Business

PARIS — French oil and gas major TotalEnergies said on Wednesday that it would boost fossil fuel production over the next five years, a reversal after years of reducing output.

The group's oil and gas production had been dropping every year between 2019 and 2022.

The company had also never given a forecast for how much production would fall or increase, saying instead that it would remain stable by the end of the decade.

But in a statement before presenting its strategy to investors in New York on Wednesday, TotalEnergies announced it would increase output by two to 3 per cent per year, mainly from liquefied natural gas.

"TotalEnergies reaffirms the relevance of its balanced multienergy strategy considering the developments in the oil, gas and electricity markets," the firm said.

It added that it was "in a very favourable position to take advantage of changing energy prices".

The oil and gas business "is expected to generate more than $3 billion of additional underlying cash flow in 2028 compared to 2023 at constant prices", TotalEnergies said.

Oil prices have increased in recent months on concerns about supply following cuts by major producers Saudi Arabia and Russia

TotalEnergies said it was refocusing its oil and gas portfolio on assets and projects with "low greenhouse gas emissions" while also diversifying into renewable energy.

The company said it was "implementing its transition strategy while offering an attractive shareholder return".

TotalEnergies also said it was "drastically lowering the emissions from its operations".

Fossil fuel use is set to be the main bone of contention at key UN talks aimed at curbing climate change, starting on November 30 in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.

Energy firms have come under fire from climate activists for not doing enough to turn away from oil and gas.

Oil and gas sector emission reduction pledges have stalled and in some cases gone backwards, the financial think-tank Carbon Tracker said in a report this month.

BP watered down a 2030 production cut target while fellow British major Shell has announced its "liquids" production (LNG and liquefied natural petroleum) will remain stable to the end of this decade, the report noted.

KARIMA — The lush palm groves of Karima are a long way from Sudan's battlefields, but the war's effects are all too present, leaving farmers struggling to find buyers for this year's harvest.

Prices have collapsed in the vital date industry, the latest economic sector to become a casualty of war in the northeast African country.

Every autumn, until this September, date farmers in northern Sudan pulled their harvests down from palm trees, securing a living for months to come.

But five months into the war between Sudan's rival generals, the country's economic infrastructure has been destroyed and "buyers are scared", farmer Al-Fatih Al Badawi, 54, told AFP.

Sudan is the world's seventh-largest producer of dates, growing more than 460,000 tonnes per year, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.

How much of that figure will be available this year remains to be seen, but farmers in northern Sudan are lucky they could manage a harvest at all. 

In Karima — a town on the Nile River about 340 kilometres (210 miles) north of the capital Khartoum — the groves bustle with young men climbing date palms, dropping bunches of the brown fruit, beloved by Sudanese, onto white sheets below.

Farmers who depend on the date industry face colossal challenges moving their products across the country, as do those in other agricultural sectors. 

Along with insecurity, wartime fuel shortages have severely hindered the ability to transport goods.

Before the war, nearly all trade in highly centralised Sudan went through Khartoum.

But constant air strikes, artillery blasts and street battles have left the capital largely off-limits to traders, who fear for their safety or are turned back by fighters at checkpoints.

"Our main market was Khartoum," Badawi said. Without it, trade is at a standstill and the price for his crop is in freefall.

Land left fallow 

In Sudan, one of the world's most underdeveloped countries, dates and other agricultural products were a foundation of the pre-war economy.

The agriculture sector employed more than 80 per cent of the workforce and accounted for 35 to 40 per cent of gross domestic product, according to the United Nations.

But now, in much of the country including southeastern Gedaref state, known as Sudan's breadbasket, the land has been left fallow.

Processing factories have been razed or looted.

Smallholder farmers have no access to financing, traders have no guarantees of viable markets and industry heavyweights have given up.

In May, Haggar Group — one of the agriculture sector's largest employers — suspended operations and laid off thousands of labourers.

Even before the war began, one in three people were in need of humanitarian aid and the country's farmers — unable to meet domestic food security needs — struggled to break even.

The date sector in Karima had been in urgent need of "guidance and agricultural policy", as well as resources to reduce high rates of waste, said Al Jarah Ahmed Ali, 45, another farmer.

Now the challenges have only worsened.

Since April 15, fighting between army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, has torn Sudan apart.

