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NEW YORK — US automaker Tesla beat analyst expectations in the second quarter, delivering 466,140 vehicles despite a difficult market, according to its earnings report released Sunday.

The nearly half million deliveries represent an 83 per cent increase over the same period last year, and a 10 per cent rise from the previous quarter.

Analysts had expected deliveries to come in under 450,000.

From April to June, the Texas-based electric vehicle giant produced 479,700 cars — an 85 per cent increase compared to the second quarter in 2022.

That brings Tesla's total production by the middle of this year to 920,508, well on its way to its goal of manufacturing 1.8 million cars in 2023 and exceeding expectations from industry watchers.

"Price cuts implemented early in 2023 have paid major dividends for Musk & Co. as demand appears to remain very strong and production efficiencies have allowed for the massive deliveries," analysts from Wedbush Securities wrote in a note to clients.

As competition in the EV sector heats up, Tesla has made several price cuts in the United States, Europe and Asia. 

This has also allowed it to weather declining demand in China.

"We've taken a view that pushing for higher volumes and a larger fleet is the right choice here versus a lower volume and higher margin," CEO Elon Musk said on an April call discussing first-quarter results.

In the United States, Tesla has also benefited from its expanded eligibility in the government's $7,500 tax credit program for electric car buyers, part of President Joe Biden's environmental policy.

Until recently, buyers of Tesla's cheapest offering, the Model 3, were only eligible for half the tax credit because certain parts of the car weren't produced in North America.

WASHINGTON — The US inflation measure most closely watched by the Federal Reserve declined sharply in May, official figures showed Friday, returning to a downward trend after a jump a month earlier.

The Federal Reserve recently announced it was pausing its aggressive campaign of 10 consecutive interest rate hikes to tackle inflation in order to give policymakers more time to assess the strength of the US economy.

The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index measure of inflation declined to 3.8 per cent year-on-year in May, a significant drop from 4.3 per cent a month earlier, the Commerce Department said in a statement.

Much of the slowdown was due to a sharp drop in energy prices, and food prices to a lesser extent. 

But core PCE, excluding volatile food and energy prices, fell only slightly to an annual rate of 4.6 per cent from 4.7 per cent a month earlier, indicating that inflation remains stubborn in many areas. 

Services inflation remained high, while goods inflation rose by a much smaller amount. 

On a monthly basis, PCE rose by 0.1 percentage points, slightly above the median forecast of economists surveyed by Briefing.com. 

BEIRUT — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned in a report Thursday that Lebanon's failure to implement reforms could have "irreversible" consequences for the crisis-hit country and risks jeopardising economic and social stability.

Lebanon has been mired since 2019 in an economic collapse that has seen the local currency lose around 98 per cent of its value against the dollar and impoverished most of the population.

In April 2022, Lebanon and the IMF reached a conditional agreement on a $3 billion-dollar loan needed to save the economy, but officials have still yet to enact the substantial changes required to kickstart the 46-month financing programme.

"The continuation of the alargest risk to Lebanon's economic and social stability, taking the country down an unpredictable road," the IMF said in a report Thursday.

"Without reforms, the economy will remain depressed with irreversible consequences for the country," it said.

The IMF projected that if the situation remains unchanged the public gross debt in Lebanon, which defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time in 2020, could reach 547.5 per cent of gross domestic product by 2027.

Inflation "has accelerated recently reaching 190 per cent year-on-year in February 2023, with food prices increasing by 261 per cent", while unemployment "increased sharply", it said.

"The fiscal deficit widened to an estimated five per cent of GDP in 2022," it added, while the central bank's foreign currency reserves "declined to about $10 billion, compared to $36 billion at its peak in 2017".

The IMF deal is conditional on a series of measures, including unifying Lebanon's plethora of exchange rates, restructuring the banking sector and implementing formal capital controls.

Lebanon has enacted some reforms, including passing a revised bank secrecy law, but the IMF report said the legislation "should be changed to address outstanding weaknesses".

"Nobody wants to lend to a country where the government cannot make good on its external obligations," the IMF's Ernesto Ramirez Rigo told a press briefing on Thursday.

Lebanon's political elite, locked in a power struggle, has been widely blamed for the country's financial meltdown.

Since last year, Lebanon has been governed by a caretaker Cabinet with limited powers and without a president.

No group has a clear majority in parliament, and lawmakers have failed 12 times to elect a new president, amid bitter divisions between the Iran-backed Hizbollah and its opponents.

WASHINGTON — A senior Federal Reserve (Fed) official has criticised proposals to increase bank capital requirements and called for an "independent and impartial" investigation into the rapid failure of US banks earlier this year.

