Business

ISTANBUL — There is a silver lining to Turkey's currency crisis and the global supply chain crunch: The country is becoming an attractive alternative at the gates of Europe for foreign firms.

Turkey is seizing on its geographic advantage to woo companies as the skyrocketing cost of sea freight and pandemic-related disruptions to supply chains push some European companies to reduce their dependence on Asia.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose policies have contributed to the lira's plunge, has promoted a new slogan for exports: "Made in Turkiye", using the country's language instead of the internationally-known "Made in Turkey".

But his vision must overcome concerns about Ankara's complicated relationship with the European Union, the independence of the judiciary and political uncertainty ahead of elections next year.

Nevertheless, Turkey's exports reached a record $225.4 billion last year, with a target of $300 billion in 2023.

"Many international companies are taking action to supply more from Turkey," said Burak Daglioglu, head of the Turkish presidency's investment office. 

He said the country offers automakers or textile companies a "competitive talent pool, sophisticated industrial competencies, well-developed services industries, perfect geographic location and state-of-the-art logistic infrastructure". 

Ikea announced last year it wanted to move part of its production to Turkey.

The Italian clothing group Benetton said it wants to "increase its production volumes in countries closer to Europe, including Turkey".

Peter Wolters, vice chairman of The Netherlands-Turkey Chamber of Commerce, said the business group received "requests from the household and garden sector, textile and fashion and also yacht building industry who search for new partners in Turkey".

Soaring freight costs

It has become extremely expensive to ship goods from Asia.

As a result of container shortages, the cost of freight between China and northern Europe has increased ninefold since February 2020, according to the Freightos Baltic Index.

While a cargo ship can take weeks to travel from Asia to Europe, Turkey is only three days away by truck.

A study by the McKinsey consulting group published in November placed Turkey in third position among countries with the best potential for textile supplies by 2025, behind Bangladesh and Vietnam but ahead of Indonesia and China. 

"Apparel companies are also looking to change their sourcing-country mix... to secure the supply chain," the global report's authors wrote.

The report said Turkey offers "cheaper production costs due to a declining lira".

The lira has fallen by 44 per cent against dollar since 2021 as the central bank — prodded by Erdogan — cut interest rates even though inflation was rising. 

Turkey's new net minimum wage is now equivalent to $315 — an amount barely higher than that of Malaysia. 

Erdogan, who has been in power for two decades and seeks re-election in 2023, is betting on a weak lira to boost exports and growth, according to some observers, even if it destroys Turks' purchasing power. 

Europe, 'friend' and 'enemy'

The collapse of the lira is also problematic for several industries due to the country's dependence on imports for energy and raw materials. 

"It's not like Russia, for example, which has extensive raw materials," said Roger Kelly, leading regional economist covering Turkey and Russia at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. 

He said Turkey also faces competition from countries within the EU.

"I don't think we should ignore those countries in southeast Europe like Romania or Bulgaria, which are actually in the EU — which helps them to a certain degree — and also have low production costs and strong production bases as well."

Erdal Yalcin, professor of international economics at Germany's Konstanz University of Applied Sciences, said uncertainty over Turkey's judiciary and institutions is also a concern.

"We don't see big investments, even though Turkey from a purely economic perspective would be the perfect place to bring production closer to Europe," Yalcin said.

Another issue is Turkey's difficult ties with the EU, with Yalcin noting that in the rhetoric of Turkish leaders, "one day Europe is a friendly nation, the other day it's an enemy". 

He also pointed to Volkswagen's move to postpone the construction of a plant in Turkey after Ankara's Syria operation against a US-backed Kurdish militia in late 2019 before scrapping the plan during the coronavirus pandemic.

"As long as people are being killed, we are not laying the foundation stone next to a battlefield," VW CEO Herbert Diess said at the time. 

For Yalcin, no big decisions will be taken by businesses before the 2023 election and "until this uncertainty about the political future of this country is resolved". 

TUNIS — Every day at the family grocery stall in a Tunis market, Bilel Jani sees the reality of a biting economic crisis, which for many has overshadowed Tunisia's latest political turmoil.

"People here are poor," he said, handing a meagre bag of olives to a customer. "Most of our customers are living day-to-day. Monthly salaries these days don't even cover a week."

The small North African country, roiled by years of political turmoil that deepened with President Kais Saied's power grab last July, is also mired in a deep recession. 

Surging prices and job losses have hurt families that were already struggling before the coronavirus pandemic. 

This week, Tunisia started preliminary talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over a bailout package. 

