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AMMAN — Royal Jordanian (RJ)  inaugurates its new direct regular route from Amman to the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Tuesday, according to an RJ press statement. "RJ is expanding its network in Turkey by adding the Ankara route to that of Istanbul," RJ President/Chief Executive Officer Suleiman Obeidat said  in the Monday press release.

"This route is bound to cater for the demand of business traffic between the capital of Turkey and both Jordan and beyond. It will also serve Hajj and Umrah pilgrims." Ankara and its vicinity are important regional centres for trade and commerce, he said. 

The chief executive officer  added that the new addition to the route network brings the number of RJ destinations to 55, pointing out that new destinations will be added to the RJ route network within the coming few weeks.

Also, RJ passengers flying from/to Amman can continue their travel to more than 1,000 destinations served by RJ’s partners in the oneworld airline alliance. Royal Jordanian will operate to Ankara three times a week, on Thursdays, Sundays and Tuesdays bringing the number of flights between Jordan and Turkey to between 12 and 17 weekly, depending on the seasonal demand.

ATHENS — The Greek parliament approved a 2016 budget featuring sharp cuts in spending and some tax increases to satisfy the country's international lenders at a time of growing austerity fatigue.

The leftist-led government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is under pressure to deliver tangible benefits to its poorest citizens after having signed to a third rescue package from eurozone governments in August worth up to 86 billion euros.

The budget makes 5.7 billion euros ($6.2 billion) in public spending cuts including 1.8 billion from pensions and 500 million from defence. The savings are greater than this year's 1.5 billion euros. It also included tax increases of just over 2 billion euros.

It was passed by 153 votes to 145 with two members absent.

"This budget is a difficult task for a government that wants to leave its mark with social justice," Tsipras told lawmakers just before the vote.

He stressed that for the first time in five years, spending on hospitals, social welfare and job creation was being increased modestly within the bailout's constraints.

Tsipras said that was possible because his government had secured greater fiscal space by reducing its primary budget surplus target before debt service to 0.5 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in tough negotiations with the creditors.

The budget will have a deficit of 2.1 per cent of GDP next year compared with 0.2 per cent this year.

 Tsipras' coalition majority fell to three last month after two lawmakers rebelled against a set of reforms demanded by the lenders, raising questions about his ability to push through a more ambitious long-term reform of the country's complex, under-funded pension system next month.

Representatives of the eurozone, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) return to Greece on Monday for more talks about pending reforms of the pension and tax systems and public administration.

Having recapitalised the countries' four systemic banks at less expense to the taxpayer than expected, the government aims to complete a first review of the latest bailout programme in February in order to open promised talks on long-term debt relief from eurozone governments.

For the centre-right opposition, interim New Democracy Party leader Yiannis Plakiotakis said: "Syriza's first national budget proves that what they have been saying about social sensitivity is just a myth. The budget shows that 2016 will be much worse than 2015."

Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos told Reuters in an interview on Saturday that a long-term commitment from eurozone partners to debt relief is crucial to restore investors' confidence in Greece and "lay the Grexit dragon to rest once and for all".

The soft-spoken leftist academic, who replaced Yanis Varoufakis in July when Greece was on the brink of being bounced out the euro, has worked to rebuild shattered trust among euro area finance ministers by faithfully implementing the country's third bailout plan.

While his predecessor had a turbulent relationship with  fellow ministers, Tsakalotos has focused on building a record of delivering on undertakings made under the bailout deal more or less on schedule before presenting demands to his peers.

Even German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a sceptic who tried to force Greece to take a long "time out" from the eurozone at the height of the debt crisis last summer, has been heard recently to praise reform efforts and new-found cooperation between Athens and its creditors.

Asked if a Greek exit from the euro was still a risk, Tsakalotos said: "If the roadmap of the Greek government to complete the recapitalisation of the banks and complete successfully the first review of the [bailout] programme is followed, and we get a serious discussion and solution on debt, then ... I think that will lay the Grexit dragon to rest once and for all."

Consumers, businesses, depositors and investors needed long-term certainty about the sustainability of Greece's debt burden, which is expected to reach 186 per cent of annual GDP next year — to restore their confidence, he said.

Debt relief

The leftist government swept to power in January, promising to reverse years of austerity demanded by Greece's creditors that helped to push the economy into a long depression.

