Category Archives: Resource Based Economy

SINGAPORE - All civil servants will receive a year-end bonus of one month's salary, the Public Service Division (PSD) in the Prime Minister's Office said on Thursday (Nov 25).

Civil servants in junior grades - equivalent to MX15 and MX16, as well as those in OSS(Operations Support Scheme) Grades III to V - will get an additional one-time payment of $500.

The Government will continue to pay the non-pensionable annual allowance of one month, more commonly known as the 13th month bonus, to all civil servants.

The bonus, or annual variable component (AVC), recognises the sustained hard work and diverse contributions of officers in the fight against Covid-19, said the PSD.

There was no mid-year bonus or year-end bonus for civil servants last year, amid the economic gloom caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Over the past year, public officers have continued to dedicate themselves to the national fight against Covid-19 and have worked tirelessly to keep Singapore and Singaporeans safe," it said in a statement.

This year's year-end bonus is also a significant rise from the year-end AVC of 0.1 month given in 2019.

The PSD noted that the Ministry of Trade and Industry has updated its gross domestic product (GDP) forecast to around 7 per cent for 2021.

It also cited the economy's expansion by 7.1 per cent on a year-on-year basis in the third quarter of this year, a rise from the 1.3 per cent expansion in the first quarter.

Resident employment grew more quickly in the third quarter, particularly in outward-oriented industries - such as wholesale trade and manufacturing -and unemployment rates declined for the second consecutive month in September 2021, said PSD.

Taken together with the mid-year AVC, civil servants this year received a full-year AVC of 1.3 months, compared with 0.55 months in 2019.

The AVC, which reflects economic conditions, is typically set based on a multiple of a civil servant's monthly salary.

Commenting on the year-end bonus, National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) deputy secretary-general, Ms Cham Hui Fong, said: "NTUC is appreciative of our public officers who have been at the front of Singapore's fight against Covid-19, putting in hard work and contributing in their respective roles."

As the civil service is Singapore's biggest employer, its bonus is closely watched by the private sector, while statutory boards and other government agencies take their cue from it.

General secretary Sanjeev Kumar Tiwari of the Amalgamated Union of Public Employees said the union is appreciative that the Government took into consideration the National Wages Council's (NWC)guidelines to do more for lower-wage workers.

"This gesture is a much-needed encouragement for our civil servants as Singapore's economy is still in recovery," he said.

Singapore Teachers' Union general secretary Mike Thiruman said the bonus recognises the dedication of civil servants in the last two years, including teachers who wentbeyond the call of duty to ensure neither the safety nor learning of their students was compromised.

"Moving forward, I am hoping there would be more appreciation and recognition of our teachers' tireless efforts, amidst constant procedural shifts," he said.

The year-end bonus for civil servants is fair and warranted given the effective and consistent recovery of Singapore's economy, said Mr Derrick Teo, CEO of human resource company Elitez Group.

But this may not be the case across the private sector, he noted.

"Sectors that benefited well in the last two financial years are likely paying well above the usual bonus rates, while sectors negatively affected by the pandemic, such as aviation and hospitality, are unable to present bonuses," he said.

CIMB Private Banking economistSong Seng Wun echoed these sentiments, listing finance, real estate, manufacturing and chemical industries as some of the sectors that have performed well in the past year.

"Last year, there was no bonus for civil servants as the Singapore economy shrunk by 5.8 per cent. This year's bonus for civil servants is an acknowledgement that the economy is on more stable footing now," said Mr Song.

Mr Teo added that the economy's upswing, coupled with the NWC recommendation of wage restoration, will see a continued upward trend of bonus and variable payments in the coming year.

Singapore National Employers Federation executive directorSim Gim Guan said that the civil services full-year AVC reflects the projected recovery of the economy in 2021.

(The AVC) is also a recognition of the sustained hard work and diverse contributions of public service officers in the fight against Covid-19. However, as the economic recovery is uneven, private sector employers should reward bonus to employees based on their performance, added Mr Sim.

Earlier this month, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung announced that 100,000 public healthcare workers involved in the national response to the pandemic will also receive a special one-time award amounting to $4,000 each.

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Civil servants in Singapore to get 1-month year-end bonus - The Straits Times

2021 has seen ESG become a priority topic for many insurers, who have already taken significant steps to commit to more ethical and sustainable practices. Whilst environmental, social and governance regulation has been progressing for the past decade, the pandemic has accelerated the drive to a more sustainable corporate world.

There has been a notable shift in expectations of investors, regulators and other stakeholders and now, insurers in all sectors have a greater focus on business continuity, employee health and safety and the environment. Ongoing regulatory developments in the UK, Europe and worldwide such as TCFD disclosures, Climate Financial Risk Forum (CFRF) guidance, Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) disclosures and the Taxonomy Regulation have all increased the need for firms to proactively take responsibility for the decisions that they make and the steps that they take which will affect both the environment and society.

Indeed, two of the key areas of focus at COP26 were to mitigate the impact of climate change and to build societal resilience against such impact. The objective being to reduce emissions and agree on international commitments to secure global net zero by 2050.

The insurance industry has been significantly affected by climate and environmental change, and insurers play a major role in identifying and measuring climate risk and in financing the move to a low carbon economy. Remaining competitive whilst focusing on environmental and social duties means that insurers have to continuously adapt and innovate.

Industry initiatives

The UN Convened Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance (NZAOA) is an international group of 61 institutional investors delivering on a commitment to transition their investment portfolios to net zero by 2050. NZAOA was initiated by Allianz and Swiss Re at the beginning of 2019 and has since added a number of leading global insurers as members. Although NZAOA is driven by the insurance industry, it does not cover the liability side and includes other investors as members.

The liability side is the focus of the recently founded Net-Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA), a net zero initiative dedicated to the industry launched by AXA and the United Nations Environmental Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI). NZIA brings together fifteen of the worlds leading insurers and reinsurers to play their part in accelerating the transition to net-zero emissions economies. They are committing to individually transition their underwriting portfolios to net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050, consistent with a maximum temperature rise of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.

As risk managers, insurers and investors, the insurance industry plays a key role in supporting the transition to a resilient net-zero emissions economy. Climate change-related physical and transition risks are relevant to both the insurance and investment portfolios of insurers for firms, financial risks emerge through two primary channels, or risk factors: physical and transition. Physical risks from climate change arise from a number of factors and relate to specific weather events (such as heatwaves, floods, wildfires and storms) and longer-term shifts in the climate (such as changes in precipitation, extreme weather variability, sea level rise, and rising mean temperatures). Transition risks can arise from the process of adjustment towards a low-carbon economy. A range of factors influence this adjustment, including climate-related developments in policy and regulation, the emergence of disruptive technology or business models, shifting sentiment and societal preferences, or evolving evidence, frameworks and legal interpretations.

In addition to physical and transition risks, it is worth noting that liability risks may occur from people or businesses seeking compensation for losses they may have suffered from the physical or transition risks outlined above ie if future generations do suffer from severe climate change, who will they hold responsible?.

For insurers, these risks will ultimately manifest in forms such as increasing underwriting, reserving, credit, or market risk and firms are ever more aware of the need to adapt or even reinvent their practices to mitigate these risks.

Climate data adapting and innovating

Identifying and managing risks form the core of the insurance industry and a key question firms are asking is how technology can advance their ESG profile. We are seeing technology used in a huge variety of new ways from using satellite imagery and machine learning to understand natural resource management which ultimately guides firms sustainable practices, to providing credit insurance in the renewable energy sector.

New environmental data sources with better capabilities to predict loss will continue to be a crucial component to help the industry and the wider financial services community transform their operations. Insurers have, for certain risks, historically leveraged data on an annual basis but for climate change, in order to prevent loss, the data needs to be as close to real time as possible. The use of satellite imagery as a catastrophic event is unfolding in order to capture every detail of that event allows insurers to process claims within days of a catastrophic event. The combination of satellite, aerial, and other imagery with AI processing allows firms to assess loss damages almost instantly.

