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STOCKHOLM — World military spending rose 1 per cent in 2015, the first  annual increase in four years, a Stockholm think tank said on Tuesday as it estimated 10 per cent of this could cover the costs of global goals aiming to end poverty and hunger in 15 years.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said military expenditure nudged up to almost $1.7 trillion last year, with the United States accounting for by far the greatest amount despite its spending dipping 2.4 per cent to $596 billion.

China was the second largest spender for the second year in a row with spending up 7.4 per cent to $215 billion, while Saudi Arabia passed Russia to take third place at $87.2 billion and Britain came fifth. Moscow spent $66.4 billion.

During the 10-year period from 2006-2015, the US military budget shrank by 4 per cent, while China's soared by 132 per cent. Those of Saudi Arabia and Russia also increased significantly, by 97 and 91 per cent respectively.

France, which had the fifth biggest budget in 2014, fell to seventh place behind Britain and India.

SIPRI said military expenditure amounted to 2.3 per cent of the global gross domestic product, and 10 per cent of this would be enough to fund the global goals agreed upon by United Nations' 193 member states in September to end poverty and hunger by 2030.

"This gives some sort of perspective that can allow people to see what is the opportunity cost involved with global military spending," Sam Perlo-Freeman, head of SIPRI's military expenditure project, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"This could stir up some debate although we are certainly not expecting a 10 per cent cut in military spending at all," he said. "That is all about the politics of these countries."

UN figures show an estimated 800 million people live in extreme poverty and suffer from hunger, with fragile and conflict-torn states experiencing the highest poverty rates.

SIPRI's annual military spending report showed overall expenditure increased last year in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe and for Middle East countries with data available.

However spending fell in North America, Western Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa, a continuing trend attributed partly due to the global economic crisis, falling oil prices and the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.

"On the one hand, spending trends reflect the escalating conflict and tension in many parts of the world; on the other hand, they show a clear break from the oil-fuelled surge in military spending of the past decade," Perlo-Freeman said.

"This volatile economic and political situation creates an uncertain picture for the years to come," he added.

Countries that bumped up military spending in 2015 included Algeria, Azerbaijan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, many of which were involved in conflict or faced heightened regional tensions.

Perlo-Freeman said this was the first time SIPRI has mapped military spending to the UN's new Sustainable Development Goals but it had previously compared it to spending on health and education.

The SIPRI military expenditure project was established in 1967 to study developments in world military expenditure.

"It is no secret that we are a peace research institute and our mission is towards promoting peace and demilitarisation, but we don't say how this should be done," he added.

FRANKFURT — The global economy's already modest prospects will decline further unless authorities take stronger action to boost growth, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned on Tuesday, saying the fund would cut its headline forecasts next week.

Christine Lagarde said China's shift to an economic model based more on domestic demand, stubbornly low commodity prices and tighter funding conditions in some countries had all clouded the outlook.

"Let me be clear: we are on alert, not alarm. There has been a loss of growth momentum," the IMF's managing director said in a speech at Frankfurt's Goethe University.

The recovery from the 2007-2009 global financial crisis "remains too slow, too fragile and risks to its durability are increasing".

But if policymakers confronted the challenges and acted together, "the positive effects on global confidence, and the global economy, will be substantial".

Lagarde advised the United States to raise its minimum wage, Europe to improve job training and emerging economies to cut fuel subsidies and boost social spending.

She gave her strongest hint yet that the IMF will cut its global economic forecasts next week.

"The global outlook has weakened further over the last six months so you can [deduce] from that there will be a slight revision [in the IMF estimates]," Lagarde said.

Spring meetings

Lagarde's remarks come less than two weeks before ministers, central bankers and other policymakers from the fund's 188 member countries gather in Washington to assess the health of the world economy at the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings.

While the US recovery has been gaining momentum and some emerging markets, including Mexico, have performed well, the IMF views Europe and Japan as major disappointments, while China's slowing growth has hurt oil and commodity exporting countries, including Brazil and Russia.