With Greek banks near collapse, Athens had to impose capital controls on deposit withdrawals and international transfers in July and accept creditors' demands for more austerity and reform by agreeing to the third bailout programme in August.

However, the government is continuing to press for relief on Greece's huge debt burden.

Tsakalotos hinted at the parameters of a debt relief negotiation he said was likely to start in February, saying that capping the country's annual gross funding needs by extending loan maturities and grace periods before payment of interest and principal have to begin could be a good solution.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who chairs meetings of eurozone finance ministers, told Reuters in October that the governments of the currency bloc agreed that Greece's debt service costs should be capped at 15 per cent of GDP a year over the long term.

Asked about that idea, Tsakalotos said: "Fifteen per cent is a very large number if it doesn't include T-bills, but if it does include T-bills it is something that is very well worth considering. So that is quite a big issue."

One source close to the creditors poured cold water on the idea. Asked if short-term treasury bill debt could be included in a country's gross funding costs when the IMF and European Union (EU) calculate its debt sustainability, the source said: "No, T-bills are not included in the financing needs calculations."

Tsakalotos accepted in principle that long-term debt relief would be conditional on continued progress on reforming the Greek economy, with monitoring by the creditors.

"It depends on the nature of the benchmarks and the nature of the conditionality," he said. 

"At some point the creditors have to decide whether they trust the Greek government. Because if they do not trust the Greek government and the Greek government is always going to have to be on a tight political leash, then the implications of that are that we will never get out of the crisis," Tsakalotos added.

The IMF considers 15 per cent of GDP to be a normal debt service level for an advanced nation, but given Greece's economic weakness, an IMF source said in October that a cap of 10 per cent of GDP would be more appropriate.

Treasury bills are the government's main source of short-term funding since it was shut out of capital markets and forced to seek the bailouts.

The ECB has limited Greece's total borrowing through T-bills to 15 billion euros ($15.84 billion), about 7 per cent of GDP. That would mean the government would need to allocate another 8 per cent of GDP to service longer-term debt, close to the level envisaged by the IMF source.

Athens faces debt service costs far below the EU average until 2022 because it was granted a 10-year holiday on principal repayments on most of its debt to the eurozone in 2012, but they will spike from 2022 unless smoothed out.

Tsakalotos said locking in manageable annual debt service costs over the long term would give investors a "clear runway".

"Because if they only get a solution for one year, they will only invest for one year. If they only get a solution for two years they are only going to invest for two years," he added.

Return to growth

He forecast a return to economic growth in the second half of 2016 and a complete lifting of capital controls after a shallower-than-expected recession due to this year's political turmoil.

Asked when he thought Athens might be able to start borrowing on the bond market again, Tsakalotos said: "I don't think it's impossible by the end of 2016. I wouldn't bet my life on it but I think it's at least a 50-50 bet."

Since July, he has overseen a recapitalisation of banks hard hit by the capital controls to stop deposit flight, and pushed through seven sets of unpopular legislation required to obtain a first cash release from the eurozone creditors.

Tougher assignments lie just ahead, including a potentially explosive overhaul of Europe's most expensive pension system in the coming weeks which provoked a general strike on Thursday.

The government's parliamentary majority has shrunk to three and public tolerance for further belt-tightening is wearing very thin after the six years of austerity.

Tsakalotos said the government would nevertheless manage to pass the ambitious pension reform next month, but it aimed to avoid further pension cuts in 2016 despite a requirement in the bailout deal to save 1 per cent of GDP on pension costs next year.

Asked how he could square that circle, he said: "We will have to find savings without cuts, obviously." He declined to say if that meant raising contributions, saying he wanted to discuss the reform first with employers and trade unions.

"We really have got reform fatigue and it's absolutely critical that people start seeing some of the benefits so that the reforms do not lose momentum," Tsakalotos concluded.

LONDON — Emerging economies not long ago deemed at risk of crisis are seeing steady balance of payments improvements, while for oil exporters in the Gulf and elsewhere once-mighty cash surpluses have all but melted away.

The so-called taper tantrum of mid-2013 unleashed a wave of selling of assets from developing countries whose big funding or current account deficits left them vulnerable to the withdrawal of cheap money resulting from a slowdown, or taper, in the rate of US money printing.

With oil prices at the time over $100 a barrel these tended to be fast-growing energy importers such as India and Turkey, which, along with Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa, were lumped together as the Fragile Five.

