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GENEVA — The World Trade Organisation (WTO) kicked off a ministerial meeting on Thursday aimed at breathing life into drawn-out negotiations towards banning subsidies that favour overfishing, but numerous sticking points remain.

Before the meeting, WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala voiced cautious optimism that trade ministers from the organisation's 164 member states could finally move towards clinching a "historic" agreement after 20 years of negotiations.

"While no one expects a miracle, the meeting represents a golden opportunity to bring the negotiations within striking distance of a deal," she said in an editorial published on Wednesday in Project Syndicate.

"A failure to do so would jeopardise the ocean's biodiversity and the sustainability of the fish stocks on which so many depend for food and income."

The talks aim to ban subsidies that contribute to illegal and unregulated fishing, as well as to overfishing, threatening the sustainability of fish stocks and the industry.

While fishing should in theory be held in check by the environment, with low fish stocks pushing up costs, subsidies can keep unprofitable fleets at sea.

It is widely agreed that action is needed to protect a crucial resource that millions of people depend on for their livelihoods.

In 2017, the Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated that one third of global fish stocks were overfished.

Global fisheries subsidies are meanwhile estimated at between $14 billion and $54 billion a year, according to the WTO.

But two decades of negotiations have stumbled over a range of issues, including a UN demand that developing countries and the poorest nations receive special treatment.

After missing the last UN deadline to reach an agreement by December 2020, talks have intensified in recent months, however.

Okonjo-Iweala, who took the reins of the global trade body in March, has made clinching the long-awaited fisheries deal by the end of this year a priority.

Thursday's meeting, which is taking place virtually due to Covid restrictions, is focusing on a draft text presented in May by Colombian ambassador Santiago Wills, who chairs the WTO fisheries subsidies negotiations.

Okonjo-Iweala voiced optimism that "marathon discussions" on the text, which according to Wills proposes "compromise language" in a range of areas, would succeed. 

"We are on the cusp of forging an agreement at the WTO that is historic in more ways than one," she said, stressing that a deal would also show that "members can come together and act on issues of the global commons." 

Reaching any kind of an agreement at the WTO can be hard, because all decisions require a consensus among all member states.

But observers said there had been a clear boost in momentum towards finding a deal.

"We have never had more political attention on the issue, (nor) the degree of political attention from a director general, and the degree of commitment from WTO members to really advanced this text," Alice Tipping of the International Institute for Sustainable Development told reporters in Geneva. 

Special treatment? 

But a number of sticking points remain and NGOs warn against rushing to the finish line at any cost.

"It's critical that WTO members do not sacrifice environmental outcomes for the sake of speed when negotiating a fisheries subsidies agreement," Isabel Jarrett of The Pew Charitable Trusts told AFP.

One of the main stumbling blocks has been a UN demand that developing countries and the poorest nations receive so-called special and differential treatment, or SDT.

While special treatment for the poorest countries is widely accepted, demands from some self-identified developing countries to be exempt from subsidy constraints has proved difficult to swallow.

Many of the major fishing nations are considered developing countries by WTO, including China, which has one of the world's biggest fishing fleets.

An EU official told reporters this week that a declaration from China that it was prepared to assume "full commitments without claiming SDT" would be "very helpful" to the talks.

There is also disagreement over how broad the fisheries deal should be.

There appears to be consensus around excluding fish-farming and continental fishing from subsidy constraints.

But some developing countries are calling for fuel subsidies, including through tax deduction schemes like those widely used in the EU, to be included in the deal -- something the bloc flatly rejects.

WASHINGTON — US inflation will remain "elevated" in coming months but will decline once supply bottlenecks and other temporary issues are resolved, Federal Reserve Chair Powell said on Wednesday.

But the world's largest economy still has "a long way to go" to return to full employment following the COVID-19 pandemic, Powell said in his semi-annual testimony to Congress. 

The Fed "will ensure that monetary policy will continue to deliver powerful support to the economy until the recovery is complete," he said.

Inflation has surged in recent months, with the annual consumer price index hitting 5.4 per cent in June, the highest since August 2008.

But Powell and other Fed officials have stuck to their argument that the high rate has been driven mostly by temporary issues related to the struggles to reopen the economy following the pandemic shutdowns and is not a reason to pull back on stimulus efforts.

Many private economists agree, but Powell is likely to face tough questions from members of the House Financial Services Committee in the hearing that begins at 1600 GMT. He is due to appear again Thursday before the Senate Banking Committee.

