Business

TOKYO — Japan's economy shrank more than expected in the final quarter of last year as consumer spending and exports slumped, adding to headaches for policy makers already wary of damage the financial market rout could inflict on a fragile recovery.

Gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by an annualised 1.4 per cent in October-December, bigger than a market forecast for a 1.2 per cent decline and matching a fall marked in the second quarter of last year, Cabinet office data showed on Monday. It followed a revised 1.3 per cent increase in the previous quarter.

The data underscores the challenges Prime Minister Shinzo Abe faces in dragging the world's third-largest economy out of stagnation, as exports to emerging markets fail to gain enough momentum to make up for soft domestic demand.

Abe sought to reassure markets that Tokyo is ready to stem excessive market volatility that could undermine the wealth effect delivered by his stimulus policies.

"As we have agreed at Group of 7 and Group of 20, sudden currency moves are undesirable. I want the finance minister to closely monitor the situation and respond with appropriate measures as needed," he told parliament on Monday.

Market speculation of additional monetary easing simmers, although the Bank of Japan's (BoJ) policy ammunition appears to be dwindling, analysts say.

"Private consumption is especially weak. The economy is at a standstill," indicated Junko Nishioka, chief economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking.

"It's a matter of time before the BoJ and the government will take additional stimulus measures," she said, predicting the central bank will ease policy again as early as next month.

Running out of ammunition?

With his stimulus policies that gave big manufacturers windfall profits, Abe had hoped to generate a positive cycle in which companies raise wages and help boost household spending.

Instead the data showed that private consumption, which makes up 60 per cent of GDP, fell 0.8 per cent, exceeding market forecasts of a 0.6 per cent decline.

Since Abe took power three years ago, private consumption has shrank by roughly 1.5 trillion yen to 306.5 trillion yen ($2.7 trillion).

The economy grew an average 0.68 per cent since Abe's administration took office in 2013, below a 1.8 per cent increase during the opposition Democratic Party's three-year reign.

Offering some hope for policymakers, capital expenditure rose 1.4 per cent, confounding market expectations for a 0.2 per cent decrease.

But analysts doubt whether the economy will gain momentum in coming months, with the recent market turbulence and slowing Chinese growth clouding the outlook for corporate profits.

Exports fell 0.9 per cent in October-December after rising 2.6 per cent in the previous quarter, underscoring the pinch companies are already feeling from soft emerging market demand.

Domestic demand shaved 0.5 percentage point off GDP growth, while external demand, or net exports, added just 0.1 point.

Last month the BoJ cut a benchmark interest rate below zero, stunning investors with another bold move to stimulate growth.

But the shock move has failed to boost Tokyo stock prices or weaken the yen as Japanese markets remained at the mercy of a global equity sell-off.

Separately, the BoJ hopes that cutting interest rates below zero will boost spending and investment, but fear, inertia and years of paltry returns mean the nation's army of savers is unlikely to march to the central bank's tune.

After the BoJ made its move last month to charge banks for holding their reserves from February 16, some retail banks are already cutting their deposit rates, and the rest are expected to follow suit.

Bank of Yokohama Ltd., one of Japan's biggest regional lenders, cut its one-year rate to 0.02 per cent from 0.025 per cent, and Resona Bank, a unit of fourth-largest lender Resona Holdings, halved its rate to 0.025 per cent on five-year deposits.

Central bank governor, Haruhiko Kuroda, aims to break the deflationary mindset that has blighted Japan for decades and get the economy moving, but his compatriots are compulsive savers. 

More than half of the $14 trillion in Japanese households' financial assets are either bank deposits or cash, compared with only 13.7 per cent for the United States and 34.4 per cent for the eurozone.

Ryoji Yoshizawa, director at Standard & Poor's Ratings Japan, doesn't think the cuts will change that.

"Interest rates are already very low, so further cuts are not likely to have much impact on depositors," he said.

Tokyo pensioner Kozo Nishimura remembers getting 8 per cent on his savings at Kyowa Bank, which later became Resona, 320 times what the bank pays now on five-year deposits, but he has long since become used to getting scornfully low returns.

"A change of 0.01 points is such a microscopic thing," said Nishimura, 70, who used to own an electronics shop. "For now, I'll just wait and see."

Noriko Ainoya, 71, who runs a shop selling handbags in Sugamo, a Tokyo shopping district popular with the older generation, is equally dismissive of the "dimes and pennies" she gets on her savings.

