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LONDON –– Egypt is pressing ahead with plans to develop a new wheat storage facility and expand port operations at two terminals in the Suez area as the country looks to bolster strategic food reserves and attract investment, a top port official said.

President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who as armed forces chief toppled Islamist President Mohamed Morsi last July following mass protests, was sworn in on Sunday and seeks to fix Egypt’s economy while overcoming political divisions after a long period of turmoil and bloodshed.

Egypt plans to boost its storage capacity in the strategic wheat sector to reduce reliance on imports and cut its 32 billion Egyptian pound ($4.5 billion) overall food import bill. A government minister said this week Egypt wants to be a “global logistics hub” for grain storage.

Hassan Falah, chairman of the Red Sea Ports Authority, said it had recently issued a tender to develop a wheat storage site with a capacity of 2 million tonnes at the port of Adabiya. He declined to disclose the value of the project.

“There are a number of Egyptian banks who are willing to fund the project with any investors and one of them is the National Bank of Egypt,” Falah said on a trade visit to Britain this week. “In six months, the winner of the tender will be known.”

The National Bank of Egypt could not immediately be reached for further comment.

Falah said Adabiya would add to grain storage facilities at other ports in Damietta, along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, and Safaga, which is situated along the Red Sea.

“Adabiya is in the middle and it is preferred to shorten the distance and can serve cities and governorates in different areas,” Falah told Reuters via an interpreter.

Egypt is also making progress in increasing local storage capacity with the help of one of its major Gulf Arab backers, the United Arab Emirates. The UAE has committed to funding the construction of 25 silos to boost storage capacity by a further 1.5 million tonnes.

Falah said Port Tawfik, also situated in Suez and another terminal within his port authority, had issued a tender to develop a multipurpose port there.

“In the pipeline and under study are expansion projects for yachts and cruise ships at the port,” he added.

Authorities have mounted a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, once Egypt’s most well-organised Islamist group, and its supporters since Morsi was deposed, killing hundreds and arresting thousands. Sisi still faces a violent threat from militants based in the Sinai peninsula, who are believed to have access to weapons smuggled from chaotic Libya.

In May, the army said it had seized 15 tonnes of a material used to make explosives in a town straddling the Suez Canal, a vital source of foreign exchange for Egypt and the fastest shipping route between Europe and Asia.

Falah, who retired from the Egyptian navy as a rear admiral in 2007, said there were no security issues with Suez.

“There are multiple checkpoints throughout Suez. The Suez area is secure,” he said.

Sisi’s plans include creating a Central Sinai governorate, or administrative area, carved out of the North and South Sinai. North Sinai has seen countless militant attacks on policemen and soldiers since Morsi’s ouster.

“A new governorate will be created in the Sinai area,” Falah said. “This will mean there will be a lot of improvements in the security situation. It will be much better and not worse.”

TOKYO –– Toyota on Wednesday recalled 2.27 million vehicles globally over a defect that could see airbags fail to deploy in a crash and also posed a fire risk, dealing another blow to the Japanese giant’s safety record.

The world’s biggest automaker said the latest call back involved 20 models, including its Corolla sedan, Yaris subcompact and Noah minivan, and covered about 1.62 million cars overseas and 650,000 in Japan.

Some of the affected overseas cars were already included in a recall last year, but had not had their airbag inflator replaced, Toyota said.

“The involved vehicles were equipped with front passenger airbag inflators which could have been assembled with improperly manufactured propellant wafers,” it said in a statement.

“[That] could cause the inflator to rupture and the front passenger airbag to deploy abnormally in the event of a crash.”

A company spokesman in Tokyo said it had received a complaint from a Japanese customer who said his passenger seat was burned from the defect. No serious injuries or accidents had been reported, he added.

In April, Toyota recalled 6.39 million vehicles globally over a string of problems, and another 520,000 last month, mostly in North America, over several issues including cable corrosion that could lead unused spare tyres to fall off. 