"Inflation has increased notably and will likely remain elevated in coming months before moderating," Powell said in his prepared testimony.

He cited the impact of supply issues including a global semiconductor shortage that has hindered auto production, and said those factors "should partially reverse as the effects of the bottlenecks unwind."

The Fed cut the benchmark lending rate to zero right at the start of the pandemic and implemented a massive bond-buying program to provide liquidity to the economy during the crisis.

Central bankers have pledged to maintain the stimulus until inflation holds above the 2 per cent goal and the labour market has recovered.

But while job gains are expected to continue, Powell said "reaching the standard of 'substantial further progress' is still a ways off."

Fed officials have begun to discuss when they will start to taper the $120 billion a month in asset purchases, and Powell again pledged to give advance notice before making any changes.

WASHINGTON — The United States saw its biggest surge in inflation in more than a decade last month, government data said on Tuesday, hitting consumers and challenging the White House and Federal Reserve (Fed) narrative that the price spike will fade in the coming months.

As widespread COVID-19 vaccinations allowed the world's largest economy to relax pandemic restrictions, Americans have resumed spending and traveling but have faced rising prices for used cars, gasoline, hotels and airline fares.

That trend could undermine already-tentative support for President Joe Biden's economic plan, including his massive jobs and infrastructure proposals.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) spiked 5.4 percent, not seasonally adjusted, over the 12 months ended in June, the Labor Department said, its highest rate since August 2008.

While the reopening is a boon to businesses, they are facing supply bottlenecks such as a global shortage of semiconductors that has hampered auto production, and also surges in demand, including from rental car companies rushing to rebuild their fleets.

After sinking in the midst of the pandemic shutdowns, energy prices have rebounded, aided by the failure of OPEC+ oil producers to boost output. Gasoline surged an unadjusted 45.1 per cent over the past year and 2.5 per cent in the month of June, the report said.

Those eye-popping gains will intensify pressure on Fed chair Jerome Powell, who faces two days of questioning by lawmakers on Wednesday and Thursday.

Powell has repeatedly insisted that most of the factors driving the price spikes, among them the comparison to the sharp declines in 2020, will disappear and inflation will come down.

But economists are beginning to question that view.

"The surge in prices remained largely driven by COVID but surprised many at the Federal Reserve [Fed] who hope the surge will be transitory," said economist Diane Swonk of Grant Thornton. She warned, "That possibility is fading."

Continued stimulus 

Powell likely will find himself defending the Fed's pledge to continue providing stimulus to the American economy until there has been substantial progress on lowering unemployment and getting inflation to hold above 2 per cent.

US central bankers at their policy meeting in June expressed surprise at the extent of the inflation jump, and with the new data, inflation hawks will have the upper hand at the policy meeting later this month, where they are expected to discuss pulling back on the Fed's massive bond-buying programme.

Food prices rose a comparatively modest 2.4 per cent for the year ended in June, and 0.9 per cent in the month, according to the data.

But even excluding the more volatile food and energy prices, "core" CPI over the 12 months to June jumped 4.5 per cent, unadjusted, the biggest increase since November 1991, the Labour Department said.

Compared to May alone, CPI surged 0.9 per cent, seasonally adjusted, with over one-third of that rise driven by a 10.5 per cent gain in used car prices.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers pointed to temporary factors driving inflation, and cautioned that "the recovery from the pandemic will not be linear".

Ahead of the report, economists said they expected inflation to start trending down in coming months, but noted that price pressures persist.

The "price gains were widespread as unleashed pent-up demand outstrips diminished supply," said Kathy Bostjancic of Oxford Economics.

"We believe this will be the peak in the annual rate of inflation," she said in an analysis, but "price increases stemming from the reopening of the economy and ongoing supply chain bottlenecks will keep the rate of inflation elevated."

By Beiyi Seow with Lianchao Lan in Shanghai
Agence France-Presse

BEIJING — China's economic growth slowed in the second quarter as the country's army of consumers remained hesitant to splurge and exports were dented by disruptions, according to an AFP poll of analysts.

The world's second largest economy has staged a rapid recovery from last year's pandemic-induced slump, but the investment and manufacturing rebound fuelling it now seems to be fading — and other drivers are not picking up fast enough.