Such a deal would likely mean cuts to subsidies and public sector wages, which many fear would spell more suffering for the most vulnerable.

That could fuel the same kind of grievances that sparked a revolution a decade ago and brought down Zine El Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years in power.

The economic crisis since then has pushed tens of thousands of Tunisians to seek better lives overseas.

Arab Spring's birthplace

At the Halfaouine market in a winding street near central Tunis, Jani's customers are already feeling the pain.

"People used to buy by the kilogramme," he said. "Now they just buy the absolute necessities."

His customer Dalila Dridi said life was a struggle on her salary from the education ministry.

"I earn 1,000 dinars [$348, 305 euros] a month and I used to have 100 or 60 dinars left over at the end," she said. "Now I have to borrow to get to the end of the month."

Asked when things had started to deteriorate, she said "since Zine left".

Ben Ali had ruled with an iron fist. But in late 2010, in the neglected town of Sidi Bouzid, vegetable salesman Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in desperate protest against police harassment.

That sparked a revolt which forced Ben Ali into exile and sparked the Arab Spring uprisings around the region.

But rather than addressing corruption and structural economic problems, the dysfunctional democracy that followed was torn by an ideological showdown between hardliners and secularists.

Successive governments staged hiring sprees to tamp down social unrest, inadvertently tripling the wage cost of Tunisia's public sector, one of the world's most bloated.

Battling inflation 

Little was done to help poorer regions in a country with vast wealth disparities, said Romdhane Ben Amor of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights. 

Then, in 2020, the pandemic hit and Tunisia's economy shrank by more than nine per cent while public debt spiralled.

The International Crisis Group think-tank warned last month that the debt-burdened treasury "can barely cover the salaries owed to public-sector workers or honour commitments to repay external loans".

With both the government and private banks reluctant to lend to the private sector, about 80,000 small and medium-sized companies have either declared bankruptcy or left the country since early 2020.

"The economy is in a deep recession, debt is at unprecedented levels and unemployment is at 18 per cent," and much higher among the youth, said economist Ezzedine Saidane.

Inflation has remained stubbornly high, in December hitting 6.6 per cent on an annualised basis.

Those rising costs have spelled misery for people relying on stagnant salaries, pushing many of Tunisia's once large middle class towards poverty.

"I've stopped buying lots of things because my salary doesn't cover it," said Dridi.

'Waiting for a spark' 

All this poses a looming challenge for President Saied, who last year sacked the government and seized wide-ranging powers, vowing to "cleanse" state institutions and rewrite the constitution.

Ben Amor worries that Saied, an austere constitutional law professor, "doesn't have an economic or social programme".

"He doesn't meet any economic experts. He meets legal experts. But our problem is not legal," he said. "There's a crisis, but it's an economic and social one."

Ben Amor said that going to the IMF, with the austerity that would likely follow, should be Tunisia's last option after domestic solutions were exhausted.

For example, the country's large informal sector and companies that benefited from the pandemic all represent untapped sources of tax revenue, he said.

"The IMF looks at citizens and their needs as numbers: the public wage bill, interest rates, debt rates etc," he said. "It doesn't look at them as people who have needs — to eat, have health care, travel."

Ben Amor believes that the economic crisis could easily spark major social unrest.

"This seems like the calm before the storm," he said. "Society is waiting for a spark. Just as happened in 2010."

WASHINGTON — Advanced countries should "immediately" provi de relief to developing countries whose debt burdens have swelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Wednesday.

In a message to Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers gathering in Jakarta this week, the IMF chief renewed her call for urgent action from creditors, warning of dire consequences if they fail to do so.

"We estimate that about 60 per cent of low-income countries are in or at high risk of debt distress, double 2015 levels," Georgieva said in a blog post.

"These and many other economies will need... more grants and concessional financing, and more help to deal with debt immediately."

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the G-20 put in place the Debt Service Suspension Initiative to help countries that ramped up borrowing to deal with the twin health and economic crises, but that program ended in December.

The G-20's Common Framework meant to offer a way to restructure large debt loads remains subject to uncertainty, and only three countries — Chad, Ethiopia and Zambia — have requested a negotiation under its terms.

Georgieva echoed the IMF's sister institution, the World Bank, calling for officials to take additional steps including "reinvigorating" the common framework, beginning with "a standstill on debt service payments during the negotiation under the framework".

She also called for the programme to be extended "a wider range of highly indebted countries".

A key sticking point in the debt restructuring process is the lack of accurate information about borrowing levels, especially loans from China.

The Washington-based crisis lending institutions have called for greater transparency, including on the debts of private firms in those countries.