Fed Governor Michelle Bowman said on Sunday that a recent report into banking failures put together by the US central bank's vice chair for supervision, Michael Barr, was "not reviewed by the other members of the Board prior to its publication".

"Troublingly, other Board members were afforded no ability to contribute to the report's content," she told a conference in the Austrian city of Salzburg in prepared remarks. 

"There is a genuine question whether these efforts provide a sufficient accounting of what occurred," she added. 

Barr's report called for greater banking oversight while admitting to the Fed's own failures in its oversight of the failed California lender Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

Bowman's comments highlight the division at the top of the Fed over the best path forward on bank regulation following the swift collapse of regional lenders including SVB, which failed following a bank run by concerned depositors in March. 

'Unintended consequences' 

Speaking in a Congressional hearing on Thursday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell addressed reports that regulators are considering raising capital requirements for some US banks by as much as 20 per cent.

"The capital requirements will be very, very skewed to the eight largest banks," he said, adding that there may also be some capital increases for other banks. 

But he said that "none of this should affect banks under $100 billion [in assets]."

On Sunday, Bowman said there was "room to improve bank supervision for large banks", adding that such reform efforts should be "informed by an impartial and independent review of what led to the failures".

"We must be circumspect about what went wrong, deliberate about what to fix, and cognizant of unintended consequences," she said.

"Misperceptions and misunderstandings about the root causes," of the bank's failures could cause "real harm to banks and their customers, to the financial system, and to the broader economy", she added. 

Bowman said she expected that an independent review into the matter would "find improvements to supervision, revisions to liquidity requirements, or improvements to bank preparedness to access liquidity are more effective than increases in capital for a broad set of banks".

"It is abundantly clear that regulatory and supervisory reform is on the way," she said. "But we should ensure that changes ultimately promote a safe and sound banking system."

JAKARTA — Indonesian livestreamer Christine Febriyanti stood in a room crammed with clothes in Jakarta, hawking colourful garments to hundreds of viewers on a TikTok livestream for a local fashion brand.

"For the Vitamin C kind of girls, you'll fulfil all of your nutrient needs with these orange pants," the 25-year-old told the sales session.

Her pitch is part of a clamour for TikTok shopping in Indonesia, where users spent more money on the app than anywhere else in Southeast Asia over the past year.

The region is a bright spot for TikTok, owned by Chinese tech firm ByteDance, following months of intense scrutiny in the United States and other nations over users' data security and the company's alleged ties to Beijing.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew announced plans last week to invest billions of dollars in Southeast Asia, where it counts 325 million users, of whom 125 million are in Indonesia.

As TikTok Shop grows in popularity, with Indonesians buying more than a third of goods sold in Southeast Asia over the past year, entrepreneurs are flocking to the platform to promote a range of tech, fashion and homemade products.

They are drawn to TikTok's e-commerce features that allow them to sell through livestreams or open online stores.

Febriyanti's 20-strong online retail employer Monomolly reported a 30 per cent increase in revenue since kicking off a TikTok livestream drive last year, according to spokesperson Nadya Paramitha.

The platform's algorithm has jumpstarted the company's business, according to employees.

It has allowed sellers to "reach new markets randomly" instead of relying on interest-based search results on rival apps, said TikTok sales manager Chelvyana Onggo Winata.

It isn't just companies that are using the platform.

DIY home streamers Panji Made Agung and his wife Astari Gita used to rely on their families to survive.

But they now sell as many as 1,000 cookie jars a month through TikTok livestreams, making 25 million rupiah ($1,700).

Their viewers and sales ramped up because of their personalities, said Gita, who often flirts with her husband and makes him feel uncomfortable on camera.

"We discovered selling products alone would not work. It has to touch people's emotions. It has to be entertaining," Gita said. 

"They like our real-life humour as a couple and Agung being awkward."

TikTok Shop has capitalised on the Indonesian market, amassing more than 2 million sellers since it launched in 2021.

It takes one per cent commission and a charge of 20,000 rupiah ($0.13) for every item sold, building a growing market share against more established and bigger rivals.

Indonesia represented 42 per cent of TikTok's $4.4 billion regional gross merchandise value (GMV) last year, according to Singapore-based consultancy Momentum Works.

'Virtual conversation'

Online shopper Aldi Alfarabi said he wasn't looking to spend money while scrolling through TikTok livestreams, but he often stumbled on items that took his fancy, such as a dinosaur backpack he recently bought.