It is forecast to have grown 7.7 per cent on-year in April-June and 8.5 per cent for the full year, according to a poll of 12 analysts conducted by AFP.

While the quarterly figure would be much slower than the record 18.3 per cent seen at the start of the year, that jump was largely driven by the low base of comparison owing to large parts of the country being locked down to prevent the spread of the virus.

Official figures will be released on Thursday.

The virus first emerged in China in late 2019, but the strict containment measures meant the disease was brought under control fairly quickly, allowing the country to be the only major economy to expand last year.

But analysts note that the economy has been expanding more slowly since the start of 2021 as the pandemic drags on globally.

"The production side of the economy is... under pressure amid increasing supply challenges," Moody's Analytics Economist Christina Zhu told AFP.

"Input shortages, surging raw material costs, and shipping disruptions are weighing on the country's manufacturers, threatening to drag down the country's growth," she said.

China's factory activity has been bogged down in recent months by supply shortages of key commodities and semiconductors, which are used to make a range of goods from electronics to vehicles.

Export challenges 

The government has also "put the brakes on lending in order to stop the rise in private corporate and household debt", said Hao Zhou, senior emerging markets economist at Commerzbank

"The industrial sector has so far remained relatively unimpressed by this," he added, pointing to expectations of slowing industrial output.

Unlike most other countries, the government has so far refused to embark on a big-spending stimulus drive as it looks to prevent overheating.

However, on Friday the central bank lowered the amount of cash lenders must keep in reserve, which it said would pump an extra $154 billion into the economy.

Another potential drag comes from exports as demand is weighed by the pandemic as well as supply and shipping bottlenecks.

A backlog caused by a coronavirus outbreak among port workers earlier this year severely hit shipping container movement and exacerbated existing challenges.

While export growth beat expectations in June, the government warned the pandemic continued to cause headwinds with customs spokesman Li Kuiwen saying there were "many uncertain and unstable factors facing foreign trade development".

Although China's growth drivers are widely expected to move from industrial production to services, Wu warned recently that "household consumption recovery remains fragile", with data showing holiday spending was 25 per cent below pre-pandemic levels in June.

Still, he believes consumers will eventually "become more comfortable with public health conditions and their own economic situation".

China has ramped up its vaccination drive in recent months, and has now given out around 1.38 billion doses — although it does not make publicly available what percentage of the population have had the jab.

The World Bank cautioned last month that full recovery would require continued progress towards widespread immunisation against COVID-19.

"The prospect of reaching herd immunity this year has increased, which could bolster consumption in the second half," said Oxford Economics lead economist Tommy Wu.

PARIS — France's competition regulator said on Friday that it would issue a ruling on Tuesday on whether Google was negotiating "in good faith" with news publishers over payments for using their content alongside search results.

The long-running legal battle centres on claims that the US Internet giant is showing articles, pictures and videos produced by media groups when displaying search results, without adequate compensation despite the seismic shift of advertising revenue online.

In April 2020, France's competition authority ordered Google to negotiate "in good faith" with media groups, after it refused to comply with a new EU law governing digital copyrights.

The so-called "neighbouring rights" aim to ensure that news publishers are compensated when their work is shown on websites, search engines and social media platforms.

But last September, news publishers including Agence France-Presse filed a complaint with regulators, saying Google was refusing to move forward on paying to display content in web searches.

The competition authority will rule on this point, before issuing a final ruling later this year on Google's alleged abuse of monopoly power in internet news searches.

News outlets struggling with dwindling print subscriptions have long seethed at Google's refusal to give them a cut of the millions of euros it makes from ads displayed alongside news search results.

The US giant counters that it encourages millions of people to click through to media sites, and it has also spent heavily to support media groups in other ways, including emergency funding during the COVID-19 crisis.

In the meantime, Google announced in November that it had signed "some individual agreements" on copyright payments with French newspapers and magazines, including top dailies Le Monde and Le Figaro.

AFP did not sign the accord, but its chief executive Fabrice Fries said he was "optimistic" about improved relations with Google and other internet giants such as Facebook and Apple.

AL BADHAN — Palestinian workers in the Israel-occupied West Bank are putting the final touches on a decommissioned Boeing 707 aircraft to ready it for a new kind of takeoff: As a restaurant.

Its enterprising owners, 60-year-old twin brothers Ata and Khamis Al Sairafi, expect to welcome their first customers within weeks at the site in an isolated mountain area near Nablus.

