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DUBAI — Economic growth in Saudi Arabia and most other Arab oil exporters will slow this year following production cuts aimed at propping up energy prices, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Tuesday.

In its latest World Economic Outlook report, the IMF cut its 2017 growth forecast for the region comprising the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan to 2.6 per cent, down from the 3.1 per cent projected in January.

“The subdued pace of expansion reflects lower headline growth in the region’s oil exporters, driven by the November 2016 OPEC agreement to cut oil production,” the Washington-based IMF said.

It “masks the expected pickup in non-oil growth as the pace of fiscal adjustment to structurally lower oil revenues slows,” the IMF added, referring to measures to cut budget deficits.

Members of the OPEC cartel of oil exporters, mostly from the region, agreed last year to reduce output by 1.2 million barrels per day from January 1 for six months, to support crude prices that had shed half of their value since mid-2014.

“Growth in Saudi Arabia, the region’s largest economy, is expected to slow to 0.4 per cent in 2017 because of lower oil production and ongoing fiscal consolidation, before picking up to 1.3 per cent in 2018,” the IMF said. 

It said that growth is likely to dip in most Gulf Cooperation Council member states, which also include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

One bright spot is gas-rich Qatar which is expected to register 3.4-per cent growth this year, compared with 2.7 per cent in 2016. Kuwait’s economy, in contrast, is forecast to shrink by 0.2 per cent.

In Algeria, the IMF sees economic growth of 1.4 per cent this year, down from 4.2 per cent last year.

Growth is also predicted to slow sharply in Iran, to 3.3 per cent in 2017, from 6.5 per cent last year when the Islamic republic won a boost from the lifting of economic sanctions.

Iraq’s economy is expected to contract by 3.1 per cent in 2017 after surging by 10.1 per cent last year on the back of expanding oil exports after sharp contractions in the previous two years. 

Egypt reforms ‘to deliver’ 

The overall figure for the region overshadows a faster pace in many of its oil-importing countries.

Morocco’s economic growth is forecast to jump from 1.5 per cent last year to 4.4 per cent this year, while Tunisia’s economy is seen expanding by 2.5 per cent compared with just one per cent the year before.

On the other hand Egypt, whose currency plummeted in value after authorities floated it in November, will see slower growth of 3.5 per cent this year, compared to 4.3 per cent last year.

“In Egypt, comprehensive reforms are expected to deliver sizable growth dividends, lifting growth ... to 4.5 per cent in 2018,” it said.

The IMF, whose forecasts exclude war-torn Syria, noted that “continued strife and conflict in many countries in the region also detract from economic activity”.

Meanwhile, a “broad-based recovery is expected to continue at a healthy pace” in Pakistan, the IMF said, forecasting growth of 5 per cent this year, and 5.2 per cent in 2018, “supported by ramped-up infrastructure investment”.

BERLIN — Miko from Berlin may only be five, but he already has 1,000 euros ($1,063) per month to live on — not from hard graft, but as part of an experiment into universal basic income.

He is one of 85 people, including around 10 children, chosen by startup Mein Grundeinkommen (My Basic Income) to receive the payments for a year since 2014.

Founder Michael Bohmeyer has set out to prove to a sceptical public in Germany and further afield that the universal basic income (UBI) idea is workable.

"Thanks to my first startup, I got a regular income; my life became more creative and healthy. So I wanted to launch a social experiment," 31-year-old Bohmeyer told AFP.

He wasn't alone in his desire to test the idea, as some 55,000 donors have stumped up the cash for the payments in a "crowdfunding" model — with the final recipients picked out in a "wheel of fortune" event livestreamed online.

Mother Birgit Kaulfuss said little Miko "can't really understand, but for the whole family it was exhilarating" when he was chosen — offering a chance to live "in a more relaxed way" and take a first-ever family holiday.

Trying things out

"Everyone sleeps more soundly and no one becomes a layabout," Bohmeyer said of his beneficiaries.

Recipients' experiences range from a welcome spell without financial worries to major turning points in their lives.

"Without day-to-day pressures, you can be more creative and try things out," Valerie Rupp told public broadcaster ARD in a recent interview.

She was able both to take care of her baby and start a career as a decorator — even as her husband, newly arrived from Mali, was taking German lessons.

Winners have left jobs that were doing little more for them than put bread on the table to become teachers, taken time out to address chronic illness, broken alcohol addiction, taken care of loved ones, or paid for children's studies.