Increasingly advanced technology provides insurers with access to granular information on properties, topography, weather, and environmental conditions which will ultimately enable firms to better quantify risks, price policies, and settle claims.

For climate risk, historical data is becoming less effective in predicting future risk given the rapid acceleration of climate change over the past decade. New real-time data sources for example, wind speed, temperature, rainfall, etc., analysed via artificial intelligence will continue to increase the efficiency and accuracy of predicting expected losses in the future.

The Green Recovery

ESG means firms need to do more than just embed ethical and social principles into their business plan; its more than just corporate strategy. Ultimately ESG needs to underpin a firms vision and help set the direction the firm takes. The availability of new platforms providing alternative and specialised forms of insurance serve to indicate how rapidly the market is changing and how the traditional insurance model is evolving.

We have seen firms now commit and sign up for the business ambition pledge to limit global temperature increases to under 1.5 degrees centigrade and to cut carbon intensity in equity bond investments, as well as reducing emissions from their own operations. Some firms are making huge commitments to eradicate their carbon footprint entirely within the next 20 years and have goals to cut emissions from their investments by up to 60 per cent within the next 10 years. Firms are actively removing coal-based assets from their portfolios and taking further steps to increase investment in renewable and social infrastructure.

Firms need to continue to assess the financial risks from climate change, and to be able to address and oversee these risks within their overall business strategy and risk appetite. They need to have clear roles and responsibilities for the board and its relevant sub-committees in managing these risks.

The clear message for insurers is that they will have to adapt to the ESG framework and continue to innovate to remain competitive.

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Insurance: adapting to the ESG framework and innovating to stay ahead - Lexology

The post-COP26 state of coal has become elevated in global climate diplomacy with the first-ever mention of the fossil fuel in the final Glasgow Climate Pact.

Despite the watering down of the final text from phasing out coal and fossil fuel subsidies to phasing down unabated coal and inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies, the acknowledgement of coal has been described as a major precedent for climate commitments across the world.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that to limit global warming to 1.5C, 2021 needs to mark the end of new investments not only in coal, but also in new oil and gas supply.

According to research institute Ember, the recent UN climate negotiations in Glasgow, Scotland resulted in 47 countries signing the global coal to clean power transition statement, with new phase-out commitments from 11 countries.

The body says more than 95% of coal capacity is now in countries with phase-out plans.

In addition, a number of countries have committed to ending coal finance abroad. These include China, Japan and South Korea, as well as G20, G7 and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.

Phasing out coal is a long stretch, but cancelling new coal is among the more immediate action announcements this year. COP26 resulted in a number of countries committing to no new coal development, including Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Chile. Vietnam, the Philippines, Poland, Morocco and Kenya joined the movement, despite previous plans for new coal.

Organisations such as the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air said COP26 ended with 90 new coal power projects (88GW) facing the likelihood of cancellation. According to Ember, this constitutes two-thirds of the plants outside China. The organisation has found that rich countries are among the worst coal-power emitters when you adjust for population size, and they have a responsibility to move first.

The net is closing in on fossil fuels, and coal is at the front-line. It was awe-inspiring throughout COP to hear leaders discuss coal phase out with a passion and energy that Ive never seen before. The momentum has reached a new gear. However, there is a massive bridge from the real world of rising coal generation this year, to how quickly a phase down and ultimate phase out of coal can happen, said Dave Jones, global programme lead at Ember.

Coal remains the largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions causing climate destruction.

AS COP26 came to a close, the African Coal Network, a coalition of organisations calling for the end of coal-fired power and other fossil fuels on the continent, welcomed the progress.

Lorraine Chiponda, co-ordinator of the Africa Coal Network, said the organisation was demanding more committed action, and not only from those that owe Africa a climate debt, including the Global North, China and South Africa.

If you want Africa to join the world meaningfully to phase out coal, oil and gas, there has to be ambition with an action plan that is transparent [and has] accountability mechanisms, so that we, the people of Africa, can hold our governments to account, and our governments hold those that got rich from Africa accountable to deliver on the climate debt that will finance a people-centred renewable decarbonisation strategy for the people of Africa and not for the export of money and resources from Africa, Chiponda said.

A new study by the Energy Systems Research Group at the University of Cape Town finds that the department of mineral resources and energys plans to add 1 500MW of new coal-fired power to the grid would cost at least R23-billion more than a least-cost resources plan. It would also push up electricity prices, weigh on GDP, and result in 25 000 economy-wide job losses by 2030.

It suggests that South Africa needs to review the current integrated resource plan (IRP), which was released in 2019 and dictates the countrys energy mix.

Researchers found that if South Africa intends to meet its revised climate targets (reducing 350 to 420 metric tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions) by 2030, and still go ahead with its plans for 1 500MW of new coal power, it will cost an additional R74-billion to R109-billion.

An examination of the costs of coal compared to alternatives in South Africa, and elsewhere in the world, demonstrates that coal power is no longer competitive in many countries, nor in South Africa. When we assess the employment-creation opportunities in South Africa of different power-system build plans, we find that the highest employment creation across the economy comes from a high renewable system and that a high coal future actually leads to significant job losses in the country, the researchers said.

This, among other factors, is the reason a new, youth-led case has been lodged in court to stop the 1 500MW of additional coal power in South Africas IRP.

The #CancelCoal court case was launched by the youth-based African Climate Alliance (ACA); the community-based Highveld group the Vukani Environmental Justice Movement in Action; and groundWork, represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), against the minister of energy and the National Energy Regulator of South Africa.

New coal-fired power flies in the face of our constitutional right to an environment not harmful to health and wellbeing, not only for the present generations but for future ones too, said Nicole Loser, programme head for pollution and climate change at the CER.

The court papers highlight the findings of both local and international research, such as the recently published intergovernmental panel on climate change report.

Its clear now more than ever that we need a just transition a just energy transition, said ACA youth co-ordinator Gabriel Klaasen. It is beyond time that we see young people and vulnerable communities being taken into account and that our needs and the impacts that we experience are also prioritised and addressed. Without this, I cant imagine a future that is not defined by continued and increased suffering.

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The post-COP26 state of coal - Mail and Guardian

By years end, Russias exports not based on resources or energy will reach a record $180 billion, Russian Export Center (REC) CEO Veronika Nikishina told reporters on the sidelines of the Eurasian Womens Forum.

According to Russian Export Center estimates, for the 9 months of 2021, non-resource non-energy exports in nominal terms amounted to around $135 billion, which means an increase of almost 40% compared to 2020, she said.

Nikishina added that in October, the value of these exports will surpass the figure for the whole of 2020 around $141 billion.

By the end of the year, the countrys non-resource, non-energy exports will set a new historical record they may amount to $180 billion, Nikishina added.

Among the main exports for September, she mentioned rolled steel, fertilizers, wheat, steel, platinoids, lumber, aluminum, fish, copper wire, turbo engines, and polymers.

Nikishina added that the product categories are representative for the year, and the list of major export commodity items is changing slowly this is a characteristic feature of all major exporters.

According to the RECs press service, gold is excluded from the calculation of non-resource exports.

For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section

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Russias non-resource-based exports will reach historic ...

Targeted supports for people and businesses, increased vaccinations and the resilience of people and communities continue to drive a strong economic rebound in B.C. with second quarterly results showing a further reduction in the provincial deficit.

Based on data until the end of September, B.C.s deficit is projected at $1.7 billion a substantial reduction from the $9.7-billion deficit originally estimated at Budget 2021, and the $4.8-billion deficit predicted in the First Quarterly Report.

