour has rarely been so contentious in Egypt.

At supermarkets across the country sugar has all but vanished, prompting media talk of a crisis and pushing the state to rapidly increase imports despite an acute dollar shortage and soaring global prices of the sweetener.

Egypt consumes around 3 million tonnes of sugar annually, while it produces just over 2 million tonnes, with the gap filled by imports, usually between July and October when local beet and sugar cane supplies have wound down.

But traders said high global sugar prices, which surged 50 per cent over the past year, combined with a rising black market rate for dollars has made it too expensive and risky for many importers to obtain sugar in recent months.

Importers have no choice but to turn to the black market to get dollars, as banks ration meagre supplies, paying 15 Egyptian pounds or more per dollar versus an official rate of 8.8. At such rates, more and more traders say they can no longer buy.

"No one is willing to source dollars for this. It is way too expensive," one sugar trader said.

In the absence of steady imports, sugar supplies have all but dried up, shop owners, commodity traders, and producers of sugary foodstuffs told Reuters.

"It's been four weeks since we've had sugar at any of the branches," said Aly Ibrahim Aly, a manager at Metro Market, one of Egypt's largest supermarket chains.

Other shops across Cairo told Reuters they were getting just a small fraction of their needs, with stocks sold out within the hour they arrive as customers fight over bags that have doubled in price in recent weeks.

"I just want to make a cup of tea and I can't," one shopkeeper said. He echoed growing complaints from the public about rising prices and shortages even as the country looks to implement further austerity measures ahead of a $12 billion IMF lending programme granted preliminary approval in August.

Blank cheque 

Traders describe the current sugar shortage as partly self-inflicted, the result of delayed government reaction to conflicting policy pronouncements.

The ministry of supply said in June that the country had sugar reserves to satisfy demand for a year. In August, it reneged, saying it needed 500,000 tonnes to make it until February, the start of the next harvest.

An arm of the supply ministry bought around 225,000 tonnes of sugar in August from state-owned factories, earmarking for government outlets stocks that normally supply the private sector, traders told Reuters. The private sector has struggled to procure adequate quantities since then.

"All the sugar is being dedicated to the government subsidy programme and nothing is going to the private sector," the sugar trader said, referring to government-run supermarkets that sell subsidised sugar.

"One company basically offered us a blank cheque and said do whatever it takes to get it," he added.

Ultimately they couldn't find any, he said.

Egypt's state grain buyer GASC has issued several sugar tenders over the past two months, buying about 250,000 tonnes so far.

GASC's recent tenders have called for white, as opposed to raw, sugar in order to bypass local refinement and head straight to supermarket shelves. That cuts time but adds an $80-$100 dollar per tonne premium, traders said.

Supply Minister Mohamed Ali El Sheikh said last week that Egypt had enough sugar stocks to cover demand for four months — but the manager of one government-run supermarket told Reuters on Tuesday that he had been out of stock for four days.

AMMAN — W Hotels is opening a 37-storey branch in Amman, featuring seven floors of serviced apartments and a helipad, Eagle Hills Jordan has announced.

Eagle Hills Jordan is developing the project, which includes the W Amman and the Skyline Residences serviced by the W Amman as well as office space and retail outlets, the company said in a statement. 

Skyline Residences will feature 41 apartments, between one and four bedrooms, on the top seven floors of the building, above the W Amman, in Abdali Boulevard. 

Construction of the project is complete, and only the finishes remain, according to Eagle Hills Jordan CEO Alaa Batayneh, who added that the $200 million project would be ready by mid-2017.

The hotel will be the only building in the area with a helipad, Batayneh told The Jordan Times. “It adds another dot for Jordan in the regional international market.” 

The W Amman is under the umbrella of Eagle Hills, an Abu Dhabi-based private real estate investment and development company and will be served and run by Marriot International Inc., which has more than 5,700 properties in over 110 countries.

In Jordan, Eagle Hills is involved in the development and management of four key projects, including The St Regis Amman and two mixed-use projects in Aqaba, Marsa Zayed and Saraya Aqaba.

The W Hotel, which by 2020 will have 75 hotels around the world, will offer 400 job opportunities in its branch in Amman, Batayneh said. 

“The W is an international brand, so we are very excited to have it here in Jordan under the Skyline Residences,” he said.  

ROME — Climate change could sink up to 122 million more people into extreme poverty by 2030, mostly in South Asia and Africa, where small farmers would see their output plummet, the UN warned on Monday.

In an annual report, the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) warned that a worst-case scenario involving high-impact climate change would pound the communities that rely on agriculture for their livelihood.

It called for a "broad-based transformation of food and agricultural systems" to adapt to a warmer world, and doubling down on support for the world's 475 million smallholder farm families.

"There is no doubt climate change affects food security," FAO chief Jose Graziano da Silva said.

"What climate change does is to bring back uncertainties from the time we were all hunter gatherers. We cannot assure any more that we will have the harvest we have planted."

Farming is both a driver of climate change, responsible for some 21 per cent of global greenhouse gas production, and a victim, with crops adversely affected by drought and floods.

Adopting "climate-smart" practices, like planting nitrogen-efficient and heat-tolerant crops, or finding better ways to conserve water, would reduce undernourishment for many millions, the FAO said.

To weigh the effect of climate change, the FAO created predictive models based on either a low- or high-impact scenario, and compared them to a third in which climate change did not exist.

Without global warming, it said, general economic growth would work to reduce the numbers of those at risk of hunger in most regions.

But taking a "business as usual" approach in a world with climate change would see the numbers of the world's poor jump by between 35 and 122 million by 2030.

In the worst-case scenario, 62 million of the newly poor are in South Asia, and 43 million in Africa. 

'Increasingly severe' impact 

Over the next few decades, the UN agency said some regions, especially cold ones, would actually see some gains in fishing, farming and forestry output. 

But that positive impact would disappear by 2030, replaced by an "increasingly severe" negative impact on yields all across the globe.

The FAO urged signatories to the 2015 Paris climate deal to "put commitments into action", underscoring the need to help developing countries with climate change mitigation.

These should include support for innovation, climate finance to fund developing countries' involvement and using international public finance to trigger greater public and private investment.

The FAO estimated the cost of funding smallholder farmers in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia at roughly $210 billion (190 billion euros) per year.

"The benefits of adaptation outweigh the costs of inaction by very wide margins," Graziano da Silva said.

In comparison, developed countries and the biggest developing countries spent more than $560 billion in 2015 supporting the farming industry, the FAO said in its report.

The UN agency also highlighted agricultural innovations that could help the industry reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead of flooding rice paddies, for example, Asian farmers could use water-conserving alternatives, with a 45-per cent drop in methane emissions.