Business

AMMAN — The new forecasted capital expenditure for the fiscal year 2024 stands at JD73.317 million, according to the 2024 public budget draft law.

The government allocated JD1.729 billion as capital expenses for next year’s budget, in comparison with JD1.547 billion in the current year's budget, as reported by Al Mamlaka TV. 

Approximately all estimated expenditure items in the draft law government were labeled "ongoing" and were allocated JD843.446 million, while the remaining "in progress" expenses were allocated JD812.566 million. 

Governmental units’ expenses for the year 2024 as forecasted reached JD564.638 million, while foreign loans to finance capital projects allocated JD39.610 million from the World Bank, International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Saudi Fund for Development and Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development. The allocation rose by JD1.65 million compared with JD37.963 million in the 2023 budget. 

As for the new projects, the government allocated JD3.5 million to increase the capacity of grain warehouses in Ghabawi by 100,000 tonnes. 

Moreover, JD7 million has been allocated to the General Population and Housing Census to be implemented in 2024. The local administration ministry budget will receive JD6.035 million for new capital projects including JD80,000 for pavement maintenance in the capital city of Amman.

The budget also allocated JD1.5 million for an environmental waste management project for the year 2024 to be implemented by the Public Works and Housing Ministry. Additionally, the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture will receive JD1.2 million for integrating modern technology in irrigation systems and another JD500,000 for establishing a new agricultural marketing company. 

The government allocated JD4 million as capital expense to finance qualitative agricultural projects in the field of waste water treatment. Another JD12 million were allocated for integrating children with disability in education, in addition to dedicating JD1 million to establish a technical university college in Tafilah governorate.   

The government listed JD3.4 million as capital expenses for supplying and installing mechanical water meters and an additional JD650,000 for upgrading sewage networks in the Kingdom. 

Under the National Cyber Security Centre, the government allocated JD1.67 million for an awareness national programme designated for cyber security. 

For the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority draft budget, the government allocated JD1 million to support the transportation sector in addition to allocating JD5 million to develop Al Quweira Industrial Park under the Aqaba Development Company budget.    

The government allocated JD1.5 million to establish a new building for the Jordan Water Company (Miyahuna).

The capital expenses allocated for the governorates are capped at JD131.5 million for the fiscal year 2024, in which the largest share of JD18.517 million is allocated for Amman governorate, while Madaba governorate received the lowest allocation of JD8.6 million.

STOCKHOLM — Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk broke his silence recently on a strike against his company in Sweden, saying it was "insane" that it may block new car deliveries.

Swedish postal workers began halting deliveries to Tesla offices and repair shops on Monday, in support of a strike launched by the metal workers' union IF Metall over the electric car maker's refusal to sign a collective wage agreement.

Financial newspaper Dagens Industri later reported that this in effect could block new Tesla's from hitting the road as license plates for new cars issued by the Swedish Transport Agency are only delivered via mail carrier Postnord.

Replying to a user posting about the issue on X, formerly Twitter, Musk, who had not publicly reacted to the strike previously, said simply: "This is insane."

Mikael Andersson, head of press at the Swedish Transport Agency, confirmed in an e-mail to AFP that new number plates are delivered through Postnord.

Andersson explained that the agency was bound to use the carrier under a procurement contract for all government agencies negotiated by the Swedish Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency.

Some 130 mechanics at 10 Tesla repair shops in seven cities across Sweden first walked off the job on October 27, according to trade union IF Metall.

The strike has since expanded to include other repair shops that service Tesla among other auto brands, and dock workers have stopped unloading Tesla cars at all Swedish ports.

In addition to IF Metall, nine other unions have announced "sympathy measures", including the Swedish Union for Service and Communications Employees — which represents postal workers — and the Swedish Building Workers' Union.

Despite these moves, several Swedish media have reported that their impacts have so far been limited, and IF Metall has accused the electric car maker of systematically using strike breakers to circumvent the labour action.

Tesla has also found other ways to deliver new cars to Sweden, notably by road.

Negotiated sector-by-sector, collective agreements are the basis of the Swedish labour market model, covering almost 90 per cent of all employees and guaranteeing standard wages and working conditions.

According to IF Metall, Tesla had told them it would not sign a collective bargaining agreement because they "don't do that anywhere in the world".

AMMAN — The National Petroleum Company (NPC) in 2022 achieved net profit of JD2.8 million after tax and tax settlements for previous years, marking a profit rate of JD0.191 per share.