Fighting has killed nearly 7,500 people, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

More than 4.2 million people — most of them from the Khartoum area — have been displaced within Sudan, and another 1.1 million have fled the country, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

Agricultural workers are among those joining the exodus, and while they may find relative safety in northern Sudan, whether they can earn enough to survive in a collapsing date market is questionable.

Among them is Hozaifa Youssef, a 26-year-old radiologist who left Khartoum to rejoin his family in Karima, where he is helping with the date harvest.

"I was going to India to get my master's degree," but that goal is now on hold, Youssef said.

The veteran farmer, Badawi, has not lost hope. 

"We're trying to find new markets, even though it's going to be more expensive. Hopefully, the price will adjust and it will all work out."

PARIS — Amazon said on Monday it would invest up to $4 billion in AI firm Anthropic, as the online retail giant steps into an AI race dominated by Microsoft, Google and OpenAI.

The success of OpenAI's ChatGPT, a chatbot released last year that is able to generate poems, essays and other works with just a short prompt, has led to billions being invested in the field. 

Amazon had already announced it aimed to soup up its Alexa voice assistant with generative AI, which the firm said would allow users to have smoother conversations.

San Francisco-based Anthropic is seen as a leader in the field and has its own chatbot, Claude, a competitor to ChatGPT.

"We have tremendous respect for Anthropic's team and foundation models, and believe we can help improve many customer experiences, short and long-term, through our deeper collaboration," said Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.

The giant firms and wealthy investors of Silicon Valley have poured money into artificial intelligence as they seek to find a killer application to justify the interest.

ChatGPT's instant success threw much of the focus onto chatbots and sparked imitators and rivals, not least from Google with its Bard chatbot.

Chinese titans Tencent and Baidu have also launched bots they claim can rival ChatGPT.

'Transformation' promise 

But Monday's deal between Anthropic and Amazon is potentially less significant in the chatbot world and more important in the race to develop chips to power AI. 

Anthropic agreed to use Amazon's chips to develop its next models and the two firms said they would collaborate on developing the next set of chips.

All firms in the space are looking to wean themselves off the chips made by market leader NVIDIA, said Nick Patience, lead AI research analyst at S&P Global Market.

"It'll be difficult for anyone to make a dent in the next 12 to 18 months," he told AFP, but tie-ups like Monday's Amazon deal could help change the picture over five years.

Anthropic also agreed to use Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure — the data centres that store and process data on a vast scale — for "mission critical workloads".

Amazon said it would take a "minority ownership position" in the AI firm, which has already raised more than $1 billion since it was set up in 2021.

The statement promises that "Claude", which is the name of Anthropic's chatbot and its model, will help AWS customers "of all sizes to develop new generative AI-powered applications to transform their organisations".

The deal intensifies competition between Amazon and Google, which had earlier opened its cloud services to Anthropic and invested $300 million to acquire 10 per cent of the company.

AI models require huge computing power so AI firms rely on data centres provided by the likes of AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

As tech giants push their own AI ambitions, they have been increasingly looking at tie-ins with smaller AI firms — Microsoft leading the way with a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI.

BRUSSELS — The European Commission slapped a new fine of 376 million euros ($400 million) on US chipmaker Intel on Friday after an EU court annulled a previous record penalty for abusing its dominance in the computer chip market.

The case is one of many protracted legal battles against tech behemoths the European Union has faced, fights which have driven Brussels to introduce tough new curbs on how digital giants do business in Europe.

The EU's antitrust enforcer said Intel had engaged in "anti-competitive practices aimed at excluding competitors from the relevant market".

The commission said it was restoring the fine partially "for a previously established abuse of dominant position in the market for computer chips called x86 central processing units".

An EU court in Luxembourg last year annulled the fine of 1.06 billion euros handed down in 2009, after it found that Brussels failed to adequately prove anti-competitive practices.

The EU's initial case was based on alleged market abuse between 2002 and 2007, but its origins go as far back as 2000 when complaints against Intel were first lodged at the commission.

Brussels slapped the fine on Intel after saying the company had offered clients price rebates to use its own computer chips in preference to rival AMD.

Intel at the time dominated the market for the x86 CPUs with a 70-percent share during the more than five years it was accused of breaking EU antitrust rules.

Intel said it was "reviewing" the commission's fine.

"While we are disappointed in a fine of this amount, we continue to focus on our future investments in the EU, and on cooperating with the EC in helping advance Europe's semiconductor industry," the company said.