In February, it recalled 1.9 million units of its signature Prius hybrid cars, after recalling millions of other models in recent years over a possible fire risk and other safety issues.

Despite logging record sales and bumper profits, Toyota has been fighting to protect its reputation as US rival GM scrambles to contain a deadly ignition-linked scandal. Nissan and Honda have also issued major recalls in recent years.

In March, Toyota agreed to pay $1.2 billion to settle US criminal charges that it lied to regulators and the public as it tried to cover up deadly accelerator defects, which caused vehicles to speed out of control and fail to respond to the brake.

Toyota eventually recalled 12 million vehicles worldwide in 2009 and 2010.

As part of the settlement, the automaker admitted that it lied when it insisted that it had addressed the “root cause” of the problem by fixing floor mats that could trap the accelerator.

In the United States, General Motors has been sideswiped by accusations that it hid a decade-long ignition and airbag problem linked to 13 deaths. 

On Tuesday, GM chief executive Mary Barra said the company has not yet figured out how much its deadly, faulty car ignitions will cost the Chevrolet and Cadillac maker.

GM has already set aside $1.7 billion to cover some of the costs of recalling 2.6 million cars with the problem ignition switches, Barra said at the company’s annual shareholders meeting.

But it faces the possibility of having to spend billions more to answer lawsuits from car owners and victims of crashes tied to the ignition problem, as well as their relatives.

TRIPOLI –– Libya’s government, suffering from dwindling oil revenues, will allow its ministries to begin spending the $50 billion budget it submitted to parliament at the start of the year, even though lawmakers have not voted on it.

The move might force the central bank to use more of its reserves as the budget is not backed up by oil revenues which have fallen to $1 billion a month, a quarter of what Libya used to make in the past.

Ten months of protests at oil facilities have reduced oil output to around 200,000 barrels a day, down from 1.4 million bpd in July when protests started.

The OPEC producer’s parliament has failed to agree on a 2014 budget proposal worth around 60 billion Libyan dinars ($50 billion), according to lawmakers.

Public finances could worsen in next few weeks after acting Oil Minister Omar Shakmak said on Wednesday Libya had started directing crude from its two offshore fields to supply the Zawiya refinery, key to provide the capital with petrol. This will bring exports closer to zero as the two fields had been the last unaffected by protests so far.

The Cabinet of caretaker Prime Minister Abdullah Al Thinni said in a statement late on Tuesday that it considered the budget draft, submitted in January, as valid after parliament had exhausted the legal limit of fours months to vote on it.

“The government considers the budget approved,” it said.

Mohamed Abdullah, head of parliament’s budget committee, signalled support. He told Reuters the General National Congress was willing to work with the finance ministry to use the budget without formal vote as long as recommendations from lawmakers were included.

Other deputies said parliament, heavily divided, should still vote on the budget.

“In my opinion the budget should be adopted as soon as possible,” said Hamed Al Hattah, a lawmaker from the south.

The central bank holds around $110 billion in foreign reserves but only part of the money is cash, the rest held in overseas bonds, deposits or equity stakes.

Libya is in turmoil as the government and parliament struggle to control militias who helped oust Muammar Qadhafi in 2011 but now defy state authority, and seize oil ports at will.

Cutting the budget is difficult as more than half of the budget goes on subsidies and salaries for a greatly overstaffed and inefficient public service, a legacy of Qadhafi who put most adults on the payroll to discourage opposition.

The government has been reluctant to cut back as it struggles to impose authority on a country awash with arms.

WASHINGTON — The World Bank downgraded its forecast for the global economy this year, citing a bitter American winter and the political crisis in Ukraine.

In an outlook released Tuesday, the bank still expects the world economy to grow faster — 2.8 per cent this year versus 2.4 per cent in 2013. But its new estimate is weaker than the 3.2 per cent expansion it had predicted in January.