But thanks to the halving of oil prices since mid-2014 and sharply weaker exchange rates, gaps are narrowing.

India's deficit has shrunk to 0.9 per cent of annual economic output this year, according to data compiled by JPMorgan, while Ukraine should post a surplus versus an 8 per cent gap in 2012.

Others have improved less, with Turkey running a 5.2 per cent deficit this year and Brazil, despite economic recession, seeing a bigger deficit than in 2012 at 3.4 per cent.

"Lower oil prices are clearly helping to move trade balances so this is positive," UBS strategist Manik Narain said.

"However, none of the current account improvements have come through stronger exports," he said. "Governments have inflicted quite a lot of pain on domestic demand to get the current accounts under control," he added.

But if oil and currency adjustments are shrinking some deficits, commodity-reliant countries with fixed exchange rates are seeing the opposite.

Venezuela's 2.9 per cent surplus in 2012 for instance has swung into an 8.1 per cent deficit. There are also dramatic declines in the Middle East, where the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries will run a 3.8 per cent surplus this year, down from 22 per cent in 2012 and 13.2 per cent in 2014.

Oil earnings this year for the bloc comprising Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates will be $275 billion less than 2014, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Moreover, all GCC currencies except Kuwait peg their currencies tightly to the dollar. So with little relief on the exchange rate front, governments will need to slash budget spending to dampen import demand.

Jason Tuvey, Middle East economist at Capital Economics says the headline surplus is down to Kuwait and Qatar, which mask a Saudi deficit of as much as 7 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP). Smaller Oman and Bahrain have even bigger funding gaps.

While some reckon governments will have to loosen currency pegs, Tuvey reckons spending cuts are more likely, noting that Saudi Arabia reacted to the 1980s oil price collapse by slashing capital spending more than 98 per cent.

"A repeat of this would wipe out the budget deficit and push the current account position back into a sizeable surplus," he said.

Other oil exporters which allowed their currencies to weaken have fared better, with Russia's surplus at 5 per cent of GDP compared with 3.5 per cent in 2012.

Malaysia's surplus has halved since 2012 but with the ringgit almost 30 per cent weaker since the taper tantrum, there may be signs of a turnaround, imports are contracting and data on Friday showed exports growing twice as fast as expected.

AMMAN —  Jordanian Free Zones Corporation Chairman Nasser Shraideh expects the free zone at the Queen Alia International Airport (QAIA) to attract JD380 million of new investments and increase exports by JD750 million during the first three years, according to an Amman Chamber of Commerce (ACC) statement said Sunday.

Shraideh made his remarks during a meeting with ACC President Issa Murad, attended by several heads of Jordanian commercial chambers and representatives of commercial sectors.

Shraideh said the zone will provide 3,500 direct job opportunities and 4,000 indirect ones that will stimulate the national economy as the zone will also help meet local market demands through entering regional markets and being a logistic area for exporting and importing. Murad said the launch of the free zone in QAIA comes in response to Royal directives to support national investments.

VIENNA — Members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) failed to agree an oil production ceiling on Friday at a meeting that ended in acrimony, after Iran said it would not consider any production curbs until it restores output scaled back for years under Western sanctions.

Friday's developments set up the fractious group for more price wars in an already heavily oversupplied market.

Oil prices have more than halved over the past 18 months to a fraction of what most OPEC members need to balance their budgets. 

The hands-off decision pushed US oil back below $40 a barrel on Friday, after closing at the level Wednesday for the first time since August.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate tumbled $1.11, or 2.7 per cent, to $39.97 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Brent North Sea crude for January delivery, the international benchmark for oil, fell to $43 a barrel in London, down 84 cents (1.9 per cent) from Thursday's settlement.

"The market did not take the announcement out of OPEC very well today as OPEC appears to really be in disarray among its members and they took the path of least resistance, which was to do nothing and wait to see if things get better," said Andy Lipow of Lipow Oil Associates.

James Williams at WTRG Economics said the prolonged interval before the next OPEC meeting indicates "they do not seem to think that there will be an agreement this spring."

"By then, they have a better feel for Iranian production; how much damage has been done to shale production; and how many offshore and oil sands projects have been delayed or scrapped," Williams added.

Banks such as Goldman Sachs predict they could fall further to as low as $20 per barrel as the world produces more oil than it consumes and runs out of capacity to store the excess.