Gas sales last year totalled JD15.27 million, compared with JD16.8 million in 2021, marking a decline of JD1.8 million or 10.7 per cent, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

The quantities of gas sold in 2022 amounted to 5.382 billion cubic feet (bcf) compared to 6.526bcf for 2021, marking a decrease of 17.5 per cent.

The drop is attributed to the 65-day interruption of gas turbines operating in the Risha field following a decision by the government to transfer the ownership of these turbines from the Central Electricity Generation Company to the Samra Electricity Power Company.

As a result of this interruption, the rate of production sold fell to 14.7 million cubic feet per day compared to 17.8 million cubic feet per day in 2021.

At the end of 2022, production capacity reached about 30 million cubic feet.

The NPC's gas sales revenue during 2022 stood at JD12.021 million compared with JD13.090 million for 2021, down by JD1.068 million or 8.2 per cent compared with the previous year.

The company's property rights increased to JD37.2 million in 2022 compared with JD34.4 million in 2021, up by 8.3 per cent, while assets totaled JD47.2 million compared with JD43 million in 2021, which is 8.9 per cent higher.

AMMAN — Jordan's trade balance deficit in the January-September period of 2023 dropped by 11 per cent from the same period in 2022, decreasing from JD7.957 billion to JD7.078 billion, the Department of Statistics (DoS) announced on Thursday.

The value of the Kingdom’s total exports reached JD6.764 billion in the first nine months of 2023, decreasing by 2.4 per cent from JD6.933 billion recorded in the corresponding period of 2022, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

In the same period of 2023, national exports went down by 2 per cent, reaching JD6.272 billion relative to the same period of 2022 where national exports accounted for JD6.402 billion, DoS figures showed.

Import values reached JD13.842 billion in the first nine months, showing a decrease of 7 per cent when compared with the corresponding period of 2022.

Meanwhile, the value of reexports stood at JD492 million, marking a drop of 7.3 per cent compared with the JD531 million recorded during the same period of 2022, the DoS added.

The Kingdom's total exports in September 2023 declined by 17.1 per cent, reaching JD680 million compared with the same month of 2022.

Imports went down by 14.7 per cent to JD1.546 billion when compared with the corresponding month of 2022.

According to the DoS report, the trade balance deficit in September 2023 dropped by 12.7 per cent, reaching JD866 million compared with September 2022.

SAN FRANCISCO — ChatGPT creator OpenAI announced on Tuesday that Sam Altman would return as its CEO, days after his shock dismissal plunged the pioneering artificial intelligence firm into crisis.

Hundreds of OpenAI staff had threatened to quit following Altman's sacking on Friday, demanding in a letter released to the media the resignation of the board, as speculation swirled about the future of the company.

His dramatic exit also sparked intense lobbying from OpenAI's biggest investors, including tech titan Microsoft, for his return.

OpenAI wrote on X that it "reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor [Chair], Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo."

"We are collaborating to figure out the details."

In the fast-moving sequence of events, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had announced this week that he would hire Altman and members of his team to lead AI research.

But Altman said on Tuesday that Nadella was backing his return to OpenAI.

"With the new board and w satya's support, i'm looking forward to returning to openai, and building on our strong partnership with [Microsoft]," Altman wrote on X.

OpenAI, meanwhile, had said it would hire Emmett Shear, a former chief executive of Amazon's streaming platform Twitch, as interim CEO.

Shear also took to X to welcome the news of Altman's return.

"I am deeply pleased by this result, after ~72 very intense hours of work," he wrote.

"Coming into OpenAI, I wasn't sure what the right path would be. This was the pathway that maximised safety alongside doing right by all stakeholders involved. I'm glad to have been a part of the solution."

Change needed

Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into OpenAI, incorporating its tech into various products including its search engine Bing.

Its data centers have been crucial to the development of OpenAI's ChatGPT, whose success sparked a multi-billion-dollar global race in AI research and development.

Nadella had said that "governance changes" were needed at OpenAI to avoid such disruptive surprises.

"We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board," the Microsoft CEO said on X on Tuesday.

"We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed and effective governance."

The announcement of Altman's return appeared to cap the rollercoaster events unleashed by his firing.

The OpenAI board, which included widely respected AI researcher and company co-founder Ilya Sutskever, on Sunday stood by its decision to dismiss Altman and appointed Emmett Shear as interim CEO.

But that did little to quell the outrage within the company or the unease among OpenAI's investors.

Sutskever was among the signatories of the letter from OpenAI's employees demanding the board's ouster.

"I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions," he wrote on X on Monday. "I never intended to harm OpenAI."

Generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT are trained on vast amounts of data to enable them to answer questions, even complex ones, in human-like language.