But the alternatives are too risky.

"I'm scared to keep money under the mattress," she said. "But I don't know about investing, either, since there's no knowing how stocks will move."

Ultimately, Japanese investors value security, remarked a sales official at a major brokerage firm.

"Even if interest rates on time deposits fall from 0.02 per cent to 0.01 per cent, depositors are not losing money. Many people are likely to keep deposits even if interest rates go down to zero," he indicated.

Banks are unlikely, however, to follow Kuroda into negative territory. It would be too unpopular to charge savers, especially the elderly, for holding their money, finance professionals say.

"There have been attempts in the past by banks to introduce charges on deposits, but they failed due to the backlash from retail and corporate clients," said Yoshinobu Yamada, banking analyst at Deutsche Securities in a note to clients.

Some are already at or near the tipping point.

"There's no point in depositing money," said Kiyoshi Ishii, 72, the worried owner of a shop selling rice crackers in Sugamo. "There's no other way than to keep money under the mattress." 

That could be music to the ears of companies making something a little more secure than the mattress.

"At this point, the outlook for future sales is unclear," said Akira Kondo, who works at Eiko Kogyo Co., the top maker of safes in Japan. But "there is a chance the sale of safes would rise following TV reports", he added. 

AMMAN — Jordan Investment Commission (JIC) President Thabet Al Wir and members of the Lower House's tourism committee discussed ways to develop tourism in development zones and procedures aimed at providing support to the sector. 

Wir highlighted the importance of working with municipalities and increasing their roles in the local development, noting that municipalities constitute the majority of local communities in the Kingdom.

He also said that the outcomes of London conference provided Jordan with a chance to attract more investments, adding that investment commissions in Germany and the UK expressed their intentions to have a firsthand look on investment opportunities, especially in development and free zones.

The agreement with the European Union to facilitate the rules of origin would contribute to providing more support to Jordanian exports to Europe, the JIC president added. 

The commission seeks to further improve the investment environment and provide a proper atmosphere for investment to enhance the development process and find solutions to challenges facing investors, he said, adding that these procedures would help localise and attract more investments.

Committee President MP Amjad Maslamani and panel members highlighted the JIC's role in enhancing the Kingdom's investment environment, calling for more procedures aimed at attracting investors, especially in the hotel and tourist transport sectors.

AMMAN — The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Supply on Monday launched a computerised programme to develop business inspection, in cooperation with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank and the ICT Ministry.

Industry Ministry Secretary General Yousef Shamali said the programme aims at supporting the government in improving its services, such as business inspection, through facilitating procedures and reducing time and cost necessary for monitoring.

The system includes building a joint and comprehensive central database for all economic institutions working in Jordan, subject to inspection, and classifying them according to sectors and hazard levels to be used by all monitoring parties. 

This step supports implementing other aspects of the programme which are related to identifying institutions subject to inspection and preparing a schedule of visits to these institutions.

The programme also entails electronic connection among monitoring parties, in a way that allows exchanging the results of visits, hazard standards, laboratory tests and coordinating visit timings under an agreement among public institutions to reduce recurrent and unorganised visits.

IFC supported the government when it started reforming inspection in 2007, when two reform initiatives proved success at  the ministries of labour and environment, and paved the way for the Cabinet to approve the ministerial economic committee’s recommendation to launch inspection reform nationwide.

WASHINGTON — Advances in artificial intelligence will soon lead to robots that are capable of nearly everything humans do, threatening tens of millions of jobs in the coming 30 years, experts warned on Saturday.

"We are approaching a time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task," said Moshe Vardi, director of the Institute for Information Technology at Rice University in Texas.

"I believe that society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?" he asked at a panel discussion on artificial intelligence at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Vardi said there will always be some need for human work in the future, but robot replacements could drastically change the landscape, with no profession safe, and men and women equally affected. 

"Can the global economy adapt to greater than 50 per cent unemployment?" he asked.

Transform manufacturing 

Automation and robotisation have already revolutionised the industrial sector over the last 40 years, raising productivity, but cutting down on employment.

Job creation in manufacturing reached its peak in the United States in 1980 and has been on the decline ever since, accompanied by stagnating wages in the middle class, said Vardi.

Today there are more than 200,000 industrial robots in the country and their number continues to rise.

Today, research is focused on the reasoning abilities of machines, and progress in this realm over the past 20 years has been spectacular, added Vardi.