A final OPEC statement was issued with no mention of a new production ceiling. The last time OPEC failed to reach a deal was in 2011 when Saudi Arabia was pushing the group to increase output to avoid a price spike amid a Libyan uprising.

"We have no decision, no number," Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zangeneh told reporters after the meeting.

OPEC's Secretary General Abdullah Al Badri said OPEC could not agree on any figures because it could not predict how much oil Iran would add to the market next year, as sanctions are withdrawn under a deal reached six months ago with world powers over its nuclear programme.

"We cannot put a number now because Iran is coming, we don't know when Iran will come, and we will have to accommodate Iran one way or the other," said Al Badri. 

"We decided to postpone this decision to the next OPEC meeting [in June] until the picture will be more clearer for us to decide on a number," he added.

Most ministers left the meeting without making comments.

Badri tried to lessen the embarrassment by saying OPEC was as strong as ever, only to hear an outburst of laughter from reporters and analysts in the conference room.

‘Everyone welcome’

A year ago, Saudi Arabia pushed through an OPEC decision to defend market share instead of cutting output, ultimately hoping to drive high-cost producers such as US shale firms out of the market.

Many poorer OPEC members have said the group's largest producer was effectively twisting their arms, prompting Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al Naimi, to say he would listen to everyone this time.

 Iran has made its position clear ahead of the meeting with Zangeneh saying Tehran would raise supply by at least 1 million barrels per day (bpd), or 1 per cent of global supply, after sanctions are lifted. The world is already producing up to 2 million bpd more than it consumes.

Naimi earlier had said he hoped growing global demand could absorb an expected jump in Iranian production next year: "Everyone is welcome to go into the market."

He made no comment after the meeting.

At the meeting, OPEC welcomed back returning member Indonesia, its 13th member. The group accounts for about a third of world oil output and does not include Russia or the United States, which rival Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest producers.

"The pressure will build on OPEC and oil prices. At this rate of overproduction we will run out of onshore storage in the first quarter," indicated Gary Ross, a veteran OPEC watcher and the founder of PIRA think tank.

‘Dysfunctional family’

Initially on Friday there was no indication of a repeat of the 2011 meeting, which Naimi had called the "worst ever".

OPEC sources told Reuters the ministers had agreed to roll over existing policies during the first couple of hours of deliberations. That involved raising the collective ceiling, excluding new member Indonesia, to 31.5 million bpd from the previous 30 million, effectively bringing it in line with real production numbers.

But later, all decisions appeared to have been overturned, leaving the group with no official policy. It was not immediately clear what happened behind closed doors.

"Now the Viennese OPEC family gathering is over, the music has stopped and they're sweeping up, but nothing has changed," said Christopher Wheaton, energy fund manager and analyst at Allianz Global Investors

"The oil production remains unchanged, the oil production quota remains divorced from real-world oil production, and the slightly dysfunctional OPEC family, like most families, has gone its separate ways," he added.

OPEC President and Nigerian Oil Minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu said a reduction "is not going to make much of an impact in the market".

"We have said on more than one occasion that we are willing to cooperate with anyone that will help balance the market with us," Naimi told reporters gathered at OPEC headquarters in Vienna.

"Everyone is concerned about... the prices, no one is happy," said Iraq's Oil Minister Adil Abd Al Mahdi.

Indonesia's re-entry will "simply acknowledge the reclassification of Indonesian output from non-OPEC to OPEC production", said Julian Jessop, analyst at Capital Economics research group. "It would not amount to an increase in overall global supply."

OPEC, whose members face pressure from cleaner fuel technologies, also had a word for the Paris climate summit.

OPEC's final communique stated that "climate change, environmental protection and sustainable development are a major concern for us all".

AMMAN — Industrial exports from Zarqa and Mafraq governorates rose by 2.7 per cent in the first 11 months of 2015, reaching $822 million, compared to the same period in 2014, Zarqa Chamber of Industry (ZCI) President Thabit Wirr said on Saturday.

During the same period, the chamber issued 12,650 certificates of origin, he added, noting that exports of ZCI members amounted to $80 million in November, 9 per cent less than the same month of last year.

Leather products and embroideries topped the list with $481 million achieving an increase of 15 per cent. Supply, food, agricultural and animal industries came second at $107 million. Third place was achieved by plastic and rubber industries with $63 million.