To counteract the headwinds, Lagarde called for accelerated structural reforms, increased fiscal support and continued accommodative monetary policy.

She urged improved tax incentives for research and development (R&D) investments, citing IMF data showing that a 40 per cent increase in R&D spending in advanced economies could yield a 5 per cent increase in gross domestic product (GDP) over 20 years.

Asked about negotiations between the IMF, European lenders and Greece for a new bailout programme for the heavily indebted country, Lagarde told Bloomberg TV the fund continued to negotiate "in good faith".

After Internet site WikiLeaks published an apparent transcript of an IMF conference call, Lagarde denied that IMF staff might threaten to pull out of the bailout as a negotiating tactic to force more European debt relief for Greece.

Introducing Lagarde's speech, Jens Weidmann, who sits on the European Central Bank's decision-making body and heads Germany's Bundesbank, said the IMF was "an essential component" in any eurozone rescue programme.

Among other sources of uncertainty facing the global economy, Lagarde listed Britain's debate over remaining in the European Union.

AMMAN — A Jordanian business delegation that recently visited Georgia discussed ways to enhance commercial exchange and holding joint projects between the two countries, Jordan Exporters Association (JEA) President Halim Abu Rahmeh said Tuesday.

During the five-day visit, the delegate representing the construction, textile, tourism, renewable energy, food and ICT sectors,  met with government officials and public sector representatives to identify the requirements for penetrating the Georgian market and the available investment and commercial opportunities, Abu Rahmeh added.

He described the Georgian market as a good export opportunity for national products, especially the plastic, food, fertilisers, textile and furniture, noting that it can serve as a gateway for neighbouring markets. Jordanian exports to Georgia include fertilisers and Dead Sea products, while imports from Tbilisi include livestock, cereals, nuts and plant oils. The volume of commercial exchange between Jordan and Georgia at the end of 2015 stood at JD6.5 million.

AMMAN — Jordanian Businessmen Association (JBA) President Hamdi Tabbaa on Tuesday briefed an economic delegation from Turkey and Northern Cyprus on the association's role in enhancing Jordan's economic relations with Arab and foreign countries.

Tabbaa said the Kingdom enjoys economic ties that enable Jordanian products to enter international big markets under free trade agreements Jordan signed with the US, European Union, Canada, Singapore and the Grand Arab Free Trade Zone Agreement, according to a JBA statement.

In this regard, he added that these agreements encourage foreign companies to invest in the Kingdom's promising sectors. Mustafa Gordag, head of the visiting delegation and vice chairman of the Cyprus Turkish Chamber of Industry, welcomed investment opportunities in Jordan, highlighting the importance of exchanging information between businesspeople, the statement added.

KUWAIT CITY — Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) nations can make a "net benefit" of $750 billion if they achieve their set targets on the use of renewable energy, a senior official said on Monday.

"Almost every country in the [MENA] region has a target for renewable energy from 5-15 per cent," by 2030, Adnan Amin, director general of the International Renewable Energy Agency told reporters.

"If we are able to meet these targets, we will have a net benefit of about $750 billion for the power sector in the MENA region," Amin said on the sidelines of the sixth MENA renewable energy conference.

Amin added that the world is looking to double the current share of renewable energy of 16-17 per cent in the global mix to 36 per cent by 2030. 

He continued that doubling the renewable energy share will help achieve the reduction by half of carbon emissions which would a pre-requisite for limiting global warming to 2°C as decided by the Paris climate change summit.  

Amin told the conference that global investments in renewable energy rose by 22 per cent last year to a record $330 billion.

The cost of production of renewable energy has dropped significantly in the past few years, he said.

In the past five years, the cost of solar photovoltaic power generation dropped by 80 per cent, Amin indicated.

"It is already competitive with natural gas. There can be further reduction in cost," he added.