As previously reflected in the first quarter, the reduced deficit is primarily attributed to higher-than-expected revenue from personal and corporate income taxes, increased activity in the retail and housing sectors, strong resource revenues and commercial Crown net income, while expenses remained stable.

By putting people first, while being nimble and responsive to the challenges the pandemic has introduced, were continuing to see positive effects in our financial outlook and our economy, said Selina Robinson, Minister of Finance. That approach has helped to support people and businesses through the challenges we have seen so far, while putting us in a good place to be able to continue to provide the supports needed by those affected by the recent disaster.

There continues to be significant uncertainty about the rest of the year, especially considering still-to-be-determined impacts of flooding and extreme weather events and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as many areas of the world continue to experience outbreaks. Higher inflation, increased strain on supply chains and other associated pandemic impacts, which could be worsened by the recent flooding, will also continue to affect economic recovery.

The future remains uncertain, and we will continue to do what is needed to support people through the challenges we face as a province, whether that is the continued effects of a global pandemic or the response and recovery from the recent extreme weather,Robinson said. As we move through the immediate response and look at our next steps, our focus remains on building resilience, not only in our budgetsbut also in our communities, services and economy now and for B.C.s future.

Although private-sector forecasters have lowered real gross domestic product (GDP) projections for all Canadian provinces since August, B.C. is still expected to be among the leaders for economic growth for 2021 and 2022. The province also saw a smaller decline in GDP in 2020 than other major provinces more deeply affected by the pandemic.

The Labour Force Survey for October solidifies B.C.s position as leading Canadas economic recovery with another 10,400 jobs added around the province that month, while consumer spending and exports remain strong. High vaccination rates and vaccinations for children five to 11 also signal optimism for B.C.s future.

In the coming weeks, and as part of the budget process, B.C. will meet with members of the Economic Forecast Council and an ESG Advisory Council to discuss current events and issues affecting the provinces economy and forecasts. B.C. will next report with Budget 2022 on Feb. 22, 2022, which will include more details on the path and timeline to return to balance.

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To read B.C.s Second Quarterly Report, visit: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/finances/reports/quarterly-reports

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BC continues progress on economic recovery in second quarter | BC Gov News - BC Gov News

Every day, the factory Mohamad Lutfi runs in East Java turns 50 tonnes of plastic waste into pallets.

Like many Indonesians, Mr Lutfi has seen massive amounts of plastic waste polluting the land, oceans and rivers near his home in Pasuruan.

While plastic is a problem, the waste is also a resource for his employer, Re>Pal, an Indonesia-based Australian company.

They work with local "pemulung", or "waste-pickers", who collect plastic from waterways to sell.

The company also takes plastic waste from other businesses.

It isthen transformed back into usable items like pallets.

Mr Lutfi said Re>Pal's recycling initiative set an example for how to "reduce plastic waste in Indonesia and the whole world".

The work of Re>Pal is one case of a joint climate-focussed business involving Indonesia and Australia.

But the company's director, Marcus Goldstein, said potential cooperation between the two countries was not being fully harnessed.

"Progress between the countries has definitely not been as fast as it could be," Mr Goldstein said.

"That's where I think we've failed: Australia really could do more to spend more effort and time in Indonesia."

Environmentalists in Indonesia claim that among the thousands of tonnes of paper bales sent to East Java are household waste items including faeces-contaminated nappies.

His comments come after two recentsignificant international meetings, theG20 summit and theCOP26conference, highlighted the climate change policies of both Indonesia and Australia.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison formally confirmed at Glasgow that Australia would commit to a target of net zero emissions by 2050, but Australia's approach to climate change was criticised.

The G20 also put the spotlight back on a joint commitment between the two countries to work together towards a "green economy, after Indonesia'sPresident Joko Widodo and Prime Minister Scott Morrison issued a statement on "the green economy and energy transition".

But what is the "green economy"and why does this phrase keep cropping up in politicians'speeches and statements?

Hal Hill, a professor of South-East Asian economies at the Australian National University's Crawford School of Public Policy, said it was difficult to pinpoint exactly what "green economy"collaboration means.

"If you had a thousand people in a room, a green economy could have a thousand different definitions," he said.

"The general idea is taking the environment more seriously. At the moment, it means trying to decarbonise the economy quickly that's one dimension."

He says in a "green economy", economic growth is environmentally sustainable and companies userenewable resources and clean energy.

The UN Environment Programme defines a green economy as "low carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive" and one that prevents "the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services".

The term "green economy"also cropped up at the COP21 conference in 2015, when Australia's then-foreign affairs ministerJulie Bishop delivered a speech discussing Australia's transformation to a green economy, driven by solar power and electric vehicles, in collaboration with Indonesia.

Since then, organisations across Australia and Indonesia, like Climate Works and the Global Green Growth Institute, have set out strategies for achieving these green ambitions.

But Professor Hill pointed out that governments and experts hadbeen talking about the "green economy"for about50 yearsbefore it was used in agreements between Australia and Indonesia.

"It's not a new concept. People have been worrying about all these issues, but they've become really important as the irrefutable evidence has come through about global warming," he said.

"The general scientific consensus is, the world's heading for really serious climate problems possibly climate catastrophe unless we can cap global warming at no higher than 1.5 degrees [Celsius] increase, so it's one of the most urgent problems facing the world at the moment."

That target is unlikely to be met, and the Earth is estimated to reach 1.5C warming during the 2030s, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's August 2021 report.

Peter McCawley, an honorary associate professor at the Australian National University, said Indonesia and Australia's reliance on coal exports created issues.

"Indonesia and Australia are the number one and two coal exporting countries in the world if you've got countries that are heavily dependent on coal for their exports, there's a major dilemma in moving towards becoming green," he said.

A landmark trade deal with Indonesia is being touted by the Federal Government as a key opportunity to bounce back from Australia's first recession in 29 years.

Australia did not sign up to a pledge made by dozens of countries at the COP26 Glasgow talks, including Indonesia, to phase out coal-fired power. The United States, India and China also failed to sign on.

Indonesia's President Joko Widodo also attracted criticism at COP26, when he saidin a speech that deforestation levels in Indonesia were at their lowest in 20 years.

Greenpeace Indonesia said that since Mr Widodo became president in 2014, Indonesia had seen an area of forest three-and-a-half times the size of Bali destroyed.

Soon after that criticism, the organisation's directors were reported to the police and accused of spreading fake news.

Professor McCawley said if the two countries were to cooperate in a meaningful wayAustralia should "step up"with a "revamped economic cooperation program", including support for infrastructure development and an increase in foreign aid.

"It's difficult to have cooperative programs [between] Australia and Indonesia if there isn't foreign aid supporting them," he said.

"It would be helpful if there was a plan and a commitment, [but] you can't avoid the issue of money."

Jennifer Mathews, national president of the Australia-Indonesia Business Council, said encouraging Australian businesses to take the initiative to engage with their Indonesian counterparts was crucial.

"It's always coming back to understanding Indonesian priorities and then looking at what we have in terms of our capabilities, our expertise, which might then align with that," Ms Mathews said.

"That's where you get the best success, where you have that alignment."

Paul Bartlett is the director of the organisation tasked with implementing the free trade agreement, or the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, that came into force in July 2020.

He said there were many areas for cooperation between Australia and Indonesia on climate-friendly businesses, like electric vehicles.

"Australia is a leading exporter of critical minerals and has expertise in energy efficiency and technology solutions for renewables all of which can contribute to Indonesia's ambition to become a regional hub for electric vehicle manufacturing."

The ABC approached the Department of Foreign Affairs for comment.