FRANKFURT — The European Central Bank (ECB) eased policy further on Thursday to fight stubbornly low inflation but kept much of its powder dry, disappointing high market expectations for greater stimulus.

The ECB cut its deposit rate deeper into negative territory and extended its asset buys by six months, widely anticipated moves that some investors considered the bare minimum after the bank had for weeks stoked expectations of stimulus moves.

The bank will also start buying municipal debt but keep its overall asset purchases unchanged, potentially lowering its government bond buys as the new instrument crowds out other assets.

The euro jumped as much as 3.1 per cent against the dollar after the policy announcement and bond yields surged. 

Disappointed investors had anticipated a 25 per cent increase in monthly asset buys, with some even pricing in a bolder deposit rate cut than the move to -0.3 per cent from -0.2 per cent.

The euro traded 2.4 per cent higher on the day at $1.0865 at 1510 GMT, on course for its biggest one-day gain since March.

Defending the moves, ECB President Mario Draghi said the market just needed to take time to understand them, adding they could always be adapted.

"I think these measures need time to be fully appreciated and we'll see," he told a news conference. "Our asset purchase programme is flexible, it can always be adjusted."

The huge foreign exchange market move actually tightens monetary conditions, effectively countering the ECB's easing by lowering imported inflation through a higher exchange rate.

Draghi damaged?

"The biggest danger is that market reaction may put the ECB in an awkward position," Nicholas Wall, portfolio manager at Invesco Fixed Income said.

"A large sell-off in bonds and a stronger euro will tighten financial conditions in Europe and make inflation even harder to generate; they may be talking about easing again sooner than they wished," Wall added.

Still, the euro remains 4 per cent weaker against the dollar since the last rate meeting, indicating that the easing stance has had some impact, even if much of it has been reversed.

The disappointment also damages Draghi's track record of promising and delivering big, first established with a pledge to "do whatever it takes" to defend the euro and bolstered with a bigger-than-expected quantitative easing (QE) earlier this year.

"The non-unanimity of the decision is important, and the market's disappointment is important for the future," Toby Nangle at asset manager Columbia Threadneedle said.

"It limits President Draghi's ability to guide markets who will naturally become more suspicious of his power to deliver the governing council," he added.

Bets on looser ECB policy, even as the US is expected to lift rates this month, has been a key factor driving the euro's weakness against the dollar. 

Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Janet Yellen said investors appeared to expect more from the ECB on Thursday.

"The market expected some actions that were not forthcoming," she told a congressional hearing in Washington.

Resistance to many of the measures under consideration by the ECB was evident after the 25-member governing council's two German members came out in opposition of any measures.

Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann and executive board member Sabine Lautenschlaeger have both argued that monetary policy is already exceptionally loose, that growth is rebounding and the biggest reason inflation is hovering near zero is the fall in oil prices, a big boost for household spending.

Indeed, the ECB actually raised its 2017 gross domestic product (GDP) forecast and said the recovery, even if tepid and prone to geopolitical risk, was actually becoming more broad-based.

Fiscal loosening?

Arguing for monetary policy caution, some European governments are working on looser 2016 budgets, raising the prospect of loosening fiscal and monetary policy at the same time, for some a potentially dangerous combination.

"The ECB is acting against a backdrop of easier fiscal policy; across the eurozone, governments are quietly abandoning fiscal austerity," indicated David Tan, global head of rates at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

He said France gave up the pretence of fiscal rectitude with successive delays to cutting its deficit while Italy's 2016 fiscal stance next year is also projected to be 0.7 per cent points of GDP looser than seen six months ago.

"Even Germany expects to miss its balanced budget target next year as it needs to spend to accommodate a refugee influx of around 900,000 in 2015 and 800,000 in 2016," Tan added.

The ECB is also facing seemingly inevitable rate hikes from the Fed with divergence between the world's biggest central banks keeping markets volatile

Although the ECB also said it decided to reinvest principal payments purchased under QE, the impact of the measures is not seen as significant in the short term as few assets are set to mature until March 2017.

"If we take QE purchases so far, less than 9 per cent were maturing in the two-year sector of the curve," Citigroup indicated. "If we take this as a reasonable amount of bonds, this would be reinvestment worth less than 60 billion euros."