"It's at once a gift and a prompt" to make a change, explained Astrid Lobeyer, who used the money to give eulogies at funerals and studied the therapeutic Alexander technique, a method for relieving stress in the muscles. 

Bohmeyer's experiment has fascinated social media and boosted discussion about a universal income in Germany.

At the same time, Finland is testing the idea with 2,000 homeless recipients and the idea is a flagship policy for French Socialist presidential candidate Benoit Hamon.

Reward for laziness? 

In 2009, the German parliament flatly rejected a petition from some 50,000 Germans demanding a universal income.

Nevertheless, some 40 per cent of the public still think it's a good idea, according to a survey last June by pollsters Emnid.

Supporters have formed a campaign group called "Buendnis Grundeinkommen" (Basic income federation) with their sights on September's legislative elections, but so far no major party has taken up the cause.

There are pockets of support among left-wingers, the right, Catholic organisations and even industry leaders, whose reasoning ranges from fighting poverty to simplifying bureaucracy or smoothing the transition into the digital era.

Resistance to the idea is more focused, centering on how UBI would change people's relationship to work.

Right-wingers dismiss it as a "reward for laziness", while the Social Democratic Party worried in 2006 about unemployed recipients being "labelled useless" rather than getting help to find jobs.

Meanwhile, major unions like IG Metall and Verdi denounce the idea as a "liberal Trojan horse" that would "boost inequality" by paying millionaires and poor people alike.

 Thankless jobs 

Mein Grundeinkommen is "poorly thought out" as a response to broader social questions, University of Freiburg economist Alexander Spermann told AFP.

The startup's 20 employees eat up "60 per cent of the budget", founder Michael Bohmeyer admits — while the idea of basing the funding on curiosity or activism by thousands of donors is hardly applicable on a large scale.

For Spermann, the Berliners' experiment has only succeeded in answering the question "what would I do with a blank cheque if I got one for Christmas?"

People's choices in terms of qualifications or work if they were guaranteed the payments for life are the real mystery, the economist argues.

"Who will take on the exhausting and sometimes less attractive tasks, like emptying bins or taking care of the elderly?" asked Werner Eichhorst of the Bonn Centre for the Future of Work in 2013.

UBI supporters argue such jobs would either be taken over by robots or find a new place of honour in society if the policy were enacted.

"No machine will take over working for us and pay our taxes at the same time," Eichhorst and opponents shoot back.

SINGAPORE/SYDNEY — A company built around the research of Craig Wright, who has claimed to have invented the bitcoin cryptocurrency, has been sold to a private equity firm in a deal the company says is the biggest to date involving bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology.

The deal swings the spotlight once again on to Wright, a 46-year-old computer scientist who is the cryptocurrency's most controversial figure. He hopes to remain central to the technology's future, telling Reuters the goal is to build bitcoin into a global "system with no ruler, no king".

"We will scale and grow bitcoin to become what it was envisioned to be," he said. "All I do is to help grow the use of bitcoin, and I want to see it in daily use by at least a billion people on-chain. We have the funds, the people and the technology to do this."

According to a news release on Thursday, Malta-based High Tech Private Equity Fund SICAV plc. bought nChain Holdings, "the world leader in blockchain-centric research and development". It put no value on the deal and did not mention Wright.

Reuters previously identified nChain, formerly known as EITC Holdings, as Wright's vehicle for filing hundreds of bitcoin and blockchain-related patents.

UK records confirm that the target company — under both its EITC and nChain names — already filed more than 80 bitcoin and blockchain-related patents.

A person close to the deal said $300 million had been invested in nChain, but it was not clear over what period of time.

The Maltese fund did not respond to emails asking for comment.

Reuters reported last year that EITC planned to file hundreds of patents related to blockchain, the distributed ledger technology that underpins cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. The financial industry and others are exploring its potential.

The fund is managed by Liechtenstein-based Accuro Fund Solutions, part of Zurich-based Accuro Group. 

Divisive figure 

Wright remains a divisive figure in the bitcoin world.

After failing to convince many in the bitcoin community that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous founder of bitcoin, Wright retreated from view last year. 

Reuters reported last month that Wright was working with Calvin Ayre, a Canadian online gambling tycoon, to build a patent portfolio, though its purpose was not clear. Ayre was not immediately available for comment.

nChain said in an e-mailed response to questions from Reuters that neither Ayre nor Wright had a stake in it before or after the sale. It said the company previously acquired Wright's assets and intellectual property, and he now held the post of chief scientist.