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Australia and Indonesia keep talking about a 'green economy but what does that look like? - ABC News

Bangladesh is a country with great potential in the field of blue economy, which stands for the sustainable use of marine resources. The prospect of this sector lies not only in Bangladesh's geographic proximity to water bodies but also in its abundant seafood and fishery products which provide plenty of opportunities for export. This article will discuss how Bangladesh can leverage its natural resource endowment by building up an efficient blue economy that creates jobs, generates revenue, and supports poverty alleviation.

The blue economy is a term used to describe the sustainable use of marine resources. It covers economic activities such as fishing, aquaculture, and tourism that depend on healthy oceans and seas but also includes new industries like biotechnology and maritime transport. The blue economy concept was introduced by Gunter Pauli in 1994.

However, according to the World Bank, the modern definition of Blue Economy indicates the use of all the resources of the oceans and the resources at their bottom for sustainable development. The word "economy" here refers not only to business but also maritime issues such as conservation and sustainable use of marine living resources.

Read Bangladesh, Kenya explore cooperation in blue economy

In 2014, we conquered the sea from Myanmar. As a result, our maritime boundary has increased to 1.4 times that of another part of the whole of Bangladesh. The present sea area of Bangladesh is 2,07,000 square kilometers. Since our sea area has increased significantly, it is time to use the ocean resources for the advancement of Bangladesh. However, the Bangladesh government has already taken steps to use the resources.

Nevertheless, our government does not want to rely too much on foreign aid. Hence, the government wants to move forward through self-reliance. A university named "Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Maritime University Bangladesh was established in 2013 with the aim to build skills related to blue Economics and its development. The oceanography department has been introduced in different universities, including Dhaka University. In this way, we hope that one-day skilled manpower will be formed in our country. So, what are the prospects of a blue economy in Bangladesh? Let's find them out.

Read Focus on blue economy: PM to IORA states

Bangladesh has adopted Delta Plan-2100 in 2020, in which the maritime economy has been given priority. The plan adopts five strategies to harness the potential of the blue economy, one of which is the speedy completion of a multidimensional survey of marine resources. Through this, the government has taken up the first and foremost task of utilizing the maritime economy.

If activities are carried out in at least four areas in the territory that Bangladesh has acquired as a result of the conquest of the sea, it is possible to earn about 2.5 trillion US dollars every year by 2030. The four sectors are oil and gas extraction, fisheries extraction, port expansion, and tourism. 145 crore people live on the shores of Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, and Thailand, where Bangladesh is in the center. As a result, there are good opportunities to enrich the economy of Bangladesh due to the huge economic potential here.

At present, Bangladeshi trawlers catch fish within 35-40 nautical miles from the coast. But our economic zone is 200 nautical miles. There is a special opportunity to strengthen the country's maritime economy by working in a wider range. According to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Bangladesh is the first of the four countries among Thailand, India, and China in the world to achieve huge success in fisheries by 2022. Then Thailand, India, and China. Fish production has increased by 53% in the last 10 years. And fish exports have increased by more than 20%. Hence, proper utilization of the marine area will surely increase the fish industry.

Read Madagascar keen to work with Bangladesh on blue economy, ICT

Apart from fishery resources, the Bay of Bengal is also rich in marine animals, marine weeds, and shrubs. There is a huge number of marine weeds in the Bay of Bengal. These weeds can be processed to make medicines for various diseases. Spirulina is the most valuable of these weeds. People eat them as food in China, Japan, and different countries of Europe. So, there is a huge prospect in exporting these stuff.

The amount of Bangladesh's natural resources above the water and under the water are the same. Moreover, The mineral resources at the bottom of the Bay of Bengal are thought to be unmatched by any other sea or bay in the world. The mineral resources at the bottom of this sea include about 17 types of mineral sand. Most of these are zircon, rutile, sillimanite, ilmenite, magnetite, garnet, kyanite, monazite, lycoxine, etc. All of these substances are valuable, but monazite is thought to be a treasure. This radioactive material is used to make atomic bombs and to generate energy in nuclear reactors.

In addition to oil and gas, the bottom of the Bay of Bengal contains uranium-thorium in 13 places, a sand that is more valuable than gold. As a result of the sea conquest, Bangladesh got ownership of 8 out of 10 gas blocks from India and 13 from Myanmar. It is possible to get about 40 trillion cubic feet of gas from these blocks.

Read Bangladesh, Tanzania keen to work on blue economy, agriculture

The world's coastal tourism industry is a booming sector, and it has been steadily increasing in recent years. In fact, globally, this market segment alone accounts for 5% of the GDP as well as 6-7% of total employment. The economic benefits from these countries contribute heavily to one another, with a combined 1/2 being Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The economic potential of Bangladesh can be fostered by attracting more tourists, and this will not only help achieve the goals outlined in Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) but also contribute to GDP growth.

90% of Bangladesh's external freight trade is seaborne. This makes the country dependent on maritime commerce, and we may need to incentivize local shipping companies in order for them to maintain their current fleet size. Maritime transport is an important part of our country's sustainable economic growth. That is why seaports and coastal shipping should be given more importance to make sure we can continue providing these services for years into the future! So, the shipping industry has a great prospect on the blue economy.

Read Extensive research needed to unlock potentials of blue economy: Minister

Our marine resources are capable of contributing immensely to poverty alleviation, self-sufficiency in food production, maintaining the ecological balance, tackling the adverse effects of climate change as well as harnessing the multidimensional economic potential. However, it is important to keep in mind the potential challenges.

Ensuring the sovereignty of the entire coastal region as well as maintaining security in the economic zone can be a challenge. Further, the construction of eco-friendly marine infrastructure for the purpose of sea tourism can be another challenging task as we are yet to adopt world-class marine tourism. Providing protection of deep-sea and EZ areas from international smugglers, drug, human, and arms traffickers, piracy, and drug menace can be difficult if the government doesn't closely monitor these.

Read Be the flag-bearer of Bangladesh's blue economy, President tells Navy

For the progress, the government has to maintain an investment-friendly environment in the acquired sea area. Moreover, the protection of mangroves and marine grass will also be necessary. Proper management of climate change and controlling carbon emissions can be tough if we don't have a concrete plan from the beginning. As we know, the world sea level is rising due to climate change, maintaining the sea level and managing the temperature difference in the environment will be difficult. Therefore, sea acidification and sea carbon issues might emerge.

The local tourists in Bangladesh are not concerned about the environment. Hence, keeping the sea from pollution and waste will be very difficult. The government of Bangladesh has a lot to offer in terms of its natural resources, but due to the lack of implementation and enforcement of management measures, many opportunities remain untapped.

Read Seaweed farming can transform Bangladeshs blue economy: Experts

The country is yet to explore a vast range of resources. The lack of proper knowledge and infrastructure may hinder the further progress of the marine economy of Bangladesh.

Bangladesh must take some steps for the far-reaching development of the blue economy. Supplying reliable data and accurate statistics is necessary so that investors can be attracted to this sector and contribute to the development. Government should formulate short-term, medium-term, and long-term plans for the Blue Economy, relying on technology and skilled manpower. Besides, ensuring scientific research, eco-friendly collection, and sustainable use of fish and undiscovered marine resources is also necessary.

So far, 26 sectors have been identified for maritime trade including oil and gas, tourism, ports, shipping, renewable energy (wind and currents), and marine resources and mineral-based industries. There is a need to assess the feasibility of these sectors and plan how to proceed or which one to prioritize.

Read Bangladesh needs a separate ministry to unlock full potentials of blue economy: Experts

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Blue Economy in Bangladesh: Prospects and Challenges - United News of Bangladesh

For the past year and a half, people everywhere have been in the grip of a pandemic but not necessarily the same one. In the affluent world, a viral respiratory disease, Covid-19, suddenly became a leading cause of death. In much of the developing world, by contrast, the main engine of destruction wasnt this new disease, but its second-order effects: measures they took, and we took, in response to the coronavirus. Richer nations and poorer nations differ in their vulnerabilities.