They are also used to generate and manipulate imagery.

But the tech has triggered warnings about the dangers of its misuse — from blackmailing people with "deepfake" images to the manipulation of images and harmful disinformation.

FRANKFURT — The German government has frozen future spending pledges across almost its whole budget for the rest of 2023, a finance ministry source said on Tuesday, after a court ruling blew a massive hole in its finances.

The constitutional court decided last week Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition had broken debt rules when it transferred 60 billion euros ($65 billion) in loan authorisations earmarked for pandemic support to a climate fund.

The move upended the government's spending plans, and the finance ministry of Europe's biggest economy immediately suspended most projects under the fund from 2024.

But now, so-called "commitment authorisations" for 2023 were also being suspended, a finance ministry source said. These are commitments in the current budget that result in expenditure in later financial years.

"Existing liabilities will continue to be honoured, but no new ones may be incurred," the source said. 

Authorisations could still be allowed in "exceptional cases", it added.

Der Spiegel quoted a letter from a senior official sent to all ministries and the chancellery, saying the freeze applied "with immediate effect" and impacted the budgets of all ministries.

Government Spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told a regular press briefing in Berlin on Monday that the coalition was examining the consequences of the ruling to work out how big the budget hole was. 

The climate fund — which was worth 212 billion euros prior to the ruling — was aimed at speeding Germany's shift to an emissions-free economy. 

Cash had also been earmarked for other purposes, however, such as boosting domestic semiconductor production as Europe seeks to reduce its reliance on Asian chip imports.

The parliamentary budget committee had been due to rubberstamp the federal budget for 2024 on Thursday during a special session. But that may be in doubt after last week's court ruling. 

In their judgement, the court in Karlsruhe, southwest Germany, ruled that the government's actions had breached the so-called "debt brake", which caps new borrowing in German budgets. 

The brake was suspended from 2020 to 2022 during the pandemic and energy crisis, but came back into force this year.

The ruling has also further fuelled tensions in Scholz's uneasy coalition, particularly with the pro-market FDP, a key supporter of the debt rules, and the other two parties, which argue they should be reformed.

SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft announced on Monday the hiring of OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman following his shock sacking from the company whose ChatGPT chatbot has led the rapid rise of artificial intelligence technology.

OpenAI has appointed Emmett Shear, a former chief executive of Amazon's streaming platform Twitch, as its new CEO despite reported pressure from Microsoft and other major investors to reinstate Altman.

OpenAI's board sacked Altman on Friday, with US media citing concerns that he was underestimating the dangers of its tech and leading the company away from its stated mission — claims his successor has denied.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote on X that Altman "will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team", along with OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and other colleagues.

"The mission continues," Altman posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Altman shot to fame with the launch of Open AI's artificial intelligence chatbot last year, which ignited a race to advance AI research and development, as well as billions being invested in the sector.

His sacking triggered several other high-profile departures from the company, as well as a reported push by investors to bring him back.

Brockman said on X that the initial leadership team at Microsoft included three former OpenAI colleagues who resigned after Altman was fired.

"We are going to build something new & it will be incredible. The mission continues," Brockman said, tagging former director of research Jakub Pachocki, AI risk evaluation head Aleksander Madry, and longtime researcher Szymon Sidor.

But OpenAI stood by its decision in a memo sent to employees on Sunday night, saying "Sam's behavior and lack of transparency... undermined the board's ability to effectively supervise the company," The New York Times reported.

'Badly' handled sacking 

Shear confirmed his appointment as OpenAI's interim CEO in a post on X on Monday, while also denying reports that Altman had been fired over safety concerns regarding the use of AI technology.

"Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of @OpenAI. After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted," he wrote.

"Before I took the job, I checked on the reasoning behind the change. The board did not remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety, their reasoning was completely different from that."

"It's clear that the process and communications around Sam's removal has been handled very badly, which has seriously damaged our trust," Shear added.

Global tech titan Microsoft has invested more than $10 billion in OpenAI and has rolled out the AI pioneer's tech in its own products.

Microsoft's Nadella added in his post that "we look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI's new leadership team and working with them".

"We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap," he said.

OpenAI is in fierce competition with others including Microsoft, Google and Meta, as well as start-ups like Anthropic and Stability AI, to develop its own AI models.

Generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT are trained on vast amounts of data to enable them to answer questions, even complex ones, in human-like language.

They are also used to generate and manipulate imagery.

But the tech has triggered warnings about the dangers of its misuse — from blackmailing people with "deepfake" images to the manipulation of images and harmful disinformation.