"There is an engaging interaction through the virtual conversation," said the 29-year-old from Jakarta.

"You can see exactly what you are buying."

Experts say TikTok's Indonesia strategy is catching on with shifting shopping habits as younger customers demand more engaging experiences to open their wallets.

"Indonesia's digital market is dominated by Generation Z," said Bhima Yudhistira, an analyst from Jakarta's Center of Economic and Law Studies.

"As they are more adaptive to new things, the market patterns change swiftly."

So Southeast Asian online shopping — pulled along by Indonesia — is only going one way, he said, growing into what is predicted to become a $35 billion market next year.

That's only good news for sellers like Agung and Gita. 

"We asked our family to stop helping us. Now we can buy food and diapers for our child with our own money," said Gita.

"We can also have fun a little bit."

DHAHRAN — Saudi Aramco and France's TotalEnergies on Saturday signed contracts to start building an $11 billion petrochemicals facility in the Gulf kingdom, the two companies said.

A signing ceremony for the engineering, procurement and construction contracts for the Amiral complex took place at Aramco's headquarters in Dhahran, in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province.

The move "marks the start of construction work on the joint petrochemical expansion", Aramco and TotalEnergies said in a joint statement.

Seven companies were awarded contracts for the construction of the project in Jubail, on Saudi Arabia's east coast. The facility is slated to begin operations in 2027.

The project, first announced in 2018, represents an investment of around $11 billion, of which $4 billion will be funded through equity by Aramco and TotalEnergies.

The complex will enable Saudi Arabia's SATORP refinery to convert internally produced off-gases and naphtha, as well as ethane and natural gasoline supplied by Aramco, into higher value chemicals.

It will have the capacity to produce 1.65 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of ethylene and other industrial gases, Aramco said.

"As part of Aramco's growth strategy, the project is anticipated to contribute to value-addition opportunities in the kingdom's downstream ecosystem," Aramco President Amin Nasser said at the signing ceremony.

PARIS — The leaders of France and Barbados joined forces on Thursday to push for an overhaul of the international financial system at a summit aimed at tackling poverty and climate change.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who is hosting the two-day conference in Paris, invited Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley to co-headline the event which seeks to improve the lending system for developing countries mired in poverty and threatened by planet-heating emissions.

In his opening remarks, Macron told delegates that the world needs a "public finance shock" — a global surge of financing — to fight these challenges, adding the current system was not well suited to address global challenges.

"Policymakers and countries shouldn't ever have to choose between reducing poverty and protecting the planet," Macron told the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact.

Ugandan climate campaigner Vanessa Nakate took the podium after Macron and asked the audience to take a minute of silence for people who are suffering from disasters.

With oil-rich Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in the crowd, she slammed the fossil fuel industry, saying they promise development for poor communities but the energy goes elsewhere and the profits "lie in the pockets of those who are already extremely rich". 

"It seems there is plenty of money, so please do not tell us that we have to accept toxic air and barren fields and poisoned water so that we can have development," she said. 

Economies have been battered by successive crises in recent years, including COVID-19, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, spiking inflation, debt, and the spiralling cost of weather disasters.

Mottley, whose Caribbean island nation is threatened by rising sea levels and tropical storms, has become a powerful advocate for reimagining the role of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in an era of climate crisis.

"What is required of us now is absolute transformation and not reform of our institutions," Mottley said.

Barbados has put forward a detailed plan for how to fix the global financial system to help developing countries invest in clean energy and boost resilience to climate impacts.

"We come to Paris to identify the common humanity that we share and the absolute moral imperative to save our planet and to make it livable," said Mottley.

Debt or healthcare 

Outlining the challenges facing developing countries, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said more than 50 nations were now in or near debt default, while many African countries are spending more on debt repayments than on healthcare.

Guterres said the post-World War II global financial system was failing to rise to modern challenges and now "perpetuates and even worsens inequalities".

"We can take steps right now and take a giant leap towards global justice," he said, adding that he has proposed stimulus of $500 billion a year for investments in sustainable development and climate action.

In a nod to those looking for tangible progress from the summit, IMF director Kristalina Georgieva announced that a key pledge to rechannel $100 billion of liquidity boosting "special drawing rights" into a climate and poverty fund had been met. 

"Ultimately it is the future of humanity that is being discussed here," she told reporters. 

Macron also said he was hopeful that a 2009 pledge to deliver $100 billion a year in climate finance to poorer nations by 2020 would finally be fulfilled this year — although actual confirmation the money has been delivered will take months if not years.

Big ideas 

The summit comes amid growing recognition of the scale of the financial challenges ahead.