Germany and Intel signed a deal in June for the company to build manufacturing sites in the eastern city of Magdeburg after months of tense negotiations.

"Intel paid its customers to limit, delay or cancel the sale of products containing computer chips of its main rival. This is illegal under our competition rules," said the EU's competition commissioner, Didier Reynders.

"Our decision shows the commission's commitment to ensure that very serious antitrust breaches do not go unsanctioned," he added.

Reynders replaced Margrethe Vestager on September 5 after she stepped down temporarily to run as a candidate for the head of the European Investment Bank.

Under Vestager's leadership, the EU hit tech titans with a series of fines, triggering a wave of legal challenges in the past few years.

Brussels doled out more than eight billion euros in fines to Google alone for abusing its dominant market position between 2017 and 2019, but the penalties are the subject of appeals in EU courts.

The biggest players online will have to comply fully with the landmark Digital Markets Act from next year, or they face fines of up to 10 percent of a firm's global revenue.

But the EU might not be able to run away from legal dramas as experts in Brussels expect some companies to launch legal battles to avoid the harsher market restraints.

Earlier this month, Brussels listed Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and China's ByteDance as online "gatekeepers" that will come under the new rules.

MOSUL — Abir Jassem is busy preparing stuffed vegetables at a kitchen in Iraq's Mosul, where after years of unrest a women-run catering service has helped single mothers like her achieve financial security.

The 37-year-old, who lost her husband while the city was under the control of the Daesh  group, said she had to get a job to put food on the table for her and her children.

"If I didn't work, we wouldn't have anything to eat," said Jassem.

She is now one of some 30 employees of "Taste of Mosul", which celebrates local delicacies and was founded in 2017 after the northern Iraqi metropolis was liberated from IS jihadists.

Most of the workers — cooks as well as two deliverywomen — are widowed or divorced.

Mosul residents are all reeling from the brutal IS rule and the war to defeat it, but for women in Iraq's largely conservative and patriarchal society, the challenges are often compounded.

For Jassem, whose husband died of hepatitis, the catering business has offered a lifeline.

Her family had refused for her to work in any mixed-gender spaces, "but I wanted to work so I would not have to depend on anybody", she said.

Now she earns 15,000 dinars ($11) a day cooking meals that are then delivered to clients.

Her speciality is Mosul-style kibbeh, a minced meat dish.

"Neither Syrians nor Lebanese can make" some of the recipes her Iraqi city is known for, Jassem boasted, as other women sat beside her at a large blue table were preparing the day's menu.

One cook rolled vine leaves. Another copiously stuffed hollowed-out peppers with orange-coloured rice, and a third made meat fritters.

'Strong women' 

Only slightly more than 10 per cent of Iraq's 13 million women of working age are in the job market, according to a July 2022 report issued by the International Labour Organisation.

When the war in Mosul ended in the summer of 2017, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR estimated the number of "war widows" in the thousands.

"Their husbands were often the families' sole breadwinners," the UN agency said.

"Without an income and often with children to support, Mosul's war widows are among the most vulnerable to have been displaced during months of fighting for the once thriving city."

Mahiya Youssef, 58, started "Taste of Mosul" to allow women to enter the labour market in the battered city.

"We have to be realistic," she said. "If even people with university degrees are unemployed, I wondered what kind of work" would "let them cover their children's needs and be strong women".

Launched with just two cooks, the initiative has since grown and now also provides employment for young graduates, said Youssef, a married mother of five.

Appetisers and main dishes on the menu go for the equivalent of $1-10, and monthly profits top $3,000, according to Youssef, who plans to expand.

She said she hopes to open a restaurant or create similar projects in other parts of Iraq.

'Unique' 

Youssef said her passion was "old recipes that restaurants don't make", like hindiya, a spicy zucchini stew with kibbeh, or ouroug, fried balls of flour, meat and vegetables.

One of her employees, Makarem Abdel Rahman, lost her husband in 2004 when he was kidnapped by Al Qaeda militants.

The mother of two, now in her 50s, delivers food in her car, which she said has drawn some criticism.

"My children support me, but certain relatives are opposed" to her working, she said.

But Abdel Rahman hasn't let that stop her, and said she has found in "Taste of Mosul" a "second home".

Many clients order again, but some have become particularly loyal.

For more than two years, Taha Ghanem has ordered his lunch from "Taste of Mosul" two or three times a week.