Separately, top ECB officials will not meet market players within a week of policy decisions, Draghi said on Thursday, responding to criticism of closed-door meetings with hedge funds and banks.

The move represents an improvement in transparency for Europe's arguably most powerful institution, which critics say is also one of the continent's most opaque bodies.

It comes six months after a top ECB official revealed market-sensitive information at a closed-door hedge-fund dinner. That prompted the central bank to scrap the distribution of speeches to journalists under embargo.

Criticism resurged, however, after officials' diaries, published in response to a journalist's freedom of information request, showed that hedge funds and banks regularly met policy makers, even shortly before key decisions.

On Thursday, Draghi sought to draw a line under the controversy. In a letter to European lawmakers, he said that such meetings with the six-person executive board, at the core of decision making, would no longer happen at sensitive times.

"There is a need to avoid public speculation or any misperceptions about meetings between members of the executive board and the media and market participants," Draghi wrote to the member of the European Parliament.

"We have, therefore, decided ... that the members of the executive board will refrain from meeting or talking to the media, market participants or other outside interests on monetary policy matters during the quiet period, i.e. in the seven-day period prior to monetary policy meetings," he said.

The move brings the ECB into line with other central banks, such as the Bank of England, and should help satisfy critics, including the European Union's top watchdog.

Last week, European Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly had said she would appeal to Draghi to scrap such meetings ahead of setting policy, such as interest rates.

Others have also called for better accountability at the ECB, which sets the cost of eurozone borrowing, supervises banks and was part of the 'troika' involved in overhauling troubled eurozone states such as Greece.

In May, Benoit Coeure, an influential member of the ECB's executive board, told an audience including hedge funds about plans to accelerate bond buying.

The euro fell when it was announced to the public the following day and some investors cried foul. The ECB said the delayed publication of Coeure's speech was accidental.

ECB diaries later revealed Coeure met BNP Paribas in September 2014 just hours before the bank cut its deposit rate, increasing its charge on banks for parking money at the ECB.

Those diaries also showed that hedge funds Moore Capital and Bridgewater Associates are among regular visitors to the central bank. 

MOSCOW — Gas pipes worth 1.8 billion euros ($1.95 billion) are to be left stranded on the shores of the Black Sea after Russia's decision to suspend work on the Turkish Stream pipeline, a potent symbol of Moscow's falling out with Ankara.

Russia has set out to punish Turkey after it shot down a Russian warplane in Syria last week, imposing trade sanctions and releasing data it claims proves Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is involved in illegal oil deals with Daesh.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters on Thursday work on Turkish Stream, a pipeline intended to pump Russian gas into southeastern Europe via Turkey while bypassing Ukraine, had been suspended.

Shortly afterwards, the head of Italian oil major Eni, slated as one of the main buyers for the pipeline's gas, said the project was dead in the water.

The decision leaves Russian energy giant Gazprom  with kilometres of pipes only useable in the Black Sea.

It ordered pipes from as far afield as Japan and Germany for the 2,400-kilometre South Stream pipeline, originally slated to open in 2018, which were then reassigned to Turkish Stream after the project was axed.

Industry sources said the pipes can only be used for projects in the Black Sea because of their specialised construction. Gazprom will now be forced to put the pipes in storage until tensions between Moscow and Turkey subside.

"These pipes were calibrated for a specific environment, pressure and capacity," said one source in the pipe-making industry. "Accordingly, they are only suitable for underwater pipelines in the Black Sea."

Gazprom was not available for comment.

Aborted predecessor

Although freezing work on Turkish Stream is largely symbolic, it has long been beset by delays and doubts over its viability, the financial implications for Gazprom are very real.

Sberbank analyst Valery Nesterov said Gazprom has spent between $12-14 billion on Turkish Stream and its aborted predecessor South Stream, which was abandoned last year in the face of European Union (EU) opposition and heightened tensions over the Ukraine crisis.

Questions have also been raised over the planned Nord Stream pipeline to Germany after a group of 10 European governments published a letter saying the project ran counter to EU interests and risked destabilising Ukraine.

"Again, the company is rapidly building a pipeline which might not be needed," said Nesterov.

Russia is one of the world's largest steel pipe producers, second only to China, and has the capacity to turn out more than 3 million tonnes of the large-diameter pipes typically used in major energy projects every year.

Russia's largest pipe maker, TMK, said Turkish Stream could be revived in the future.