Whenever I talk with members of my family in Ghana, Nigeria and Namibia, Im reminded that a global event can also be a profoundly local one. Lives and livelihoods have been affected in these places very differently from the way they have in Europe or the US. Thats true in the economic and educational realm, but its true, too, in the realm of public health. And across all these realms, the stakes are often life or death.

The three countries I mentioned have a median age between 18 and 22 years, and the severity of Covid-19 discriminates sharply by age. A big way that Covid can kill is by hampering the management of other diseases, such as HIV, malaria and TB. In Africa alone, 26 million people are living with HIV and, in a typical year, several hundreds of thousands die of it, while malaria, which is especially deadly to infants and toddlers, claims almost 400,000 lives.

Those are big numbers, and yet they used to be much bigger a major healthcare effort brought them down. Amid the pandemic, though, people stopped visiting clinics, in part because it became harder to get to them, and healthcare workers had to curtail their own movements. According to a Global Fund survey of 32 countries in Africa and Asia, prenatal care visits dropped by two-thirds between April and September 2020; consultations for children under five dropped by three-quarters.

Public-health experts predict that, as an indirect consequence of the Covid pandemic, twice as many people around the world could be at risk of dying from malaria. There could be 400,000 extra deaths from TB in the next few years, and half a million extra deaths from HIV. Across much of the world, in short, the response to the coronavirus has ushered in a shadow pandemic. The coronaviruss real death toll, then, has to be calculated not just in deaths from Covid, but also in deaths that would otherwise have been prevented, from malaria, TB, HIV, diabetes and more.

This shadow pandemic isnt simply a story about disease its about poverty, hunger, truncated education and stunted lives. A suggestive comparison can be made with the climate crisis. In the affluent world, some people think of climate breakdown as a matter of how long the air conditioning stays on, but for many in the developing world, its already a matter of floods, droughts and famine.

These disparities between the global north and south are likely to be a feature of crises to come. The tale of two pandemics, then, is a tale of two international orders. The post-pandemic challenge, in turn, is to take seriously the rhetoric of an international community, and integrate the two into one.

The economies of rich nations have, of course, been buffeted by the pandemic as well. But these nations have been able to spend enormous sums toward relieving the financial distress that has resulted from lockdowns and social-distancing protocols. Lower-income nations dont have those resources. Borrowing money is costly for them, and their tax base in the formal economy is a shallow, narrow plinth. Country by country and village by village, theres little to cushion the blow. Not long ago, a team of researchers studied living standards during the pandemic via household surveys across nine developing countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia. They found that the direct health impact of Covid in these relatively youthful countries was less than in richer (and, invariably, older) countries, but that economic vulnerability was decidedly greater. Households typically reported a drop in income people lost jobs or had a harder time selling their goods. Half of the rural households in Kenya they surveyed had to skip meals or shrink them; in Sierra Leone, that number was nearly 90%.

When the pandemic came to India, meanwhile, 140 million migrant workers found themselves effectively stranded or simply shipped back to their home villages, plunging their dependents into dire circumstances. For those who were living from hand to mouth to start with, the eminent India-based economist Jean Drze observed as it was happening, lockdown is almost a death sentence.

The number of people in extreme poverty around the world has risen for the first time since 1997, and analysts dont expect a quick toggle back once the health crisis subsides. Africa was on track to see economic growth of 3.2% in 2020; now thats estimated to have been 0.8%. When youve got a population growth rate of about 2.5%, that means less food on the table for many, and outright malnutrition for some. In rich countries, Covids medical consequences killed elderly people. In developing countries, Covids economic consequences killed the poor.

Taleni Ngoshi, a softly spoken 32-year-old businesswoman in Namibia, described the situation to me precisely: The gap between the rich and the poor here is quite huge. The line between the middle class and the poor is very thin. Her people are Ovambo, from northern Namibia, where she was born in a town without electricity, eventually got work in a nursery, and found she had a green thumb. Down in Windhoek, the nations capital, she started a small business helping people with their gardens. Stories like hers help to explain why, a dozen years ago, the World Bank reclassified Namibia: it went from being a lower-middle-income country to an upper-middle-income one.

With the pandemic, though, business came to a standstill: most of Ngoshis regular clients cancelled their contracts, fearful of any visitors. When she looks around, she sees people losing their houses and cars along with their jobs. Her husbands small government salary at least puts food on her table. So mainly she worries about the three people who work for her part-time and the six or seven people who depend on each of them.

The story is different from place to place, and also the same. The low-income nation of Mozambique, which has been identified as the African country most vulnerable to climate change (extreme weather events cost it billions in 2019), found its economy contracting in response to the pandemic, with depressed markets for its commodities and, of course, for tourism. In the lower-middle-income nation of Kenya, where, in 2020, GDP shrank for the first time in almost 30 years, millions of families, living close to subsistence, were squeezed hard. Women there have been especially stricken, in part because theyre heavily involved in retail, hospitality and tourism. (Global tourism losses have been estimated at $8tn.)

To get a proper sense of how the pandemic roiled a country like Kenya, though, bear in mind that one of Kenyas biggest exports is cut flowers lilies, carnations, babys breath and roses. In fact, Kenya has, in recent years, emerged as the main exporter of rose stems to the EU, supplying almost 40% of the market. Floriculture employs perhaps 2 million Kenyans, directly and indirectly. Dozens of large flower farms can be found around Lake Naivasha, an hours drive north-west of Nairobi, and about 1,800 metres above sea level. Its sunny there, and well supplied with water for irrigation. Despite transport requirements, the carbon footprint per stem was a fraction of that for flowers grown in heated Dutch greenhouses.

Over the past year and a half, as you might guess, those sales wilted. Social distancing meant fewer functions wedding, funerals, celebrations of all kinds and fewer functions meant fewer flowers. Millions of rose stems were dumped into pits as flower farms found most of their orders cancelled. Workers were furloughed or saw wages reduced. Once the pandemic settled in, those sales disappeared.

In west Africa in Ghana and Ivory Coast, in particular the big story wasnt about roses; it was about chocolate. Cocoa trees are picky about temperature, humidity and soil, and large swaths of these west African countries hit their sweet spot. Together, the two countries account for about two-thirds of the global cocoa supply. Its Ivory Coasts biggest export. In Ghana, gold and oil exports are greater in monetary value, but they dont matter as much to the country, because they dont employ as many people and they dont generate as much public revenue. Economists have estimated that as much as a third of Ghanas workforce depends on cocoa, directly and indirectly.

During the pandemic, though, chocolate consumption declined. Not mine, and maybe not yours. But it turns out that a lot of chocolate is bought at retail shops and vending machines. Theyre gifts or impulse buys: the pre-ribboned box you pick up at the airport, the KitKat bar that pleads for release from its plexiglass prison. Then theres all the chocolate bought for gatherings at Christmas, Easter, Halloween or, more to the point, all the chocolate not bought when those festivities dont take place.

Both countries had big plans for 2020. Ghana and Ivory Coast have state-run boards in charge of buying and selling the cocoa harvest, and had jointly agreed to impose a new surcharge on cocoa exports, amounting to $400 per tonne. It was dubbed a living income differential, and was meant to benefit the farmers. Chocolate is a $130bn-a-year industry, but only a few percentage points go to the millions of west African smallholders who do the cocoa cropping. And they have a tough time of it: on average, each cultivates about 3.5 hectares, while trying to support half a dozen or more family members. Its hard work. The trees are susceptible to sun scald, and those beans arrive inside pods a little smaller than rugby balls. They take months to mature during which time they can be afflicted by various pests and pathogens, like black pod rot. Just in the past half decade, the swollen-shoot virus has forced the destruction of hundreds of thousands of hectares of cocoa trees.