Inside the old jet's cabin, the seats have been stripped out and the window panes removed. Tables will soon be fitted in the fuselage, which has been painted white with laminate wooden floors.

The brothers plan to call their aviation-themed eatery — which is decorated with Palestinian and Jordanian flags — "the Palestinian-Jordanian Airline Restaurant and Coffee Shop Al Sairafi Nablus".

"We will start by providing hookahs," said Khamis, for people who enjoy smoking tobacco through water pipes, before later expanding the business into an event space.

"The cockpit will be a suitable place for any newlyweds who come to us for their wedding ceremony."

The Sairafi brothers — identical twins who were sporting matching yellow shirts, khaki shorts and red sneakers during AFP's visit — are known for their interest in unusual initiatives.

Ata said he and his brother were working as scrap metal traders two decades ago when he learned about a 1980s-era passenger plane sitting near Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel.

They purchased it in 1999, even though there was — and still is — no airport in the Palestinian Territories, usually forcing residents who want to fly abroad to travel via Jordan.

'Strange idea' 

The brothers negotiated with the Israeli owner, who sold it to them for $100,000, the engines removed.

"After we bought it, we had to move it from Israel... which is a complicated process," Ata said.

The twins paid an Israeli company $20,000 to move the jet to the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since it occupied the territory along with East Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967.

The brothers said the 13-hour transport was coordinated between the Israeli and Palestinian sides.

Key roads were closed so the plane could be rolled on a giant tow truck, its wings temporarily separated, to its current location.

"Loads of media outlets covered it, and the Israeli police intervened to organise the transfer," recalled Khamis.

"We received the plane, which dates back to the 1980s, without any equipment that would enable it to fly," Ata said.

The twins said they hoped to run a restaurant out of the plane since around 2000, but the launch faltered with the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising.

"The events in the Palestinian territories at that time hindered the completion of our project, and we thought of reviving it two years ago, but the spread of the coronavirus also prevented us from doing so," Khamis said.

As they returned to their long-delayed passion project, the twins purchased a rickety retired gangway from Ben Gurion Airport, its name still visible in Hebrew and English characters.

The project faces one more, environmental, challenge. The plane sits on property abutting a waste sorting station which the twins are trying to convince local authorities to move elsewhere.

Ultimately, they said they are hopeful their project will finally take wing after being grounded for nearly a quarter-century.

"Having an aircraft in the Palestinian territories," said Khamis, "is such a strange idea that I'm sure the project will be a success."

BEIRUT — Pharmacies in crisis-hit Lebanon began an indefinite strike on Friday over medicine shortages as the cash-strapped state struggles to afford subsidies on key imports.

The country is facing what the World Bank has called one of the world's worst economic crises since the 1850s, and its foreign currency reserves are fast depleting.

Drug importers warned on Sunday that they were running out of hundreds of drugs, and that the central bank had failed to pay suppliers abroad millions of dollars in accumulated dues under a subsidy scheme.

The association of pharmacy owners announced there would be a "general open-ended strike across Lebanon" from Friday morning.

Ali Safa, a member of the association, said 80 per cent of pharmacies had stayed closed in Beirut and other big cities, and around half had done so in other areas.

An AFP photographer said most pharmacies had closed along the densely populated coastline north of Beirut, while another said many remained shut in the capital's southern suburbs.

Some medicines have disappeared from the shelves in recent months, forcing many people to appeal on social media for help in finding them, including from friends and family abroad.

Beirut resident Elie, 48, said he had visited five pharmacies earlier in the week to find medicine to treat high uric acid.

"They kept telling me there was none left, or that the suppliers had not delivered" the medicine, he told AFP.

Medicine importers' syndicate head Karim Gebara told AFP on Sunday that some drugs to treat cardiac diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer and multiple sclerosis were already out of stock.

He said this was because the central bank was not releasing dollars and importers could no longer open lines of credit.

Pharmacy owner Safa said that over the past two months suppliers had gradually stopped deliveries.

He said he and others wanted the health ministry to approve a list of medicines that would continue being subsidised according to priority, and then be sold at a fixed rate.

Suppliers could then sell all the other drugs according to the black market exchange rate to the dollar, he said, in order not to make a loss.

The central bank on Monday said it would earmark $400 million to support key products including medicine and flour.

Gebara said the central bank had promised $50 million a month in subsidies for medicine, which would cover just half of importers' current bills.