The US economy — by far the world’s largest — shrank at an annual rate of 1 per cent from January to March, chilled by an unusually nasty winter. The political crisis in Ukraine dragged growth in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Together, those factors will “delay the recovery we talked about in January but not derail it”, World Bank economist Andrew Burns told reporters.

Helped by super-low interest rates, the world’s wealthiest countries will expand 1.9 per cent this year, up from 1.3 per cent in 2013. In developing countries, growth is expected to stay flat at 4.8 per cent.

In its twice-yearly Global Economics Prospects report, the World Bank estimates that the 18 European countries that use the euro currency will grow 1.1 per cent collectively this year after shrinking in 2012 and 2013. It sees the US economy recovering from the weak first quarter and growing 2.1 per cent this year, up from 1.9 per cent in 2013.

World growth is accelerating as the US and Europe regain strength. Overall, the global economy is expected to expand 3.4 per cent next year and 3.5 per cent in 2016.

The rate of economic growth has stalled in China and other developing countries that had bounced back quickly from the financial crisis of 2008-2009. China’s economy is expected to decelerate steadily, from 7.7 per cent growth last year to 7.6 per cent this year to 7.5 per cent in 2015 and 7.4 per cent in 2016.

In China, the slowdown is partly deliberate. Authorities are attempting to manage a transition from rapid growth based on exports and investment in real estate, factories and infrastructure to slower but more stable growth based on spending by Chinese consumers. But the Chinese slowdown has pinched other developing countries — from South Africa to Brazil — that provide the world’s second biggest economy with raw materials.

The good news: The US and Europe should pick up some of the slack as their economies improve and they demand more imports from developing countries. After growing less than 3 per cent each of the past two years, world trade will expand 4.1 per cent this year and 5.2 per cent in 2015, the bank predicts.

Central banks, including the US Federal Reserve, have been supporting economic growth by keeping interest rates low. Last week, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced additional rate cuts and took the historic step of imposing a negative interest rate — charging banks for deposits with the ECB in an effort to prod them to make more loans instead of hoarding money. Burns said the ECB’s moves to protect Europe’s fragile recovery were “appropriate” and “go in the right direction”.

But he and other economists worry about what will happen when the central banks declare their mission accomplished and let interest rates rise again. Higher rates in the US and Europe likely will lure investment away from developing countries. If the shift occurs too quickly, it could damage developing countries’ economies and cause chaos in their financial markets — a potential rerun of the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998. 

Other risks to the World Bank’s growth forecast include continued tension in Ukraine, political instability in Syria and Thailand, and the possibility that China’s economy slows faster than expected.

PARIS –– Emerging giants China, Russia and Brazil are losing some of the driving steam which helped prevent a global economic slump, but advanced economies are now increasingly able to pick up the slack, according to key data published on Tuesday.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said its latest monthly report on leading economic indicators suggest that “the growth momentum is weakening in most major emerging economies” with the indicators showing weaker than usual growth in China, Russia and Brazil.

Conversely, the United States and Canada are showing stable growth momentum, the 18-member eurozone as a whole including Italy is improving and non-euro Britain is steadying at unusually strong growth rates, the OECD said.

The OECD’s report was published shortly after Britain and Italy both published strong industrial output for the month of April.

The British statistics office reported that industrial output expanded 0.4 per cent in April from the March level when it gained 0.1 per cent and over 12 months showed a jump of 3 per cent.

That was far ahead of analysts’ expectation of a 12-month rise of 2.8 per cent.

At Berenberg bank, chief UK economist Rob Wood commented: “Today brought yet more good news on the strength of the UK recovery, with manufacturing output rising solidly for the fifth consecutive month.

“The UK economy is increasingly firing on all cylinders, setting up the second quarter for another strong growth reading.”

Italy’s industrial production also rose more than expected in April in a welcome boost for the eurozone’s third-biggest economy.

Industrial production was up 0.7 per cent compared with output in March — the first increase for three months.