But Bassam Fattouh, director of Oxford Energy Institute Studies, said the targets set by MENA countries are "very ambitious”.

He said several challenges hamper renewable energy production in the region, like state monopoly of the power system, a lack of institutional capacity and conventional energy subsidies.

Nearly half of all new installed power generation capacity in 2014 was in renewables — 37 per cent wind, a third solar and a quarter hydro, according to the International Energy Agency.

Renewables only account for about 20 per cent of global electricity generation, and three-quarters of that is hydro. 

Separately, trillions of dollars of non-bank financial assets around the world are vulnerable to the effects of global warming, according to a study on Monday that says tougher action to curb greenhouse gas emissions makes sense for investors.

Rising temperatures and the dislocation caused by related droughts, floods and heatwaves will slow global economic growth and damage the performance of stocks and bonds, according to the report, led by the London School of Economics.

"It makes financial sense to a risk-neutral investor to cut emissions, and even more so to the risk-averse," lead author Professor Simon Dietz, an environmental economist, told Reuters.

A global climate summit in Paris last December set a goal of limiting global warming to "well below" 2°C above pre-industrial times, while leaving open precisely how this would be achieved.

If the rise were limited to 2°C by 2100, the study's central scenario put the total of current financial assets that could be damaged at $1.7 trillion. But if the temperature rose a further 0.5°C by the end of the century, $2.5 trillion would be at risk under the most likely scenario.

Global regulators in the Financial Stability Board (FSB) say all the world's current non-bank financial assets are worth $143 trillion.

At the extremes of the study's thousands of scenarios based on a 2.5°C rise, the value at risk ranges from 0.5 per cent of total financial assets up to a worst case of 17 per cent, or $24 trillion.

The study did not try to identify which sectors were most at risk from the damage that climate change can wreak, ranging from the destruction of buildings, bridges or roads by storms or floods to losses of agricultural productivity and enforced movement of populations.

Many previous studies about the financial impact of climate change have focused on fossil fuel companies, together worth around $5 trillion on stock markets, whose shares may lose value if investors shift to cleaner energies.

Stephanie Pfeifer, head of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGC), told Reuters the report was "yet more evidence that unabated climate change would negatively impact economic growth and investment returns over the long term".

She urged investors to put pressure on company boards to disclose risks from climate change and to ensure that their businesses were on track to limit rising temperatures. The IIGC represents 120 investors controlling more than $13 trillion in funds.

Last Friday, a task force of the FSB unveiled plans for all listed companies to disclose in financial reports how climate-related risks could hit their bottom line. 

TEL AVIV — Israel has authorised another 500 Jordanians to work in hotels in its  Red Sea resort of Eilat to make up for a domestic labour shortage, the tourism ministry said on Monday.

"The need for workers in the hotel industry is growing as the summer season approaches," Tourism Minister Yariv Levin said in a statement.

"These are day workers who leave Israel at the end of the working day.

"The statement added that the Jordanian staff would be employed in cleaning, dishwashing and room service.

"Past endeavours launched by government ministries and the hotel industry to encourage Israelis to work in these positions were not successful," it said, adding that incentives including bonuses, housing benefits and day care had been offered.

"However, these did not result in recruiting Israeli workers into the Eilat tourism industry.

"It said the new recruits would join 400 Jordanians  already employed in Eilat hotels.

The Israeli city, which has  about 12,000 hotel rooms, is close to the Jordanian border and the kingdom's own Red Sea resort of Aqaba.

Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, becoming the second Arab state to do so after Egypt in 1979.

AMMAN — Euromoney Conferences,  the world’s leading organiser of conferences for cross-border investment and capital markets, announced this week in a press statement that it is returning to Amman on April 25, 2016.

Euromoney will relaunch its annual financial conference, which was last held in 2012. This year’s conference, titled “Finance for an Invigorated Economy”, will be held under the Royal patronage of His Majesty King Abdullah and co-hosted by the Ministry of Finance.