"And there is every reason to believe the progress in the next 25 years will be equally dramatic," he continued.

By his calculation, 10 per cent of jobs related to driving in the United States could disappear due to the rise of driverless cars in the coming 25 years.

According to Bart Selman, professor of computer science at Cornell University, "in the next two or three years, semi-autonomous or autonomous systems will march into our society".

He listed self-driving cars and trucks, autonomous drones for surveillance and fully automatic trading systems, along with house robots and other kinds of "intelligence assistance" which make decisions on behalf of humans.

"We will be in sort of symbiosis with those machines and we will start to trust them and work with them," he predicted. "This is the concern because we don't know the rate of growth of machine intelligence, how clever those machines will become."

Control? 

Will the machines remain understandable for the humans? Will humans will be able to control them? Will they remain a benefit for humans, or pose harms?

These questions and more are being raised anew due to recent advances in robotic technology that allow machines to see and hear, almost like people.

Selman said investment in artificial intelligence in the United States was by far the highest ever in 2015, since the birth of the industry some 50 years ago.

Business giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Tesla, run by billionaire Elon Musk, are at the head of the pack.

Also, the Pentagon has requested 19 billion for developing intelligent weapons systems.

What is concerning about these new technologies is their ability to analyse data and execute complex tasks.

This raises concerns about whether humans might one day lose control of the artificial intelligence they once built, added Selman.

It's a concern that some of the world's great minds have raised too, including British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who warned in a BBC interview in 2014 that the consequences could be dire.

"It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate," he said. "Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete and would be superseded." 

"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," he added.

These questions have led scientists to call for the establishment of an ethical framework for the development of artificial intelligence, as well as safeguards for security in the years to come.

Last year, Musk — the owner of SpaceX — donated 10 million to resolve such concerns, deeming artificial intelligence potentially more dangerous than nuclear weapons.

For Wendel Wallach, an ethicist at Yale University, such dangers require a global response.

He also called for a presidential order declaring that lethal autonomous weapons systems are in violation of international humanitarian law.

"The basic idea is that there is a need for concerted action to keep technology a good servant and not let it become a dangerous master," Wallach said.

LONDON — Gold prices glistened last week, striking one-year highs as the precious metal benefitted from its status as a haven investment in times of economic turbulence.

With growing fears of another global recession, gold struck $1,263.47 an ounce, the highest level since February 6, 2015.

"Clearly, gold's status as the ultimate safe haven asset has well and truly been confirmed, yet again," said Fawad Razaqzada, analyst at City Index trading group. 

"The buck-denominated precious metal has also benefitted from a weaker dollar as hopes about further 2016 rate rises from the Federal Reserve have basically been dashed," he added.

Investors have been pouring into gold and other haven investments such as the Japanese yen, as stock markets tumble on rising concerns over the global economy, in particular regarding slowing growth in China.

"The gold price is benefitting from tailwind generated by stock markets... reflecting the risk aversion displayed by market participants," Commerzbank analysts indicated in a note to clients.

Despite worries over China, Asia's biggest economy and the world's second largest is still set to support demand for the metal going forward, industry body World Gold Council (WGC) predicted.

"Physical demand will continue to be supported by strong central bank purchases, and continued buying of jewellery, bars and coins by households across the world, led by India and China," said Alistair Hewitt, head of market intelligence at the WGC.

"If we just look at the year to date, the investment case for gold is as strong as ever. While stock markets have wobbled, gold has performed well," he added.

Hewitt spoke as the WGC published its report for 2015, which indicated that total demand for gold was virtually flat compared with a year earlier at 4,212 tonnes.

"Despite a challenging start to the year, gold demand rebounded in the second half of 2015 as a result of sustained buying from central banks and a strong second half from China and India," the WGC said in its latest Gold Demand Trends report.

"This was particularly evident in the retail investment sector, where bar and coin purchases were led by China and Europe, with strong support from the US, as investors took advantage of weaker prices amid a softening economic backdrop, financial turbulence and ongoing geopolitical tension," it added.

By Friday in late trading on the London Bullion Market, gold stood at $1,239.75 an ounce, compared with $1,150.35 one week earlier.

"After soaring the most since the 2008 financial crises to a one-year high, gold is seeing a pullback on profit taking," said CMC Markets analyst Jasper Lawler.

European stocks also rebounded Friday on higher oil prices, solid German economic growth and rising US retail sales, regaining some ground lost last week on fears of a global recession.