The Italian data “suggest that the economy might return to growth in Q2”, said Capital Economics analyst James Howat.

However, the analyst was less upbeat about Tuesday’s French data, which showed industrial output rallied in April by 0.3 per cent, saying it suggested “that the recovery there remains pretty weak”.

The OECD said however, that for Germany and France, the signs were that these two economies were growing steadily.

The signals for Japan pointed to an upset in its momentum towards growth, but this could reflect one-off factors, the OECD said.

The OECD said that its leading indicators of trends suggested “that the growth momentum is weakening in most major emerging economies”.

But India looks as though it is picking up speed, the OECD said.

Russia shrinks, Poland, Turkey grow 

These indicators, which are closely watched by analysts and investors as reliable pointers to future activity, “point to growth below trend in Brazil, China and Russia”.

Russia is on the brink of recession, with the government forecasting up to $100 billion in capital outflows, as investors jittery about the crisis in Ukraine pull out their funds.

But for India the indicators “tentatively indicates a positive turning point” which could suggest “a return to faster growth”, said the OECD.

In Poland, the biggest economy in former Communist central Europe, the government approved a budget for next year on Tuesday, forecasting growth of 3.8 per cent.

Poland, a member of the European Union but considered by economists to be part of emerging Europe, has escaped recession, growing continuously since 1992. 

Separate data from emerging and non-EU Turkey showed that the Turkish economy grew at an annual rate of 4.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2014 despite political turmoil and a sharp rise in interest rates.

The OECD is a policy research centre and advice forum for 34 advanced democracies, and also monitors big emerging markets and notably those in the so-called BRICS group comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

KUWAIT CITY –– The Kuwaiti government has decided in principle to end subsidies on diesel fuel but will deal with any negative impacts on consumers before implementing the decision, the Cabinet said.

Last month, the OPEC member’s government warned that spending outpaced revenues and this could lead to a budget deficit in 2017/2018 after years of surpluses.

“The council of ministers has decided in principle to stop subsidies on diesel,” a statement said late Monday.

But the Cabinet is waiting for a study by the higher planning council on ways to deal with possible negative effects on consumers.

Oil Minister Ali Al Omair told parliament three weeks ago that ending subsidies on diesel would save around $1 billion (735 million euros) a year out of total subsidies of around $18 billion.

Diesel is currently sold at around $0.20 a litre.

The step is one of several recommendations by a government committee formed last October to review subsidies on all services and commodities after costs have skyrocketed.

Finance Minister Anas Al Saleh told parliament the average annual growth in public spending was 20.4 per cent during the past decade against a 16.2 per cent for revenues.

The ministry has urged major cuts in subsidies, saying it was impossible for the state to sustain growth in wages and continue them.

Between 2005 and 2013 subsidies rose more than fourfold, from $4.1 billion to $18 billion, an annual growth rate of 23 per cent, the ministry said.

Oil income rose from $45.9 billion in 2005 to $106 billion last year.

The minister has said that, if oil prices remain at around $100 a barrel, Kuwait will post an estimated budget deficit of 2.3 billion in the 2017/2018 fiscal year.

Last month, the International Monetary Fund warned Kuwait to contain a rapid rise in public wages and subsidies to safeguard the economy against oil price shocks.

The Gulf state is also revising subsidies on electricity, water and petrol, currently sold at well below cost.

Kuwait has boasted a budget surplus in each of the past 14 fiscal years, helping to increase its sovereign wealth fund to over $500 billion, local media said.

AMMAN — Profit generated by Jordan Petroleum Refinery Company (JPRC) increased by 30.5 per cent, reaching JD28.2 million at the end of 2013 compared with JD21.6 million at the end of 2012. According to a disclosure to the Amman Stock Exchange,  gross profit amounted toJD32.1 million in 2013 compared with JD25.8 million in 2012. More than half of the company’s profit came from gas refining and filling at JD15.9 million, its oils factory at JD8.6 million, and its marketing and selling of petrol products at JD4.5 million. Last year, the JPRC completed the procedures needed to bring up its capital to JD50 million from JD40 million. 