The conference, supported by senior lead sponsor Arab Bank and co-sponsor, Jordan Kuwait Bank, will bring together 300 financiers, investors, business leaders, entrepreneurs and government officials to address the development of Jordan’s innovation economy, the statement said.

This one-day conference will examine Jordan's economic outlook, exploring macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges the country faces, as well as assessing the role of the financial sector in the country's wider economic development.

The conference will also address Jordan’s growing role as a hub for entrepreneurship and innovation in the region. Topics will include micro- and SME-financing and the development of the innovation and digital ecosystem in Jordan.

Keynote addresses will be delivered by Finance Minister Omar Malhas, and Planning and International Cooperation Minister Imad Fakhoury.

LONDON — The majority of British aerospace, defence, security and space companies believe that the country should stay in the European Union (EU), the latest business group to come out in favour of staying in the bloc.

The economic impact of a 'Brexit' is one of the key issues for voters ahead of a referendum on Britain's EU membership on June 23.

ADS Group, the industry body for aerospace, defence, security and space companies in Britain, said that 70 per cent of its members believe it would be better for their business if the country stayed in the EU.

"Our members recognise the benefits of the UK remaining part of the EU; access to integrated European supply chain; research and development funding which enables the UK to compete globally, and the ability to influence and shape EU regulation," ADS Chief Executive Paul Everitt said.

Members of the ADS group employ 310,000 people in Britain and generate £31 billion in exports for the country. The  survey was carried out in February and March, ADS noted.

Planemaker Airbus, which employs 16,000 people in Britain building wings for its aeroplanes amongst other activities, said in February that its British operations would be less competitive if the country voted to leave the EU.  

The industry's view echoed the bosses at more than a third of Britain's biggest companies including oil giants Shell and BP and its largest telecoms group, who said leaving the EU would put the economy at risk, backing Prime Minister David Cameron's call to stay in the bloc.

Nearly 200 companies, among them 36 FTSE 100 firms, including telecoms group BT, retailers Marks & Spencer  and Asda, and oil firms Shell and BP, signed the letter which put forward the economic merits of EU membership.

"Business needs unrestricted access to the European market of 500 million people in order to continue to grow, invest and create jobs," said the letter, published in the Times newspaper. "We believe that leaving the EU would deter investment, threaten jobs and put the economy at risk."

London Mayor Boris Johnson, who as mayor presides over one of the world's pre-eminent financial centres, dismissed the significance of the letter from the business leaders.

Spreading alarm

"There will be people who try to spread alarm, anxiety," he told reporters, saying the same people had been wrong over Britain's decision not to join the euro and to exit the European Exchange Rate Mechanism 20 years earlier.

Other commentators said the potential boost for Cameron was limited given that two-thirds of top bosses had not signed up, including those from its two biggest retailers.

Tesco, Britain's biggest private employer with 310,000 staff, said the referendum was a decision for the people of Britain and that its focus remained on serving its customers, while Sainsbury's, the country's second biggest supermarket, said it was an apolitical organisation.

"I suspect that the numbers [of FTSE 100 bosses] giving support to remain publicly have been a disappointment," said Andrew Hawkins, founder of polling firm ComRes.

In another survey published by the Institute of Directors, six in 10 of nearly 700 of its members polled said they planned to vote to stay in the EU.

Scottish experience

"I can tell you this, if the leave campaign could produce 35 business leaders of this sort of stature, they'd be over the moon," Cameron said of the business leaders' letter during a visit to Slough, west of London.

"This is simply people running some of the largest businesses in our country that employ over a million people between them, saying this has real consequences for our country," he added.

Economic concerns played a role in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, when in the weeks ahead of the vote, big companies warned about the impact of leaving the UK on investment and jobs, adding to a climate of fear, and possibly swaying some votes to help keep that union in tact.