Gold's stellar performance meanwhile helped sister metal silver to reach a near four-month high at $15.96 an ounce last week.

PARIS — Oil prices may have rebounded off 12-year lows struck last month, but any hope for a broader recovery in the market would be misplaced, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Tuesday, blaming the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for the latest glut of supplies on the market.

The IEA said in its monthly report that "it is very hard to see how oil prices can rise significantly in the short term... with the market already awash in oil..."

On the contrary, it added "...the short-term risk to the downside has increased".

Crude prices collapsed from over $100 per barrel in July 2014 to under $30 last month on a slowdown in Chinese growth and as the OPEC oil group stepped up output in an attempt to force out higher-cost production.

While low oil prices are usually good for oil consuming nations and global economic activity, investors have uncharacteristically in recent months begun to take the oil price as a proxy for economic demand, roiling global markets in volatility.

After the price for the main international oil contract struck a low below $28 last month, it rebounded to above $35 and now sits around $33. 

But the IEA said "before victory over the bearish forces is declared we should look at the main factors driving the optimism".

It then proceeded to debunk the factors driving the market higher, first among them the prospect of an agreement between OPEC and non-OPEC nations to cut output.

The IEA said "the likelihood of coordinated cuts is very low".

OPEC glut 

Another widely held view in the market is that increases will slow in OPEC production, except for Iran which is returning to the market after years of international sanctions, the IEA continued.

But it pointed out that Iraqi production struck a new record in January and that there are indications Saudi Arabia has stepped up shipments.

The Paris-based IEA, which advises oil consuming nations on energy issues, noted that OPEC is currently responsible for the glut of supplies hitting the market the past year.

While non-OPEC production levels are roughly flat from one year ago, at 32.6 million barrels per day (mbpd) in January, OPEC supplies were up by 1.7 mbpd from a year earlier.

"It is OPEC's business whether or not it makes output cuts either alone or in concert with other producers but the likelihood of coordinated cuts is very low," said the IEA. 

At current levels, OPEC production means oil stocks are likely to increase further, it indicated.

Another driver of the recent bullishness in the crude market has been the view that low oil prices will boost growth in demand.

But the IEA said it holds on to its "...view that global oil demand growth will ease back considerably in 2016" to 1.2 mbpd from a five-year high of 1.6 mbpd in 2015.

It trimmed by 0.1 mbpd its forecast for world oil demand in 2016 to 95.6 mbpd.

Any change likely downward 

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) last month cut its forecast for global growth this year by 0.2 percentage points to 3.4 per cent. 

While this would still be an improvement from 3.1 per cent in 2015, the IEA noted the forecast is "heavily caveated with risks to growth in Brazil, Russia and of course slower growth in China".

"Economic headwinds suggest that any change will likely be downwards," it said.

The IEA also expressed doubt that the value of the US dollar, the currency in which oil is traded could be a sustainable factor to boost consumption.

While the value of the dollar has dipped in recent weeks as prospects of a series of interest rate hikes recedes, thus making oil cheaper to buy in other currencies, the IEA noted concerns over the state of the global economy work in favour of the US currency.

"...the dollar is still likely to remain strong as it benefits from its safe haven status with other economies faring relatively worse," it said.

Another factor driving oil prices higher is expected output cuts in non-OPEC production later this year. 

The IEA, which forecasts a net drop of 0.6 mbpd in 2016, noted that drops in production have so far been slower than the market has predicted.

"Perhaps resilience still has some way to go," it said.

In Asian trading on Tuesday, the price of Brent crude edged up two cents to $32.9 per barrel, while the main US contract, WTI, climbed 31 cents to $30.

AMMAN — The protocol for the second meeting of the Hungarian-Jordanian Joint Economic Committee was signed on Saturday at the Planning and International Cooperation Ministry, a ministry statement said. 

The protocol includes cooperation in many fields including commerce, investment, energy, environment water, agriculture, tourism and transport. 

On the sidelines of the signing ceremony, Planning Minister Imad Fakhoury briefed Hungarian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade László Szabó and an accompanying delegation on the political reform implemented by the Kingdom that aims to boost the citizen's participation in the decision-making process. 

The planning minister reviewed economic developments in Jordan and the roadmap the Kingdom adopted to enhance economic reform, especially in accordance with the Jordan Vision 2025, the executive development programme and the governorate development programme for the years 2016-2018.