Although it was not possible to confirm Wright's identity as Nakamoto, a Reuters investigation found he was deeply involved in the early development of bitcoin, and had told Australian tax officials he possessed more than 1 million bitcoin — worth $1.2 billion at the current exchange rate.

Patent lawyers have noted that open-source technologies like bitcoin are not easy to patent, and even if patents are approved, they are not always easy to defend.

Thursday's announcement is the first time nChain has publicly acknowledged it is filing patents.

Without confirming how many bitcoins he owns, Wright told Reuters he would never "dump bitcoin".

"I will sell when I do this for goods on a daily basis, or I will go down with it. Past the basics of my family's well-being, all I have is dedicated to building the systems and institutions needed to make bitcoin successful globally," he said.

The news release also shed light on what Wright and nChain might do with its patents. nChain this year "intends to make some of its intellectual property assets available to the blockchain community through open-source software and royalty-free licensing". It invited interested parties to register via email.

nChain's patent filings, seen by Reuters, range from the storage of medical documents to WiFi security. Investors have spent more than $1.5 billion on blockchain and bitcoin start-ups over the past four years, according to CB Insights, an internet research company.

The company said it was also working on software tools and applications to support the growth of blockchain. These include a software to develop applications on the bitcoin blockchain, solutions for bitcoin blockchain scalability, inventions to improve security, on-chain scripting for smart contracts, and a decentralised trading platform that uses autonomous agents.

The company also called for a neutral standards body to be set up to coordinate bitcoin's development.

NEW YORK — The US dollar rose on Thursday, rebounding after a slide that investors considered overdone following remarks by President Donald Trump that the currency was getting too strong and he would prefer the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low.

The greenback and US Treasury yields took a heavy hit after Trump’s comments to The Wall Street Journal, in which he said the strength of the dollar would hurt the economy.

But after losing 0.6 per cent on Wednesday — its biggest one-day fall in more than three weeks — the dollar recovered on Thursday against a basket of major currencies that tracks its value, rising 0.3 per cent.

“Clearly, I think it was oversold yesterday,” said Peter Ng, senior currency trader at Silicon Valley Bank in Santa Clara, California. “The market was very sensitive to headlines given how nervous it has become due to geopolitical risk.”

Trading was also thinner than usual because of the impending Good Friday holiday in the US and Europe this week, Ng said. 

Having hit a five-month low of 108.73 yen in early Asian trading, the dollar steadied at 109.20 yen.

“Yes, it was negative what [Trump] said...but it’s not a big surprise — it wasn’t a U-turn in his rhetoric on the exchange rate so far,” said Commerzbank currency strategist Thu Lan Nguyen in Frankfurt. 

“The question is: Is he able to influence monetary policy in order to get a weaker dollar? That is still an open question.” 

Trump’s remarks went against a long-standing practice of both US Democratic and Republican administrations of refraining from commenting on policy set by the independent Federal Reserve. It is also unusual for a president to talk about the value of the dollar, a subject usually left to the US Treasury secretary.

The dollar has shed 1.7 per cent against the yen so far this week, its fourth week lower against the safe-haven Japanese currency in five, as a rise in tensions in Asia and Europe prompted yen buying.

Investors are concerned about the upcoming French presidential election as well as possible US military action against Syria and North Korea, and an escalation of tensions with Russia. 

The euro fell 0.5 per cent to $1.0619 after touching a one-week high in overnight trading. 

The dollar was little changed against China’s offshore yuan, after falling to a six-day low on Wednesday. It had risen to a one-month high at the start of the week.

DAHRIYA, Palestinian Territories — Power comes in many forms, but Kamal Al Jebrini's family looked to where others may fear to tread for a new source of it: cow dung.

The family has begun recycling waste from its cows to produce electricity for one of the largest Palestinian dairy plants and even to provide power to some houses.

They discovered the idea during trips abroad and decided cow dung that would otherwise mainly rot in the sun — apart from some used as fertiliser by neighbouring farmers — could be put to better use.

"It was a shame to allow all of that manure to be lost and impact the environment when we can produce electricity with it," said Jebrini, who owns a large farm of about 1,000 cows with his brothers.

He spoke after inspecting the milking room, where workers looked after lumbering cows.

The project in the occupied West Bank is the first of its kind in the Palestinian territories, where renewable energy usually means solar panels.