As a result, some voters pledged to boycott firms wading into politics and perhaps wariness from that experience deterred some of Britain's biggest employers from signing the letter.

Cameron's move to call on the voice of big business, the letter was arranged by his Downing Street office alongside the “Britain Stronger in Europe” campaign, was not without risk as "Out" campaigners cast the EU as the instrument of a global elite which is out of touch with ordinary Britons.

Jim Mellon, a fund manager who is helping fund the "Out" campaign, told the BBC the signatories were mostly people who had "crawled their way up the corporate ladder" rather than "true entrepreneurs" who had started new businesses.

The stakes are high in the June referendum. A vote to leave would not only transform Britain's future in world affairs, but also shake the EU, which has struggled to maintain unity over migration and financial crises, by ripping away its second-largest economy.

Some companies do, however, favour an exit from the EU. 

The campaign for Britain to leave the EU has been backed by 250 business leaders including the former chief executive of HSBC, the Vote Leave group said last week, hoping to counter the view that UK businesses back staying in the bloc.

Vote Leave, one of the groups supporting a British exit, unveiled its own list of backers including Michael Geoghegan, former chief executive of HSBC Group, John Caudwell, founder of Phones4U and Tim Martin, the boss of pubs group JD Wetherspoon.

"With our growing list of business supporters, Vote Leave will make that case that whilst the EU might be good for big multinationals, for smaller businesses it acts as a job destruction regulatory machine," Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave, said.

Vote Leave also said it was forming a Business Council to argue that EU membership was holding back business.

That group will be headed by John Longworth who quit as director general of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) lobbying group after he spoke out in favour of leaving the EU, accusing Cameron of trying to scare voters into backing his case to stay in the bloc.

The Bank of England (BoE) warned last week that uncertainty surrounding Britain's looming referendum on EU membership could send the pound slumping further and boost financing costs.

The central bank's Financial Policy Committee (FPC) declared that the risks surrounding the vote represented "the most significant near-term domestic risks to financial stability", echoing recent comments from BoE Governor Mark Carney.

Uncertainty over the outcome could spark a "further depreciation" in sterling, the FPC warned in minutes from its March meeting, adding it could also adversely affect "the cost and availability of financing for a broad range of UK borrowers".

In late February, the pound had tumbled to a near seven-year low against the dollar on mounting fears that Britain could leave the 28-member EU bloc.

The FPC cautioned on Tuesday that the nation's potential EU withdrawal could "spill over" into the eurozone and weigh on the currency bloc's growth prospects.

It added that the outlook for Britain's financial stability had "deteriorated" since its previous meeting in November, citing increasing global economic risks and the threat of Brexit.

However, the FPC noted Britain's major banks had passed stress tests designed to show their ability to survive a severe economic shock, such as a sharp drop in sterling or a prolonged recession.

Last month, the BoE announced it would make extra cash available to banks around the time of the referendum, in order to help overcome market turbulence and the risk of another credit crunch.

Carney had already warned on March 8 that Britain's departure from the EU would create the "biggest domestic risk" to the nation's financial stability.

US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew also warned that If Britain exits the EU it will have a negative impact on the British, European and world economies.

The consequences of a Brexit, in terms of the flow of trade and economic relationships, would have far-reaching repercussions, Lew told Charlie Rose on public television PBS.

"I don't think it's good for the European, or the British economy, or the global economy," Lew said, adding: "And in a world where one of the things that drives the economy is the uncertainty of geopolitical risks... 

"It is clear that when you increase the level of unease, it has an economic consequence."

TOKYO — Japan is witnessing a record number of compensation claims related to death from overwork, or "karoshi", a phenomenon previously associated with the long-suffering "salary man" that is increasingly afflicting young and female employees.

Labour demand, with 1.28 jobs per applicant, is the highest since 1991, which should help Prime Minister Shinzo Abe draw more people into the workforce to counter the effect of a shrinking population, but lax enforcement of labour laws means some businesses are simply squeezing more out of employees, sometimes with tragic consequences.