Fakhoury also briefed the delegates on the Syrian crisis' repercussions on the Jordanian economy and the importance of funding the Jordan Response Plan for the years 2016-2018 to enable the Kingdom to meet the demands of hosting Syrian refugees and enhance the resilience of host communities.

The two-day meeting of the Hungarian-Jordanian Joint Economic Committee was chaired by Planning Secretary General Saleh Kharabsheh and Szabó.

On the meeting's sidelines, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission and the Hungarian National Development Agency on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. 

AMMAN — Amman Chamber of Commerce (ACC) President Issa Murad is scheduled to head a delegation to conduct a business visit to Tunisia on Monday. 

The five-day visit organised by the ACC is a continuation to the Jordanian-Tunisian Higher Committee meetings held at the end of 2015 in Amman, and will include a Jordanian-Tunisian business forum.

The delegation, which includes more than 40 businesspeople representing economic sectors, is scheduled to hold bilateral meetings and field visits to the most important Tunisian economic institutions to review economic opportunities and be introduced to fields of possible commercial cooperation. 

Moreover, the delegation will discuss bilateral cooperation between the private sectors in both countries to serve mutual interests, Murad said in an ACC statement released on Saturday. 

He stressed the importance of transitioning the Jordanian-Tunisian economic and commercial relations to a whole new level of partnership and cooperation through intensifying delegation visits. 

Murad also stressed that Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi's visit to Jordan in October 2015 gave the Jordanian private sector a strong push to go to Tunisia and look for new markets to make up for the loss of regular ones. 

He said the private sector looks forward to have Tunisia as the Kingdom's gate to the European and African markets.

JAKARTA — Indonesia on Thursday opened dozens of sectors to foreign investors in what President Joko Widodo has described as a "Big Bang" liberalisation of its economy, Southeast Asia's largest.

President Joko Widodo's administration loosened foreign investment restrictions on everything from restaurants and agriculture to transportation and movie theatres.

"Today's revisions represent our largest opening to international investment in 10 years," Trade Minister Tom Lembong told Reuters.

"More international investment will bring more capital, more world-class expertise, more technologies to Indonesia. Domestic players must seize those opportunities," he said.

Twenty-nine sectors including restaurants and the movie industry were removed from the "negative investment list" (DNI) altogether, meaning that foreigners can operate in those areas without restrictions.

The negative investment list sets out which parts of Indonesia's economy are partially or fully closed to foreign investors, who in recent years have complained of rising economic protectionism and nationalism as they look to expand into the market of more than 250 million people.

Widodo indicated in an interview on Wednesday he was opening up more room for foreigners in the latest of 10 policy packages since last September aimed at stimulating the economy, which grew 4.8 per cent last year, the slowest since the 2009 global crisis.

The investment revisions were supposed to come out in early January, but Widodo postponed the announcement because he was not satisfied that the reform was radical enough, Lembong said.

The president still needs to approve the new measures, which will be sent to him within days.

Thursday's announcement was not all about opening up Indonesia's industries, however. Twenty sectors, including low-tech construction, were added to the list of industries with foreign investment restrictions.

Although foreign direct investment into Indonesia has risen in recent years, it remains among the lowest in Southeast Asia in relation to total investment and gross domestic product.

Foreign investors have pushed for years for a greater access to opportunities in Indonesia's vast domestic market, valued at some $840 billion.

Foreign businesses applauded the latest move as a sign that Widodo was moving in the right direction.

"This will help restore confidence that Indonesia is open for business," said Adrian Short, chairman of the British Chamber of Commerce in Jakarta.

But he stressed that "implementation of the regulations will be key".

Others were not as impressed.

"Our initial impression is that this is not entirely broad-based and has fallen short of the 'big bang' moniker used to preview the stimulus package," said Glenn Maguire, chief economist at ANZ.

"They have clearly opened, but one or two gatekeepers have been added," he added.

CAIRO — Nahed Ibrahim has scoured Egypt in vain to find a regular supply of medication to help her mother to recover from a stroke she suffered four months ago. Since then the 75-year-old has struggled to follow conversations.

"I searched for the medicine everywhere, I travelled to several provinces but I still can't find it. My mother's condition is deteriorating day after day," said Ibrahim as she left, empty-handed, a pharmacy in the industrial town of Helwan, southwest of the capital.

Declines in the value of the Egyptian pound coupled with a shortage of foreign exchange have made it harder for Egyptian pharmaceutical companies to import active ingredients they need to make generic medicines millions of poor Egyptians rely on.