Many cocoa farmers barely eke out a living; a 2018 Unicef report calculated that the average west African cocoa farmer made between $0.50 and $1.25 a day. (When my father was a member of Ghanas parliament, in the 1960s, he had a lot to say about cocoa farmers getting shafted by the government board that set their prices.) In fact, the growers now tend to be middle-aged, because their kids see how bad they have it, and find other ways of making a living. When the new living income differential programme was announced in 2019, growers increased their output, hoping for a sweeter deal.

Instead, they found themselves stuck with beans they didnt have the capacity to store. As Covid shrank the chocolate market, buyers in the west asked for their deliveries to be suspended. Local middlemen, known as pisteurs, demanded deep discounts to take the bean off the growers hands.

Wilting flowers, mouldering cocoa when you hear stories about how poorly served the global south has often been by the systems of international trade, its not surprising that some people have been tempted to urge withdrawal from those systems. Among certain African and Asian scholars, theres been a revival of interest in arguments from the late great Samir Amin in favour of dconnexion unplugging from an unjust order in which development and underdevelopment were just two sides of a coin.

Amin, an Egyptian economist who spent much of his career in Senegal, urged that development be national and popular, and directed toward greater autonomy, or what he termed a strategy of self-reliance. Real political independence called for economic independence, in his view. Although he denied that his plans amounted to autarky the aim of total self-sufficiency he insisted that a nations external relations submit to the requirements of internal development: autarky-lite, then.

Alas, there is little encouragement to be found in those postcolonial African regimes, such as Guinea under Skou Tour, that attempted something like this. In fact, the story of rising global interdependence is also one of rising equality among the nations. Over the past two decades, more than 30 countries have moved from the lower-income category to the middle-income category, to go by the official World Bank designations. Certainly, the 21st century saw enormous advances in the country of my childhood. GDP per capita in Ghana rose fivefold between 2002 and 2016. In recent years, most of the worlds fastest-growing economies were in Africa. And many of the pandemic-linked economic shocks are short-term ones: the market for flowers and chocolate and timber and bauxite is rebounding.

All the same, there are morals to be drawn from the vulnerability of the global south amid the pandemic. One is that self-directed programmes of national development dont work when they simply ignore market realities or leave internal impediment unaddressed. Here, Ghanas cocoa conundrum is an illustrative instance. In February 2020, Ghanas president, Nana Akufo-Addo, travelled to Switzerland and announced that his country wouldnt be dependent on the export of raw materials. Instead, it would get into the business of manufacturing chocolate and ascend the manufacturing chains, soaring high like Ghanas animal mascot, the tawny eagle.

A couple of generations earlier, Ghanas leaders were intent on building up a steel industry: thats what they thought modernisation looked like. Akufo-Addo has pinned his hopes on bars of a different sort. Why shouldnt Ghana have vast Toblerone-type factories, with temperature-controlled vats and conveyor belts and wrapping machines? True, the country lacks a dairy industry, and has a rather paltry sugar sector, but it has no shortage of cocoa beans.

Yet Ghana, like most developing nations, has been trammelled by conflicting demands and interests. A fascinating recent paper by a Soas economist and an Accra-based cocoa analyst lays this out. Because Ghanas central bank needs US dollars foreign-exchange reserves the state cocoa boards must sell the commodity to multinational companies. In the meantime, the country is stifling local production by imposing a 60% tax on domestic sales of chocolate and semi-finished cocoa products. Special tax exemptions are reserved for firms that export most of their production, hindering those that would first build skills and capacities by developing local markets. All these statutory legacies run contrary to Akufo-Addos hopes of ascending the manufacturing chain. If Ghanas cocoa policy had a mascot, it wouldnt be the tawny eagle; it would be the pushmi-pullyu.

There are other impediments. A patchwork-quilt land-ownership system makes it hard for smallholders to gain title to their farms. (In Ghana, where so much terrain is in the hands of the traditional chiefs, land reform is a huge, and hugely complicated, issue.) And west African cocoa yields have scarcely improved in the past century. There are now programmes that promote more sophisticated and sustainable cocoa-growing methods including smart irrigation but theyve had a late start.

These quandaries are typical of developing nations. Countries throughout Africa and Latin America have economies organised around the export of fairly raw commodities from fishing, farming or mining. Most go through minimal processing before being sold on the value add is meagre. You see a lot of subsistence entrepreneurship, and a lot of vulnerability associated with informal labour and low savings rates. Meanwhile, the climate crisis makes everything worse. When you farm inefficiently, you need more land, which worsens deforestation, which worsens climate change, which worsens your farming efficiency. (West Africas seasonal Harmattan winds hot, dry and dusty have been growing more expansive over the past couple of decades.) In truth, the turbulences of climate change are akin to those of Covid in slow motion. The price is paid by those least able to afford it.

In the shadow pandemic of the global south, the most lasting consequences could relate to schooling and skills to what economists call human capital. School closings have obviously been a big problem everywhere. Around the planet, schooling has been interrupted for 1.6 billion students. Yet classrooms in Africa have been shut longer than the global average and this is a continent where the median age is under 20. (In South America, its 31.) Low-income countries, World Bank researchers say, could lose more than three full years of their investment in basic education, exacting a commensurate loss in future labour earnings.

For many families, the problem isnt access to the internet its access to electricity. Between April and August of last year, a team from Human Rights Watch conducted interviews with people across Africa, and found plenty of children receiving no instruction at all. Even when a school had managed to put its lessons online and a parent had a smartphone, the parent might not have a sufficiently generous data plan to make use of them. A teenager in Garissa, Kenya, told the HRW team that lessons were offered on a local radio station, but I never tuned in because we dont have a radio.

When classrooms close, researchers say, female students are hit especially hard: theyre at an elevated risk of child marriage, early pregnancy, domestic abuse and child-labour exploitation. For all these reasons along with the simple fact that girls are regularly asked to take on child-rearing duties and household chores Unesco researchers fear that 11 million girls around the world may never return to school. Think of it as another way of being a Covid long-hauler.

That gender disparity is worrisome for a variety of reasons. It has been estimated that womens wages go up by 11.5% for each additional year of schooling, a couple of percentage points more than for men. As the notably unsentimental economist Lawrence Summers once observed, investment in the education of girls may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world. When women are more highly educated, they have fewer children but invest more in each child; their children are healthier and, in turn, better educated. Civic participation is higher among educated women, too, and, as the Nobel prize-winning academic Amartya Sen has suggested, expanding female education may help reduce gender inequality within families.

For men and women alike, all these things matter to a societys prospects of freedom and wellbeing. When development experts say that the pandemic-linked interruptions to education threaten to push 72 million students into learning poverty, then the consequences arent simply financial. This represents an immense squandering of human potential.

Covid is the tide that went out and exposed our nakedness, a well-known Lagos-based business consultant, Sanyade Okoli, told me. It revealed all the weaknesses in our health system, educational system, governance structures etc. Those regional weaknesses can be seen in the spreadsheets; they can also be seen in the streets. A woman with a communications firm in Windhoek offered me a very specific view of the situation: Ten people a day are at my doorstep asking for food or for work.

According to World Bank economists, more than 80% of the 120 million people whom Covid ushered into extreme poverty defined as having earnings equivalent to $1.90 a day or less are from middle-income countries, a capacious category that encompasses India, Indonesia, much of west Africa and much of Latin America.

That shouldnt be a surprise. People who live in middle-income countries are peculiarly vulnerable to global contractions; they buy from you and they sell to you. Theyre thoroughly enmeshed in a globalised economy. That enmeshment has allowed for some marvellous advances, but lately it feels as if theyre trying to climb an escalator moving down.

The solution is not to get off, or stay home. Even if all you want to do is cultivate your own garden, youre hardly independent from others when it comes to your seeds, your fertiliser, and as weve all learned your weather. The way to rebuild a post-Covid world is not to withdraw from internationalism, but to strengthen it.