Claims for compensation for karoshi rose to a record high of 1,456 in the year to end-March 2015, according to labour ministry data, with cases concentrated in healthcare, social services, shipping and construction, which are all facing chronic worker shortages.

Hiroshi Kawahito, secretary general of the National Defence Counsel for Victims of karoshi, said the real number was probably 10 times higher, as the government is reluctant to recognise such incidents.

"The government hosts a lot of symposiums and makes posters about the problem, but this is propaganda," he said. "The real problem is reducing working hours, and the government is not doing enough."

The labour ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Kawahito, a lawyer who has been dealing with karoshi since the 1980s, said 95 per cent of his cases used to be middle-aged men in white-collar jobs, but now about 20 per cent are women.

Japan has no legal limits on working hours, but the labour ministry recognises two types of karoshi: death from cardiovascular illness linked to overwork, and suicide following work-related mental stress.

A cardiovascular death is likely to be considered karoshi if an employee worked 100 hours of overtime in the month beforehand, or 80 hours of overtime in two or more consecutive months in the previous six.

A suicide could qualify if it follows an individual's working 160 hours or more of overtime in one month or more than 100 hours of overtime for three consecutive months.

Work-related suicides are up 45 per cent in the past four years among those 29 and younger, and up 39 per cent among women, labour ministry data show.

Two-tier workforce

The problem has become more acute as Japan's workforce has divided into two distinct categories — regular employees, and those on temporary or non-standard contracts, frequently women and younger people.

In 2015, non-regular employees made up 38 per cent of the workforce, up from 20 per cent in 1990, and 68 per cent of them were women.

Lawyers and academic say unscrupulous employers operate a "bait-and-switch" policy, advertising a full-time position with reasonable working hours, but later offering the successful applicant a non-regular contract with longer hours, sometimes overnight or weekends, with no overtime pay.

Refusing overtime pay and break time are illegal, and the applicant could refuse the job, but activists say companies tell them they will be given regular contracts after six months or so.

They say young applicants often accept due to lack of experience, while women trying to re-enter the workforce after childbirth often feel it would be difficult to get a foothold elsewhere.

Emiko Teranishi, head of the Families Dealing with Karoshi support group, said she hears lots of complaints about hiring tactics, with some companies telling new hires that their salary includes 80 hours of overtime, and they must reimburse the company if they work less.

"Some people don't even make minimum wage under this system," said Teranishi, whose own husband committed suicide after working long hours.

Such abuses have become so common in the past 10 years that such companies have been dubbed "black" companies in the media.

HirokazuOuchi, a professor at Chukyo University, wrote a book last year about such companies when he realised some of his students were being treated illegally at their part-time jobs.

According to Ouchi, their hiring practices typically follow a similar pattern.

"Companies will hire someone for two to three years, but they have no intention of investing the time or the money to nurture that employee," said Ouchi.

He added that the labour ministry lacked the manpower to follow up on complaints.

A ministry official working in corporate surveillance acknowledged that his department was somewhat short-staffed but the government was taking steps to recruit more every year. He declined to give his name as he is not authorised to speak to the media.

Japan's working-age population has been falling since the mid-1990s, which would normally lead companies to improve working conditions to attract workers, but Ouchi said it was not happening because they can get away with bending the rules.

"This is a way for companies to keep labour costs down, but it is also a path that leads to death by overwork," he added.

AMMAN — Jordan Industrial Estate Company (JIEC) announced Sunday in a press statement that there are 250 job opportunities available for men and women at companies operating in Al Hussein Industrial Estate in Karak.

JIEC Chief Executive Jalal Al Debei said in the press statement that employment was available for production workers, technicians and administrators, and added that this coordination with the companies will bring  mutual benefit as some of the Karak residents will  be employed to fulfil labour requirements as at those companies.