"Because of our work, we are far from home," said the 28-year-old cafe owner.

"Sometimes we miss our home cooking, but we have this service," he said, hailing "the unique flavours" of Mosul's cuisine.

LONDON — The Bank of England (BoE) left its key interest rate unchanged Thursday, snapping 14 straight hikes following a shock slowdown to UK inflation and one day after the US Federal Reserve (Fed) also hit pause. 

The BoE's monetary policy committee decided in a close 5-4 vote to maintain its key rate at 5.25 per cent, the highest level in more than 15 years.

It cautioned that the rates outlook hinged on inflation staying elevated, echoing the views of its US and European peers.

UK policymakers had been tipped to raise borrowing costs again heading into this week's gathering — until surprising official data Wednesday on consumer prices clouded the picture.

The UK has seen also a rise in unemployment and weak economic growth as rate hikes take their toll.

In reaction, the pound clawed back some of its losses having earlier plumbed a five-month low of $1.2239.

Thursday's decision comes toward the end of a busy week for rate calls from global central banks, which have hiked numerous times for more than 18 months to tame inflation that surged following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

'Finely balanced' 

"The decision on whether to increase or to maintain... at this meeting had become more finely balanced," said BoE on Thursday.

"Further tightening in monetary policy would be required if there were evidence of more persistent inflationary pressures," they added.

Even if the rate has peaked, analysts expect the cost of borrowing to stay elevated for well into next year.

The BoE "doesn't want the markets to decide that a peak in rates will be soon followed by rate cuts, which would... undermine its attempts to quash inflation", noted Paul Dales, chief UK economist at Capital Economics.

Five policymakers, including governor Andrew Bailey, voted not to hike for the first time since December 2021.

A minority of four urged a quarter-point hike "to address the risks of more deeply embedded inflation persistence".

The Fed on Wednesday held US rates but indicated another hike was likely this year should inflation remain high. It hinted also that there would be fewer cuts than anticipated in 2024.

Also Thursday, Sweden's Riksbank and Norway's Norges Bank each raised their key interest rates by a quarter-point.

But the Swiss National Bank unexpectedly left its rate unchanged, confounding expectations for an increase.

All three said more rate increases may be necessary if inflation remains too high.

Shock data

UK official data on Wednesday showed the Consumer Prices Index slowed to 6.7 per cent in August from 6.8 per cent in July.

That was the lowest inflation figure since February 2022 and confounded expectations for an acceleration to 7.1 per cent on higher energy prices.

Central banks have tightened borrowing costs to multiyear highs in the wake of surging energy and food prices.

The European Central Bank has carried out 10 straight rises, including a quarter-point hike last week, but is now signalling that eurozone borrowing costs may have reached a peak.

It comes as data this week showed eurozone inflation slowed slightly in August.

Cost-of-living crisis 

In a bid to cool prices, the BoE began lifting its key interest rate from a record low of 0.1 per cent at the end of 2021, when inflation started to creep higher as economies slowly emerged from lockdowns.

Nevertheless, UK inflation subsequently struck a 41-year peak at 11.1 per cent in October 2022, while the BoE is tasked by the British government with keeping the level at about 2 per cent.

The country has since been blighted by disruptive strikes, notably by rail and health workers, as salaries fail to keep up with the surging cost of living despite record-high growth in average UK wages.

The rate increases have worsened the cost-of-living crisis, with retail banks following suit by significantly hiking mortgage rates.

Landlords, faced with higher repayments, have in turn pushed up rents by sizeable amounts.

At the same time, banks are offering higher returns on savings, for those who can afford to set money aside.

In response to Thursday's BoE decision, XTB analyst Walid Koudmani warned rates may not have peaked.

"The key message today is that rates are at their peak or close to it," Koudmani said.

"But with current data, it could be a dangerous signal to send the markets since if inflation keeps running hot, the BoE will need to hike once more."

DETROIT — The Canadian auto workers union has reached a tentative agreement with Ford, averting a strike as the labour group's US counterpart eyes expanding its ongoing stoppage to more plants.

Unifor, which represents Canadian auto workers, said late Tuesday the agreement pertained to more than 5,600 Canadian Ford workers who stood poised for a potential walkout.

"We believe that this tentative agreement, endorsed by the entire master bargaining committee, addresses all of the items raised by members in preparation for this round of collective bargaining," said Unifor National President Lana Payne.