Last year, a UN expert group said developing and emerging economies excluding China would need to spend around $2.4 trillion a year on climate and development by 2030.

Countries are calling for multilateral development banks to help unlock climate investments and significantly increase lending, while stressing that new debt arrangements should include, as Barbados has, disaster clauses allowing a country to pause repayments for two years after an extreme weather event. 

Other ideas on the table include taxation on fossil fuel profits and financial transactions to raise climate funds. 

France backs the idea of an international tax on carbon emissions from shipping, with hopes of a breakthrough at a meeting of the International Maritime Organisation in July.

Observers are also keenly awaiting details of a plan from South American countries to create a global structure for so-called debt-for-nature swaps. 

Kenyan President William Ruto said all these ideas should be explored and urged delegates not to see the challenges facing the world as divided between the global north and south.

"Climate change will consume all of us," he said. 

NEW DELHI — Twitter owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday he discussed potential "significant investments" in India after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the United States.

Musk, one of the world's richest men, said that Modi was "pushing us to make significant investments in India, which is something that we intend to do, and are trying to figure out the right timing".

New Delhi has rolled out the red carpet for top global investors and companies — including tech giants like Google and Apple — in the last few years. 

Since the coronavirus pandemic, many companies have expanded their presence in India as a way to cut their supply-chain dependence on China and tap into the South Asian nation's huge domestic market. 

Modi, who saw the tech billionaire shortly after arriving from India on a state visit, said it had been "great meeting" Musk in New York.

"We had multifaceted conversations on issues ranging from energy to spirituality," Modi tweeted on Wednesday, a day before he is due to be hosted by US President Joe Biden for a state dinner.

Musk said he was a "fan" of Modi. 

"I am actually incredibly excited about the future of India. India has more promise than any large country in the world," he added. 

Musk has faced questions from free speech activists over Twitter reportedly caving into the Indian government's demands for takedowns of critical posts. 

Critics accuse India's government of democratically backsliding, including by curtailing free speech and not doing enough to check attacks on journalists and minorities.

Last week, former Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey said the platform he founded had come under sustained pressure from Indian officials during his tenure.

Indian information technology minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar responded that Dorsey's claim was an "outright lie", while also accusing Twitter of repeated violations of local laws.

Twitter said last year that India ranked fourth globally in the number of requests made by a government to remove content — behind Japan, Russia and Turkey.

DOHA — Qatar announced a second 27-year supply deal with a Chinese company on Tuesday as it expands production from the world's biggest natural gas field.

The agreement, to supply four million tonnes annually to the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), matches the terms of a November deal with China's Sinopec as the longest ever seen in the industry.

Asian countries led by China, Japan and South Korea are the main market for Qatar's gas, which has been increasingly sought by European countries since Russia's invasion of Ukraine early last year.

"Qatar will supply 4 million tonnes annually of natural gas from the North Field East Expansion Project to China over a period of 27 years," Kaabi told a signing ceremony in Doha. 

"This will become the second LNG [liquefied natural gas] sale and purchase agreement to China within the North Field East Expansion Project."

By expanding activities at North Field, which has the world's biggest natural gas reserves and extends under the Gulf into Iranian territory, Qatar is raising its LNG production by 60 per cent-plus to 126 million tonnes a year by 2027.

CNPC signed a separate agreement for a 5 per cent interest in North Field East, the equivalent of one gas-liquefying complex producing 8 million tonnes of LNG a year.

"It lays a solid foundation for the energy cooperation between the two sides in the next three decades," CNPC chairman Dai Houliang said in a statement.

"CNPC will continue to actively discuss with QatarEnergy all-round cooperation across the hydrocarbon industry chain and other areas like green and low carbon energies," he added.

The value of the deals was not announced. Qatar, whose gas riches have made its per-capita gross domestic product among the highest in the world, has struck a series of major agreements surrounding the North Field expansion.

Earlier this month, QatarEnergy agreed a 15-year supply deal with Bangladeshi state firm Petrobangla, and last month it awarded a $10 billion contract to France's Technip Energies and Consolidated Contractors Company for the engineering, procurement and construction of the North Field South project.

In April, Sinopec became the first Asian firm to get a stake in the North Field East expansion, also gaining a five per cent stake.

Although much of its gas is sold to Asian countries, in November Qatar announced its first major deal with Germany, selling up to 2 million tonnes annually for 15 years.

The talks took several months as Germany resisted the long-term contracts that Qatar normally demands to justify its massive investment.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine increased pressure on the German government to find new sources of supply.