The family turned to Maher Magalsay, who specialises in renewable energy at the Polytechnic University of Hebron, the major city located nearby in the south of the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel for 50 years.

Magalsay brought engineers and a large generator from Germany to develop the project that involves using heat to produce methane and biogas from the cow dung, eventually leading to electricity.

He involved his students, including some ex-students who had done apprenticeships abroad.

Now, he proudly shows off two large silos where manure and biogas are stocked to be later cooled and transformed.

It allows the 30 tonnes of dung produced daily by Jebrini's cows to generate 380 kilowatt hours.

Let there be light

That's enough to no longer have to pay electricity bills for his company, which sells milk, yoghurt and other dairy products throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem, said Jebrini.

He can even route part of the energy produced to the local electricity company.

There is no power plant in the West Bank, and nearly 90 per cent of the 5.3 gigawatts of energy consumed are bought from Israel.

For certain regions, the bills are taken care of by local authorities or the Palestinian Authority.

When unpaid bills have stacked up, Israel has cut power to cities.

Israeli authorities have long called for the payment of debt for electricity provided to the West Bank and east Jerusalem that they estimate to be some $475 million (450 million euros).

At the same time, around 4 per cent of Palestinian villages are not connected to the electricity grid, according to official data. 

Most of the villages are in the Hebron area — making Jebrini's project even more relevant and an example to be shared.

It certainly doesn't seem to trouble the cows and calves who munch straw under sheet metal roofs.

Their owners hope to do even more.

"In the next phase, we are going to use another generator to produce 650 kilowatt hours, and over the long-term we will reach one megawatt hour," said Magalsay.

With that amount, "we could supply between 200 and 300 houses," he said.

GENEVA — The risk of mass starvation in four countries — northeast Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen — is rising rapidly due to drought and conflict, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday.

About 20 million people live in hard-hit areas where harvests have failed and acute malnutrition rates are increasing, particularly among children, it said. 

In South Sudan, where the United Nations declared famine in some areas in February, "a further 1 million people are now on the brink of famine", UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said.

"We are raising our alarm level further by today warning that the risk of mass deaths from starvation among populations in the Horn of Africa, Yemen and Nigeria is growing," Edwards told a news briefing.

"This really is an absolutely critical situation that is rapidly unfolding across a large swathe of Africa from west to east," he said. 

People are on the run within their countries and greater numbers of South Sudanese refugees are fleeing to Sudan and Uganda, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.

A preventable catastrophe, possibly worse than that of 2011 when 260,000 people died of famine in the Horn of Africa, half of them children, "is fast becoming an inevitability", Edwards said. 

Too late

"Always the problem that we have with humanitarian crises in sub-Saharan Africa is that they tend to get overlooked until things are too late," he said. "A repeat must be avoided at all costs."

"There's acute malnutrition, very high rates, if you don't help people with worsening rates of malnutrition, people die."

Seven million people in northeast Nigeria and the Lake Chad basin are suffering from food insecurity, Edwards said.

Food security in 4 countries is expected to continue to deteriorate until at least mid-year, he said. 

UNHCR is scaling up its operations but has a funding shortfall, with some country programmes only funded at between 3 and 11 per cent, he said.

Overall the United Nations has appealed for $4.4 billion for the four countries but has received less than $984 million to date, Jens Laerke of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

In northeast Nigeria, especially Borno state, aid workers had "almost zero access" a year ago, due to Boko Haram militants, Laerke said. 

"Now that access is opening up. That is one of the reasons why the numbers have grown. Because as we have pushed into these areas we have simply discovered more and more need of an extreme nature including extreme food insecurity so that there is a risk of famine," he said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned in late March that the world had three to four months to stop starvation in the four countries.

David Hermann, ICRC operations coordinator for Somalia, told the briefing: "If it doesn't happen now, there will be no escaping a situation that this country already experienced a few years ago, meaning probably people are going to die from starvation and disease."

STANFORD-LE-HOPE, United Kingdom — The first-ever freight train from Britain to China, laden with whisky, soft drinks and baby products, started its mammoth journey on Monday along a modern-day "Silk Road" trade route.

The 32-container train, around 600 metres long, left from the vast London Gateway container port on the River Thames estuary, bound for Yiwu on the Chinese east coast.

It was seen off on its 18-day, 12,000-kilometre journey with a string quartet, British and Chinese flags, and speeches voicing hope that it will cement a new golden age of trade between the two countries as the UK leaves the European Union.