Addressing the debt will be especially critical as rising inflation has prompted a "policy pivot" by central banks in advanced economies which are raising interest rates, which in turn will put more pressure on borrowers.

Georgieva cautioned that if "financial conditions tighten suddenly, emerging and developing countries must be ready for potential capital flow reversals".

She said authorities may have to intervene in foreign exchange markets to deal with shocks, and even impose measures to contain the exodus of capital.

Georgieva stressed that beating COVID-19 worldwide remains critical to ensuring the economic recovery, noting the IMF projects "cumulative global output losses from the pandemic of nearly $13.8 trillion through 2024". 

"Ending the pandemic will also help address the scars from economic long-COVID," caused by business disruptions and time lost by students.

LONDON — UK payrolls jumped in January as Omicron fears receded but workers' wage rises are failing to keep pace with soaring inflation, official data showed on Tuesday.

The number of UK workers on payrolls rose 108,000 to a record-high 29.5 million last month, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a statement.

The UK's unemployment rate stood at 4.1 per cent in the three months to the end of December, unchanged from the quarter to the end of November, the ONS added.

"The number of employees on payrolls rose again in January... and is now well above pre-pandemic levels," said Sam Beckett, head of economic statistics at the ONS.

She added, however, that the number of people in employment overall was "well below" its pre-pandemic level.

"This is because there are now far fewer self-employed people," Beckett noted.

Tuesday's data revealed also record vacancy levels.

Average pay, excluding bonuses, grew 3.7 per cent in the quarter to the end of December — lagging near 30-year high UK inflation at 5.4 per cent.

The ONS on Wednesday publishes annual inflation figures for January, which is set to come in at an even higher level.

The Bank of England has said that Britain's annual inflation rate will peak at 7.25 per cent in April as energy prices in particular rocket.

"The outlook for real wages, and associated pressure on consumer spending, is set to get worse before it gets better," EY ITEM Club economist Martin Beck said following Tuesday's data.

The discovery of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus in late November raised concerns about its potential effects on the global economy as countries restored some travel restrictions.

But the highly infectious variant has proven less deadly than its predecessors.

HANOI — Vietnam will lift coronavirus restrictions on international flights for fully vaccinated passengers from Tuesday, the country's aviation authority said in a statement.

The country has virtually closed itself to the world since March 2020 due to the pandemic, dealing a severe blow to its ‘vital’ tourism sector.

Authorities have slowly eased the curbs in recent months, with visitors trickling in under a bubble arrangement since November.

Starting Tuesday (17:00 GMT Monday), "Vietnam will lift restrictions on passenger carriage on scheduled flights and non-scheduled flights," the civil aviation authority said.

The statement, released on Sunday, did not say how many flights would be allowed to enter, but indicated arrivals could be permitted to return to pre-pandemic levels.

Anyone wanting to enter Vietnam must be fully vaccinated and will have to observe a three-day quarantine, either at home or in a hotel, according to regulations.

Travellers must still abide by existing entry-exit regulations and pre-pandemic healthcare requirements, the authority said.

More than 90 per cent of adults in the country have received two COVID-19 vaccine doses. The government is considering inoculating young teenagers as it accelerates the rollout of booster shots.

Vietnam is currently reporting around 20,000 new daily cases, and has recorded more than 2.5 million infections with nearly 39,000 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia has moved four per cent of Aramco shares worth 80 billion dollars in the world's biggest oil exporter to the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, authorities said on Sunday.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, announced the move as part of efforts to recalibrate the oil-dominated economy.

The transfer is also the latest sign that Saudi Arabia wants to open up Aramco, the "crown jewel" of the Saudi economy.

The "transfer of four per cent of Aramco shares to the Public Investment Fund [PIF]... is part of the kingdom's long-term strategy to support the restructuring of its economy", the crown prince was quoted as saying by the state SPA news agency.

Crown Prince Mohammed said he wants the investment fund to have one trillion dollars in assets by the end of 2025. The fund is the centrepiece of official moves to end economic reliance on oil.

"The shares will bolster the fund's strong financial position and high credit ratings in the medium term, as the PIF relies on the value of its assets and the returns on its assets under management for its funding strategy," he said.

The crown prince stressed that the Saudi state would remain the dominant Aramco shareholder with a 94 per cent stake. Crown Prince Mohammed heads the PIF sovereign fund.

'Financial reform process' 

Prince Mohammed said in April last year that Aramco was in talks to sell a 1 per cent stake to a foreign energy giant.