Catastrophes are fractal. They have to be understood and addressed in macro and in micro ways. When affluent nations in Europe and North America shut down in order to slow the pandemic, their governments offered their citizens targeted relief. (A comparable programme in Nigeria was scantily funded and Nigerians I spoke to maintained opaque to the point that it largely benefited government cronies.) In the US, Paycheck Protection Program loans were made to distressed business, which would not need to be repaid if certain conditions were met. In the UK, Bounce Back Loans and the like allowed financing on easy terms. These programmes an ad-hoc method of social insurance were imperfect, but they helped a great deal.

Something like this approach is needed on an international scale. The affluent world, in the aggregate, gains enormously from globalisation. We cherish our chocolate and roses, not to mention the aluminium, lithium, tantalum, yttrium and neodymium on which our mobile phones depend. In many respects, its a common enterprise a system of cooperation from which we all benefit. Yet, as we all know, its yields are greater for some than for others. If the trading partners of the rich nations lose faith in the system, they might be tempted to give up on it. That would be costly to them, but it would be costly to those rich nations, too.

Thats why the system is sustainable only if it involves a sense of shared responsibility. When things go wrong, we who benefit from the system have a duty to do internationally what we do at home: help the vulnerable weather the storm. When public-health measures to flatten the curve in rich countries can push people elsewhere on the planet into penury, its our problem, too. An integrated global system is imperilled when risk is shifted to those most vulnerable.

Our international responsibilities in the age of Covid have often been discussed in absurdly narrow ways as if we just needed to ship more vaccines to the under-vaccinated populations. Yes, programmes such as Covax, the international vaccine distributor, need to be better supplied, but all the vaccines in the world wont remedy the moral and practical perils of inequality. In richer nations, economic turbulence puts more people on the dole. In poorer ones, it puts more people in the grave. If the gains in alleviating global poverty over the past generation were heartening, they have also proved perishable. Okoli, in Nigeria, recalled that, early in the pandemic, people with means took care to feed those in need. There was a sense, she added mordantly, that if we dont feed them, theyll eat us.

The Covid pandemic is, in the words of the eminent economic historian Adam Tooze, the first truly comprehensive crisis of the Anthropocene era. In his view, it has put paid to the notion that globalisation will move the whole world toward greater economic and social equality what he calls the millennial vision. The question is what will replace it.

To come to grips with global inequality on a post-pandemic planet, well need more sensitive measures of fragility. No simple jab will resolve the vulnerabilities and inequities that arise from our global interdependence. Still, people in the public and private sectors will do well to think hard about a range of issues: ways of restructuring, forgiving or otherwise mitigating debt burdens when indebted governments have put the money to good use; ways of promulgating smarter and more sustainable agriculture (and other forms of resource exploitation); ways of encouraging better governance at regional and national levels; ways of building and maintaining supple and inclusive global institutions.

And, of course, ways of targeting assistance to do the most good. When, earlier this year, the UK decided to cut foreign aid by $4bn, it was signalling a retreat at a time when history is calling for an advance. The most thoughtful critics of foreign aid make an important point: we want governments that are principally accountable to their people, not to foreign donors and lenders. But the right kind of assistance (including the Covid-related financing and debt-service suspension organised by World Bank Group over the past 18 months) neednt have this distorting effect on governance. And the expansion of human capabilities is never a money hole.

As the climate crisis was telling us long before Covid blared the message, what happens in one place can have repercussions in many places. Thats why the pandemic must be understood not as an anvil-from-the-sky medical crisis, but as something far more encompassing. Science is the exit strategy, the head of the Wellcome Trust famously said, early in the pandemic. But, though science is necessary, its hardly sufficient, particularly when were interested not simply in exit but in re-entry. As raucous, inward-turned nationalisms continue to claim followers, well need to resist the go-it-alone fantasies of autarky. Rather, a post-pandemic era calls for a richer sense of our mutual obligations.

I think of what Taleni Ngoshi, in Namibia, told me about how she was affected by those whose livelihoods depend on hers. There are days when you wake up in bed and you think to yourself, Im tired of this, she said. And one minute later you think, I have to do something. If I stay in bed and wallow in misery, what will the others eat tomorrow?

They depend on her, just as, ultimately, she depends on them. Around these small, local circles of reciprocal caring, we need to build larger, global ones. Resilience shouldnt be reserved for the rich. An international conjuncture thats fairer and more secure requires that we keep track of systemic risks conceived in the broadest possible way. And trade without responsibility is itself an unaffordable risk as tempting as a box of chocolates, as perishable as a cut flower.

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A tale of two pandemics: the true cost of Covid in the global south | Kwame Anthony Appiah - The Guardian

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use. (Photo: Alerkiv/Unsplash)Samsung has announced the location for its upcoming chip plant as it seeks to chip in to the widespread semiconductor shortage. The company has chosen Taylor, Texas as the site for the $17 billion manufacturing hub, according to sources for the Wall Street Journal. Texas governor Greg Abbott is expected to make an announcement regarding the plant later today.

Samsungs new plant will use up about 1,200 acres of land and will bring 1,800 jobs to Taylor once production kicks off in 2024. The facility is part of Samsungs $205 billion investment in chip manufacturing and biotech, which will be the companys focus over the next three years.

Samsung has been preparing to build a new US-based chip plant for a while now, but details about its plans have been few and far between. There was even a period of time in which Samsung (alongside TSMC and Intel) threatened to pull the plug on its plans, should the locations under consideration not offer generous incentives to build (i.e. tax breaks). Clearly, Samsungs concerns were rectified. Though the company is said to have also courted Austin, Texas, Taylor reportedly offered better tax incentivesthough Samsungs original US-based plant in Austin is expected to remain in operation following the new plants opening.

Samsungs Austin manufacturing facility. (Photo: Samsung)

The conglomerates plan to open a new chip plant dovetails with a global chip shortage ExtremeTech readers are by now intimately familiar with. Samsung Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong reportedly visited the United States to speak with White House officials about the shortage and discuss federal incentives for chipmakers. According to sources for The Korea Times, Samsung planned to reveal the location for the plant once Jae-yong returned home to South Korea this week, but now the cat is out of the bag.

The Biden administration has been pushing for increased US chip manufacturing, recommending earlier this year that a cool $50 billion be put into research, development, and actual production of the highly sought-after resource. Semiconductors are in just about everything these days, and production delays related to Covid-19 have drastically impacted output, causing the tiny chips to be in short supply. Given that the shortage isnt expected to end anytime soon, manufacturers and government officials alike see semiconductor fabrication as an opportunity to bolster the US economy and compete with countries such as China and Taiwan, which currently lead in production.

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WSJ: Samsung's New $17B Chip Plant Will be in Taylor, TX - ExtremeTech

Iron ore has emerged from the doghouse as Chinese financial authorities blinked in the face of an economic slowdown.

Having taken steps to moderate growth due to power rationing, pollution concerns, inflationary pressures and an overheated and debt-riddled property market, the Peoples Bank of China appears to have finally relented in its latest quarterly report.

It scrubbed bearish phrases from its wording, moves which could bring more liquidity for its property market and ease steel demand fears.

That is good news for people who believe the remarkable steel production cuts mandated by the Chinese Government this year to curb pollution ahead of next years Beijing Winter Olympics are only temporary.

Expectations of rising steel demand gave way to bullish speculation in the iron ore futures market.

The most traded Dalian futures contract for January hit the 10% upper limit before sliding to a still significant 8.17% gain by 6pm AEDT while Singapores contract for the same month rose 6.17% to US$99.70/t.

ANZ Research senior economist Felicity Emmett said the rally was prompted by the change in Chinas easing around lending for property.

Iron ore futures rallied after Chinas central bank announced a possible easing of measures to aid the countrys recovery, she said.