AMMAN — A trade delegation from South Korea will visit Jordan next week to explore business opportunities with their Jordanian counterparts, according to a statement from Korea Business Centre in Amman. The delegation comprises representatives of 8 companies specialised in manufacturing and exporting pharmaceuticals, and medical materials and equipment. The Korean businessmen will hold business meetings with Jordanian companies on Sunday, according to the statement. This visit will focus on promoting and developing trade cooperation between the two countries, the statement said, highlighting the importance of the Jordanian market in terms of  reputation of the pharmaceutical industry, besides the country’s security and stability, qualified human resources and its location  as a gateway to the region. 

CAIRO — Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have contracted a state-run company headed by a retired Egyptian army officer to build wheat silos that are a key part of the UAE's $4.9 billion aid package to Cairo.

The UAE is taking a hands-on role in supporting Egypt and is funding a range of development projects including the wheat silo-building effort that could help the world's biggest importer of the commodity lower its huge food import bill.

Reuters reported in March that the UAE was working directly with the Egyptian army to ensure the silo-building was conducted efficiently.

The UAE pledged last October to build a total of 25 wheat silos with a storage capacity of 1.5 million tonnes to help prevent the loss of billions of dollars worth of wheat per year.

The project targets addressing problems in the strategic wheat sector. Millions of poor Egyptians rely on government subsidised bread, but the wasteful and corrupt system for providing it strains government finances. Egypt wants to boost its storage capacity to reduce reliance on imports.

Though the UAE and Egyptian government ministers appeared together at a news conference in Cairo to announce the details of the construction of the first two silos, their choice of a Egyptian army-affiliated company to do the construction work confirmed the military's connection to the project.

UAE Minister of State Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who handles the aid projects, announced the signing of the cooperation agreement with Cairo alongside Egypt's Supplies Minister Khaled Hanafi and Planning Minister Ashraf El Araby.

WASHINGTON — Cybercrime has grown into a global industry worth around half a trillion dollars, with no sign of slowing, a research report pointed out Monday.

The report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) with security firm McAfee estimated the global economic cost of cyber-attacks at $445 billion, accountting for the loss of 350,000 jobs in the United States and Europe.

"Cybercrime is a growth industry. The returns are great and the risks are low," the report said.

The study gave a range of $375 billion to $575 billion in losses, but the authors said even these figures were conservative in the face of limited data from many parts of the world.

"The costs of Cybercrime is going to continue to go up, barring a miracle," said Stewart Baker, a former Homeland Security official and co-author of the study.

James Lewis, a CSIS fellow and co-author, said the estimates are more conservative than some previous research pegging the cost at $1 trillion, but acknowledged difficulty in collecting data.

"Maybe half of the companies that get hacked don't tell the local police," Lewis said at a forum unveiling the study. "Many governments don't produce any data at all."

The authors said they believe their economic models produce a good estimate of economic losses but that some things are difficult to measure.

Many of the losses stem from theft of secret business information, or other forms of intellectual property.

Lewis indicated that in some cases, "someone might steal a billion dollars worth of intellectual property but is only able to monetise 10 per cent of that".

Yet the report called Cybercrime "a tax on innovation" because it reduces the return for new inventions or software, and may discourage some from investing or putting information online or in the cloud.

The researchers said cost of Cybercrime also includes the impact of hundreds of millions of people having their personal information stolen — some 40 million people in the US last year, 54 million in Turkey, 20 million in South Korea, 16 million in Germany and more than 20 million in China, according to the report.

"One estimate puts the total [number of victims] at more than 800 million individual records in 2013," the report said.

"This alone could cost as much as $160 billion per year. Criminals still have difficulty turning stolen data into financial gain, but the constant stream of news contributes to a growing sense that cybercrime is out of control," it concluded.