"Turkish stream, as a project, is not completely finished," said TMK Vice-President Vladimir Shmatovich. "Maybe in a year or two, when the tension decreases, it will be realised. But the pipes could lie on the ground for 50 years."

Separately, Turkey's leaders have mounted a charm offensive among regional energy producers in an effort to diversify supplies as relations with major natural gas provider Russia crumble.

President Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu have travelled to key energy partners Qatar and Azerbaijan respectively this week in an effort to avert any economically damaging disruption in energy supplies as winter sets in.

Putin described the downing of the warplane as a war crime on Thursday and said the Kremlin would punish Ankara with additional sanctions. Russia has already banned some Turkish food imports and left trucks carrying Turkish exports stranded at its borders.

But Russia could deal a real blow by reducing gas supplies, a move broadly seen by analysts and Turkish officials as unlikely for now but which could seriously hurt the Turkish economy and for which Ankara is drawing up contingency plans.

"There is indeed a crisis right now... We are exploring how we can offset this," a Turkish energy official said. "Davutoglu and Erdogan have personally taken the initiative to make sure Turkey doesn't experience a problem in terms of energy supplies."

Ankara buys nearly 60 per cent of its total gas needs, around 27 billion cubic metres (bcm), from Russia via two main pipelines, which enter Turkey through the Marmara region, the country's industrial hub which includes Istanbul, its biggest city, and the most sensitive area to any disruption in supply.

"The Marmara region buys almost all of its gas from Russia and this region makes up 40 per cent of Turkey's gross domestic product as well as its energy consumption," indicated FACTS Global Energy consultant Cuneyt Kazokoglu.

"If Russia cuts gas, it would effectively be shutting down the Marmara region and that would seriously hurt Turkey," he said, adding he did not expect Moscow to take such a step as it would break a "contractual obligation".

Not enough LNG capacity

Buying gas from Turkmenistan and boosting supplies from Iran, already Turkey's second largest supplier, are among the options being considered, energy officials said. Bringing supplies from northern Iraq is another possibility.

Davutoglu visited Azerbaijan on Thursday with the aim of increasing gas imports through the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), a key project due to bring 16 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe. Around 6bcm of that is destined for Turkey.

Speaking in Baku, Davutoglu said Turkey and Azerbaijan had agreed to complete the project before the original target date of mid-2018.

Earlier this week, Erdogan visited Qatar to explore the possibility of buying more liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes from its Gulf Arab ally.

But Turkey's insufficient storage capacity and the heavy dependence of its business on regular natural gas mean any boost in LNG imports would only partially make up for lost Russian gas, according to Turkish think-tank TEPAV.

"The most important element of establishing supply security in countries which have a high dependence on natural gas imports is to have a storage capacity equivalent to 20 to 30 per cent of consumption. In Turkey, that is 6 per cent," TEPAV researcher Aysegul Aytac wrote in a recent note.

Nearly half of Turkey's power generation is sourced from natural gas, leaving households and industry vulnerable to any disruption, she said.

"The insufficiency of using alternative products in both industry and power generation as well as the inflexibility of households to use anything other than gas mean problems could be inevitable in the medium term," she added.

LONDON — The outlook for the global economy next year is darkening, with a US recession and China becoming the first major emerging market to slash interest rates to zero both potential scenarios, according to Citi.

As the US economy enters its seventh year of expansion following the 2008-09 crisis, the probability of recession will reach 65 per cent, Citi's rates strategists wrote in their 2016 outlook published late on Tuesday. A rapid flattening of the bond yield curve towards inversion would be an key warning sign.

"The cumulative probability of US recession reaches 65 per cent next year," Citi's rates strategists indicated. "Curve inversion will likely come more quickly than the consensus thinks."

Normally, short-dated yields such as two-year yields are lower than longer-dated ones like 10-year yields, as investors demand a premium for taking on risk several years into the future. The curve has inverted before each of the last five US recessions since the mid-1970s.

In China, deflationary pressures and downside risks to growth will force Beijing to loosen fiscal policy, let the yuan depreciate and perhaps become the first major emerging market economy to cut interest rates to zero, Citi said.