Chinas financial regulators told some banks to issue more loans for property projects, with the aim of easing liquidity strains without sparking another speculative bubble.

These measures eased concerns of weaker demand for steel and iron ore.

Benchmark 62% iron ore fines soared almost US$4/t to US$95.63/t on Monday night according to Fastmarkets MB, with 65% fines attracting a premium of $109.20/t and discount 58% fines buying US$68.18/t.

The turnaround in market sentiment has been sharp, coming just days after iron ore prices hit 18-month lows of around US$87/t on the back of fragile steel production figures out of China.

It prompted Morningstar for one to knock down its fair value estimates on the major iron ore miners and royalty company Deterra (ASX:DRR), putting targets of $39 on BHP (ASX:BHP), $89 on Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) and just $10 on Fortescue (ASX:FMG).

Adam Dawes, senior investment advisor at Sydney stockbrokers Shaw and Partners, is of a different view.

Shaw and Partners analysts, led by well known stock researcher Peter Rocky OConnor, have quickly turned supportive of iron ore stocks.

We had our analysts this morning. First line, Rocky, Peter OConnor basically said, buy iron ore and sell the gold stocks. He thinks golds going to potentially stay subdued for a little bit longer and the iron ore miners are going to start to rally, Dawes told Stockhead yesterday.

Obviously, China came out with obviously keeping their monetary policy sort of little little changed, but they did start to change some of their wording in their monetary policy, which I think signals a shift towards an easier policy.

Still maintaining a sort of tough stance on the property market, but theres lots of other things that they can do to stimulate the economy.

Which certainly means that BHP, Rio and Fortescue as well as Champion Iron, which did quite well today also, means that they will look to take further gains going forward.

BHP was up 4.02% on a day which coincided with the first trading session after it and Woodside (ASX:WPL) approved the US$12 billion Scarborough LNG development in WA. Rio gained 3.61% and Canadian high grade producer Champion Iron (ASX:CIA) was up a ripping 8.04%.

Mineral Resources (ASX:MIN) rose 4.93%, while Mount Gibson Iron (ASX:MGX) climbed 5.2% and Tasmanias Grange Resources (ASX:GRR) was up 5.46%.

The biggest winner was Fortescue, closing at $17.35 after gaining 9.81%, although among the big boys Shaw and Partners only has a buy rating on BHP.

If you took a 10-year chart of BHP, which we did this morning theres some massive support lines for BHP, Dawes said.

$36 is massive support there for the stock. Its hit that a couple of times in the last couple of weeks, and then bounced really, really quickly.

And that sort of gave us some comfort to be in the stock or start to get involved with stock again, because of that support line of $36.

Dawes said he likes the diversified BHP because it has a number of positive catalysts coming in the new year, including its oil and gas demerger into Woodside, its company unification and focus on new commodities like potash.

While many analysts and forecasters are pessimistic on iron ore prices and have projections of under US$80/t in 2022 (the Federal Treasury sees them falling to US$55/t by the end of FY22), Dawes believes iron ore prices have found a short term low and are likely to rise above US$100/t in 2022.

That could make iron ore a short term trading opportunity.

I do think that it will stay around or over that US$100 mark, especially if China starts to stimulate a little bit more, (it) will certainly start to move towards that, and that certainly helps our iron ore guys going forward, he said.

This is going to be a trade event, I think.

You know, were still going to see some movement or volatility in the iron ore price. So dont get too wedded to it. But it certainly looks like youre on the right side of the trade now.

Longer term, Dawes said Australian iron ore could face headwinds from the development of the China-backed Simandou mine in Guinea but that the big Australian producers remain in the box seat at current prices due to their low cost base.

Chinese economic policy has seesawed this year, moving from post-pandemic stimulus to cool down mode as risks have emerged in the heavily indebted property sector, highlighted by the struggles of real estate developer Evergrande.

China also appears to be succeeding in plans to limit steel production to 2020 levels, having raced well ahead of them earlier in the year.

A loosening of monetary policy however could support underlying steel demand that may drive bids for iron ore should restrictions on steel makers be lifted.

Speaking to Stockhead last week about the recent downturn in Chinese steel output, iron ore market expert and Magnetite Mines (ASX:MGT) technical director Mark Eames said it seemed unlikely China would dramatically shift from its long term focus on economic growth.

At the junior end of the iron ore sector share prices were on the move yesterday as well.

$14 million capped Akora Resources (ASX:AKO) was up more than 15%.

It has made some high grade hits at its Bekisopa project in Madagascar, where it plans to deliver a JORC Resource in the March Quarter.

Fe Limited (ASX:FEL), which recently began exporting from the JWD mine in WA under an offtake deal with Glencore, was up 10%. GWR (ASX:GWR) was up 14.29%.

Legacy Iron Ore (ASX:LCY) continued its climb since selling a stake in its Mt Bevan JV with Hawthorn Resources (ASX:HAW) to Gina Rineharts Hancock Prospecting.

Rinehart revealed the value the 2020-21 bull run for iron ore generated for Hancocks Atlas Iron business, just days after revealing a $4.4 billion profit and $5.6 billion dividend splurge from her 70% owned Roy Hill iron ore mine.

Atlas shipped 9.7Mt of iron ore from Mt Webber and the newly commissioned Sanjiv Ridge iron ore mine, up from 9.1Mt in FY20, increasing its NPAT by 146% from $381 million in FY20 to $938m in FY21.

After seeing royalty payments to the State Government increase 35% to $93 million on the back of Atlas 2021 success, Rinehart used the results release yesterday as another soapbox to take aim at unspecified government red tape.

We just have to remember that Australia exports its ore internationally, so we have to be cost competitive internationally, hence we should be wary of onerous government cost burdens, that dont encourage investment, she said.

Its time we put greater priority on reducing government tape, and our government in turn, put greater priority on that welcoming investment and enabling living standards to grow, instead of growing government tape.

In the same release Atlas said its Sanjiv Ridge mine was completed safely, on budget and ahead of schedule with first haulage completed one month ahead of plan.

It has received all its regulatory approvals for the development of the new Miralga project, where an Aboriginal business has been awarded the site establishment works and mining services contract and first haulage is scheduled for the June quarter of 2022.

The company has studies in the works on its McPhee and Ridley projects.

Is coal on its way to being phased out?

Not if you ask Australian coal miners, who are retaining bullish demand outlooks for their product based on currently announced transition policies, particularly in the developing world in Asia.

New Hope Corporation (ASX:NHC) CEO Reinhold Schmidt (and, serendipitously, Resources Minister Keith Pitt) told shareholders at the companys AGM last week cities in Asia would remain reliant on Australian coal for the next two decades.

As the Chairman noted, the Company recognises and supports the need to transition to a global lower carbon economy; however, many communities, particularly the large cities of Asia, will require coal for affordable and accessible baseload energy provided by our customers to power homes and industries in the next two decades and beyond, he said.

As you can see in the graph the base case seaborne demand exceeds probable and highly probable production from the early 2030s onwards. This demand curve is based on the current transition measures in place by governments across the world.

Elsewhere, news among the big coal players has been characterised by safety issues, after the death of a worker over the weekend at Coronados (ASX:CRN) Curragh mine.

Its the second death in less than two years at the operations, which have been temporarily suspended while an investigation take place.

Meanwhile, Whitehaven Coal (ASX:WHC) received a prevention notice from the NSW EPA in relation to blasting at its Maules Creek mine, which has seen an increase in fume events since changing its explosives supplier on October 1.

The company said it will cooperate with the EPA and that production guidance from the mine for FY22 remains unchanged.

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Magnetite Mines and Fe Limited are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.

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Bulk Buys: As China wilts on economic crackdown, are big iron ore miners now in buying territory? - Stockhead