Though medicines are classed as essential goods, putting them high on the priority list at banks deciding how to allocate precious dollar rations, pharmaceutical companies say they still face serious problems that force them to slow or pause production.

A weaker currency has also made it more expensive to import raw materials while the price of finished medicines is fixed by the health ministry, forcing manufacturers to stop making some cheap generic medicines to staunch growing financial losses.

The result: people like Ibrahim find the medication they need is missing from pharmacy shelves for weeks at a time or is available at only a handful of outlets around the country.

Egypt has struggled to revive its economy since a 2011 uprising ushered in years of political instability, scaring off foreign investors and tourists, key sources of hard currency. 

Economic and political discontent has helped to unseat two presidents in the last five years.

Ahmed Al Sayed, a Cairo pharmacist, said he struggles to source basic medicines such as eye drops as well as anticoagulants and other drugs used to treat heart disease and high blood pressure.

A medical source at the El Salam Oncology Centre in Cairo said three important cancer drugs were currently in short supply.

Widespread shortages

Drug shortages are not new to Egypt, but have become so widespread in recent years that the health ministry set up a drug shortages directorate (DSD) in 2012 to minimise the impact. 

DSD began publishing a monthly table of medicines that were in short supply with suggested generic or branded alternatives.

In December, the ministry's tally showed 189 drugs were in short supply but had available substitutes and a further 43 drugs were in short supply with no substitute.

Walaa Farouk, who heads the DSD, acknowledged that the dollar crisis was exacerbating shortages and said the health ministry was looking at raising more prices to encourage production.

Medical professionals, however, said the shortages were more widespread and urgent than the official figures suggest.

"According to data provided by pharmacies, 180 out of 14,000 pharmaceutical drugs registered with the health ministry are in short supply with no substitutes," indicated Osama Rostom, commercial director at EIPICO, a leading manufacturer of generic medicines, and deputy head of the Chamber of Pharmaceutical Industries.

Egypt has introduced a series of measures in recent months aimed at cutting imports of non-essential goods to free up precious foreign currency for priority goods like medicine.

But manufacturers say limits on the amount of dollars companies can deposit in banks and difficulties opening letters of credit have resulted in payment delays, landing them with demurrage and storage costs for goods stuck at port.

"Before the dollar crisis, we used to pay for the cost of raw materials by writing letters of credit... We would then import the materials and pay the rest of the money after the shipment is received," Sabri Teweila, who heads the pharmaceutical manufacturers committee in the Pharmacists Syndicate, told Reuters.

"Now, it's obligatory to pay the entire cost before shipment. The economic crisis negatively affected agreements with foreign countries," he added.

With Egypt importing about 12 billion Egyptian pounds ($1.53 billion) worth of medicines and ingredients, according to Teweila, the crisis has hit the industry hard.

Pricing problem

The problem compounds a long-running price issue that has already caused ongoing shortages of certain medicines.

Though drug-producers say they are willing to keep medicine affordable, the prices of some drugs have not changed since the 1990s, when the dollar was worth between 2.7 and 3.4 pounds.

The official rate is now 7.73 to the dollar and the black market rate is about 8.72. On the eve of the 2011 revolt that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule, the rate was roughly 5.8.

Since they pay for imports of ingredients in dollars and price the medicines in pounds, producers say their losses are mounting, forcing some to cut output of certain cheap drugs.

A pharmacist who works for an international pharmaceutical company operating in Egypt said it was replacing loss-making drugs with more profitable lines to stay in business.

"We laid off 20 per cent of our employees at the beginning of 2015 because our profit went down ... We then had to minimise the production of drugs that did not bring in good money," said the pharmacist, who declined to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

The central bank has moved in recent months to ease the dollar shortage that had seen shipments pile up at ports.

The health ministry also raised in recent weeks the price of about 30 medicines to encourage manufacturers to make them. But successive governments have been reluctant to raise prices of generic medicines overall, fearing the public backlash.

"Companies have presented requests for tariff changes... the ministry is working on it and we, in fact, raised the prices of some medicines," said the DSD's Farouk.

For Ibrahim, the main carer for her elderly mother, the endless quest for medicine has come to dominate life.

Occasionally, the 32-year-old chances upon a packet of the drug and is charged double the official 16-pound price tag.

"Not everyone does that. Some of them know I'm in need and if they can find me a packet, they don't profit," she said.