Separately, a study commissioned and paid for by US automaker General Motors (GM), said that despite numerous pledges and years of effort to transform Southeast Asia into a single market, the 10-nation region remains resistant to free-flowing trade and fortified against imports, to the cost of some global companies, 

The study for one of the region's biggest investors highlights a lack of progress by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to harmonise trade and investment rules, leaving the autos industry with little to show for a decade of trade liberalisation.

In the study, consultancy Oxford Economics found that tariffs in ASEAN on imported goods such as cars generally have fallen "dramatically", but this is undermined by industrial policies that promote some products, through tax and other incentives, but require them to have high levels of locally made components that put imported goods at a competitive disadvantage.

Policies like Indonesia's "low-cost green cars" (LCGC) and one in Thailand dubbed Eco2 neutralise the positive impact of lower tariffs, says GM.

"South Korea is GM's major manufacturing hub. There is a free trade agreement between Korea and ASEAN and we would like this to operate as a free trade agreement and as effectively as possible," Matt Hobbs, vice president in charge of government relations and public policy for GM International, told Reuters.

Under current conditions, GM cannot deploy vehicles made in Korea to be sold competitively in ASEAN countries, he said.

Single market

ASEAN formally established an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) at its annual summit last month, aiming to create a single market with few barriers to the flow of trade, capital and professional labour in an area of 625 million people.

"In practice, we have virtually eliminated tariff barriers between us," said Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, the summit host. "Now we have to assure freer movements and removal of barriers that hinder growth and investment."

Twelve years in the making, Najib indicated that it will take another 10 years to put into effect all the measures of the AEC, which comes into being on December 31. Politically sensitive sectors such as agriculture, auto production and steel will remain protected during that period.

An integrated ASEAN economy is meant to compete with China, India and Japan — ASEAN's combined gross domestic product (GDP) of $2.6 trillion would make it the world's seventh largest economy — but endemic corruption, poor governance and a lack of transparency in some members pose formidable obstacles to full integration.

Drag on growth

For GM, being able to use existing capacity in South Korea, a major export hub for the company, is critical to its bottom line, especially as it restructures its business in southeast Asia. As part of that process, GM has stopped producing GM-branded cars in Indonesia and is scaling down its Thai plant.

Without significant export markets, like southeast Asia, GM Korea will find it tougher to be profitable and may need to make permanent capacity cuts, analysts say. Not so long ago, Korea was producing close to a fifth of GM's global output, but labour costs have risen by nearly half in five years, pushing it into a high-cost bracket along with Japan.

According to the GM-commissioned study, non-tariff measures have gained momentum in ASEAN since the global financial crisis. The study counted 190 additional non-tariff measures implemented in 2009-13, with 75 such measures in Indonesia, 39 in Vietnam, 27 in Thailand, and 16 in Malaysia.

These are a drag on the region's economic growth, and cost jobs, the study said, adding that if all these measures were removed, GDP in the bloc's five biggest economies would grow by an extra 0.5 percentage point in 2025, resulting in more than half a million new jobs.

For GM, policies such as LCGC and Eco2 make a car like the Chevrolet Spark less competitive. The specifications for the Korean-built subcompact model are similar to those required to qualify for the Indonesian and Thai programmes.

But in Thailand, the Spark carries an 80 per cent duty as there is no coverage under the 2007 ASEAN-South Korea free trade agreement. Also, the Spark would not qualify for the lower tax and other Eco2 benefits because it doesn't meet local content requirements. 

The cost of manufacturing an imported Spark would be "thousands of dollars" more than an average Eco2-qualified car made in Thailand, a GM spokesman indicated.

GM's Hobbs reckons ASEAN could be the world's sixth-largest car market by volume by 2018 — if it operates as a true single market.

"If you add all the [ASEAN] countries together and they could function as a single, unified region, then that would make [ASEAN] even more competitive as a production base for the rest of the world," he added.

AMMAN — The Amman Chamber of Commerce (ACC) issued 47,699 certificates of origin carrying a total value of JD1.1 billion during the first 11 months of 2015.

Iraq accounted for the highest share in terms of the value that amounted to JD322 million (2,248 certificates), followed by the United Arab Emirates with JD243 million (9,818 certificates) and JD96 million for Saudi Arabia with 9,063 certificates.

In terms of the type of certificates, re-exported items topped the list amounting to JD612 million through 6,606 certificates, followed by agricultural products with JD213 million (38,105 certificates), industrial items with JD146 million (723 certificates) and Arab products with JD58 million through 740 certificates.