"We believe that this agreement will solidify the foundations on which we will continue to bargain gains for generations of auto workers in Canada," Payne said in a statement.

Payne has pursued a quieter and less confrontational strategy than United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, who last week sent 13,000 UAW members out on strike at key Ford, General Motors and Stellantis plants in the United States after failing to reach a deal with the companies.

The collective agreement between Unifor and Ford had expired September 18 at 11:59pm but Unifor agreed to a 24-hour extension to see if negotiators from both sides could finish off the tentative agreement.

Unifor said it was withholding details about the agreement, pending ratification meetings with union members. But Payne earlier this week said Unifor was looking for substantial increases in pensions and wages.

Ford confirmed the tentative settlement but declined to discuss specifics of the proposed contract "to respect the ratification process", a company spokesman said in an email.

Fain has warned the UAW could expand its strike beyond the three plants currently striking in Michigan, Ohio and Missouri if the current negotiations don't yield any signs of progress by Friday morning.

Fain is seeking 40 per cent wage hikes and other significant labor reforms, including the elimination of different pay tiers and the reinstatement of pensions for young employees.

The UAW strike marks the first time the union has called stoppages at all of Detroit's "Big Three" auto manufacturers.

However, unlike recent auto strikes, the union this time is using a targeted stoppage that leaves the vast majority of workers on the job.

AMMAN — KPMG, a leading provider of audit, tax, and advisory services, has released its latest Banking Perspectives: Jordan 2023, titled “A new era of banking”. 

The new publication, the second in its annual flagship series on the financial services industry, highlights the consolidated financial performance of the Kingdom’s banking sector in 2022, and some key trends and themes that were noticed, according to a KPMG statement.

Despite global challenges, the banking sector has shown stability with increased net profits, total assets and customer deposits. KPMG details the impact of rising market interest rates on loan duration and expected credit loss coverage ratio, as well as the industry’s robust granting and collection strategies.

Notably, there has been a significant increase in net profits in FY2022 by approximately 42 per cent compared with FY2021, and total assets have grown by 5.9 per cent since December 31, 2021, demonstrating the sector’s stability. Furthermore, the increase in net income for YE2022 is far beyond the increase in the bank’s total analysed assets, which is directly linked to the rapid increase in the market interest rate.

Despite negative global economic indicators, NPLs have remained relatively the same in 2022 compared with 2021, the coverage ratio for NPLs has increased and the coverage ratio per stage percentage is also considered high which reflects the robust granting, provisioning and collection strategies implemented by the banks.

“The beginning of 2023 presented widespread challenges for the global banking industry, notably in Europe and the US, requiring some introspection and risk aversion to avoid any spill-over effect,” commented Rabih Shalabi, head of Audit at KPMG in Jordan. “That said, macroeconomic indicators are supportive of further growth, and market participants should pursue competition based on individual strengths and have a closer eye on the capital adequacy and liquidity position.”

The increase in the market interest rates has led to an increase in loan duration, resulting in an increase in expected credit losses coverage ratio for non-performing loans  from 124.67 per cent to 135.75 per cent between 2021 and 2022. Customer deposits have increased by 7 per cent aligning with the Central Bank of Jordan financial inclusion programme. 

The banking industry has continued to benefit from economic expansion, with an increase in lending and reaching an industry-wide loan-to-deposit ratio of around 73 per cent at the end of December 2022, while experiencing an increase in both loan book by 8 per cent and customer deposits by 7 per cent.

Fintech and ESG

To integrate fintech into the traditional financial system, significant investments in technology and regulatory support will be required. In Jordan, some banks have already invested in this area by establishing fintech entities, and there has been innovation in mobile applications to enhance convenience, personalisation and data-driven services.

“The next wave of fintech innovation is expected to focus on solving or supporting major global transitions such as the coming demographic impact on productivity, the low carbon economy, emerging markets integration, and automation,” commented Ovais Shahab, Head of Financial Services at KPMG in Saudi Arabia and Levant. “Disruptive or progressive — the innovative solutions developed by fintech will drive change everywhere.”

Jordan is dedicated to integrating sustainability into the banking and finance sector, showing a commitment to the future. The ESG agenda in the Middle East is gaining momentum due to government initiatives and the growing need for disclosure on sustainability reporting and implementations. The publication noted that the main challenge for sustainability reporting is the complexity of sustainability, which includes a variety of topics that make the data collection process and coordination challenging.