"There is a discussion on the acquisition of 1 per cent [of Aramco] by one of the world's leading energy companies, and this will be a very important deal to boost Aramco's sales in that country," the crown prince said at the time.

Aramco previously sold 1.7 per cent of its shares on the Saudi bourse in December 2019, generating $29.4 billion in the world's biggest initial public offering.

It raised six billion dollars in Islamic bonds in June last year, so that it could pay dividends to the new shareholders.

But Aramco announced $30.4 billion in profit for the third quarter of 2021, a massive rise from $18.8 billion for the same quarter the previous year, as oil prices took off again.

In December, Aramco said it had signed a $15.5 billion lease agreement for its gas pipeline network with a consortium led by BlackRock Real Estate of the United States and Hassana Investment Company, a Saudi-state-backed investment management firm.

Aramco and its assets were once kept under a vice-like government control, long off-limits to outside investment.

But with the rise of Crown Prince Mohammed, who has been pushing his "Vision 2030" reform programme, the kingdom has shown readiness to cede some control.

"The kingdom is continuing its initiatives to pursue the economic and financial reform process that it has undertaken and is putting in place economic transformation plans," the crown prince was quoted as saying on Sunday.

LONDON — Britain on Friday said it had accepted changes proposed by Google to address competition and customer privacy concerns linked to online advertising, with the US tech company vowing to apply them globally.

"The commitments we have obtained from Google will promote competition, help to protect the ability of online publishers to raise money through advertising and safeguard users' privacy," the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) regulator said in a statement.

Google separately said it would "apply the commitments globally", adding "they provide a roadmap for how to address both privacy and competition concerns in this evolving sector".

The outcome follows a CMA investigation launched 13 months ago into Google plans prohibiting placement of third party "cookies" on its Chrome browser, a move that has angered some publishers and advertisers.

The European Union launched a similar probe in mid-2021.

The EU said Friday's announcement did not impact its own investigation, which remained ongoing.

"We do cooperate with competition authorities around the world. But this is done on a case by case basis," added EU Commission spokeswoman Arianna Podesta.

Critics have argued that the project — known as the "Privacy Sandbox" — would increase Google's dominance since the giant holds mountains of data on consumer behaviour that will be denied to others.

"The CMA has secured legally binding commitments from Google to address competition concerns over its Privacy Sandbox," the CMA added in its statement.

Going forward, it will "supervise Google to ensure the Privacy Sandbox is developed in a way that benefits consumers".

The CMA said its probe followed concerns that the proposals "would cause online advertising spending to become even more concentrated on Google, weakening competition and so harming consumers who ultimately pay for the cost of online advertising".

The watchdog added it had been concerned that the plans "could undermine the ability of online publishers, such as newspapers, to generate revenue and continue to produce valuable content in the future — reducing the public's choice of news sources".

The European Publishers Council on Friday filed an antitrust complaint against Google with the European Commission "to break the ad tech stranglehold Google currently has over press publishers, and all other businesses in the ad tech ecosystem".

Among Google's commitments agreed with the CMA is the non-removal of third-party cookies until the watchdog is satisfied that its competition concerns have been addressed.

Google has pledged also "to restrict the sharing of data within its ecosystem to ensure that it doesn't gain an advantage over competitors when third-party cookies are removed".

There are commitments also "to not self-preference its advertising services", according to the CMA statement.

WASHINGTON — After two weeks of talks, the International Monetary fund (IMF) said on Friday it has advanced efforts to secure an aid programme to help Lebanon overcome its "unprecedented and complex" economic crisis, but more work is needed.

The country will need fiscal reforms that ensure it can manage its debt load as well as measures to establish a "credible" currency system, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a statement at the conclusion of its virtual negotiation mission.

"During the mission, progress was made in agreeing on these necessary reform areas, although more work is needed to translate them into concrete policies," IMF team leader Ernesto Ramirez Rigo said.

The Washington-based lender launched talks last month to pull the Middle Eastern country out of its deepening economic crisis.

In 2020, Lebanon defaulted on its sovereign debt for the first time in its history.

Its currency has lost about 90 per cent of its value on the black market and four out of five Lebanese now live below the poverty line, according to the United Nations, a situation made worse by triple-digit inflation.

Ramirez Rigo said "strong upfront actions will be necessary to start turning the economy around and rebuilding confidence".

He also urged that "decisive action by the authorities is needed to tackle the deep-seated problem of corruption".

But any programme must include a fiscal plan that "allows the government to invest in critically-needed social spending to support the people", he added.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva last week described the country's situation as "very, very dire" and said that a comprehensive programme was required.