The first train from China to Britain arrived on January 18, filled with clothes and other retail goods, and Monday's departure was the first journey in the other direction.

The rail route is cheaper than air freight and faster than sea freight, offering logistics companies a new middle option.

The driver gave a thumbs-up and tooted his horn as he got the wagons rolling at the port in Stanford-le-Hope, east of London.

The train will go through the Channel Tunnel before travelling across France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan before heading into China.

The containers will be taken off and put on different wagons at the Belarus border, as the former Soviet Union countries use a wider rail gauge.

The containers switch back to standard gauge rails at the Chinese border, an operation that typically takes around two hours.

"We are proud to be able to offer the first ever UK to China export train," said Xubin Feng, the chairman of Yiwu Timex Industrial Investment.

"Restoring the ancient Silk Road as a means by which China, north Europe and now the UK can exchange goods is an important and exciting initiative.

"This is the first export train and just the start of a regular direct service between the UK and China. We have great faith in the UK as an export nation and rail provides an excellent alternative for moving large volumes of goods over long distances faster."

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Fresh protests against civil service pay cuts broke out in Gaza on Saturday, as pressure builds on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to tackle the crisis.

The decision this week by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority to slash the salaries of civil servants in the Gaza Strip has sparked days of protests.

Tens of thousands took to a square in central Gaza City on Saturday in the largest protest since the 30-per cent cut was announced, with demonstrators calling on Abbas to sack his government.

A handful of protesters announced they would begin a hunger strike, a spokesman told AFP.

Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs Gaza, has been at loggerheads with Abbas's Fatah Party since the former seized the Strip in a near civil war in 2007.

Fatah runs the West Bank, the other part of the Palestinian territories separated from Gaza by Israeli territory.

After Hamas seized power, around 70,000 PA employees in Gaza lost their posts but they were kept on its payroll, nevertheless.

Hamas set up its own parallel administration with 50,000 staff, whose salaries the PA refuses to pay.

The Fatah-run PA announced the pay cuts earlier this week, saying they were necessary because its budget has been hit by falling foreign aid.

In 2014, Fatah and Hamas agreed to form a unity government that was meant to resolve their dispute but it has remained stillborn, with no real control in either territory.

Local elections set for May have also been suspended in the Gaza Strip after infighting between Fatah and Hamas, though they are expected to take place in the West Bank.

UN Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov said he was "deeply concerned by the growing tensions in Gaza".

He said that while the Palestinian government faced difficult economic conditions, it should make spending cuts "with consideration to the harsh conditions under which people in Gaza live".

He urged both parties to work together to resolve the crisis and "bring about real national reconciliation that ends the division".

Israel has maintained a blockade of Gaza for a decade, severely damaging the enclave's economy.

AMMAN — Representatives of the Jordan Chamber of Industry met on Saturday with a Chinese delegation, comprising several representatives of Chinese food companies and discussed ways to increase commercial cooperation.

China is the third biggest commercial partner for the Kingdom. The chamber’s President Adnan Abul Ragheb called for further commercial cooperation and joint investment at the meeting that was hosted by the chamber, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. 

RIYADH — Britain said on Wednesday it would help Saudi Arabia to diversify its oil-dependent economy as British Prime Minister Theresa May visited the Gulf kingdom.

May and Saudi King Salman held talks focused on "bilateral relations and cooperation" as well as "regional and international developments", the official news agency SPA said.

A statement from May's office said she would discuss with the monarch "tax and privatisation standards to help Saudi Arabia diversify its economy and become less reliant on oil".

Saudi Arabia faces a significant budget deficit with billions of dollars in debts to private firms, largely in the construction business, after a drop in global oil prices by about half since 2014.

Britain will also assist Riyadh in "building a reformed Ministry of Defence" and reviewing defence capabilities, the statement said.

May's visit to the oil-rich kingdom came as she seeks to secure investment and trade after Britain officially started a two-year countdown to leave the European Union. 

The premier pitched the London bourse as a venue for the expected listing of oil giant Saudi Aramco, Bloomberg news cited an unnamed British official as saying.

May also held a private meeting with Energy Minister Khaled Al Falih, the official said. 

Back home, the premier has also come under harsh criticism for her visit to the ultra-conservative kingdom.

She has faced calls at home to raise rights issues with the kingdom's leaders, primarily over Britain's arms sales to a Saudi-led military coalition battling Iran-backed rebels in Yemen since March 2015. 

Saudi Arabia has bought more than $5 billion (4.7 billion euros) worth of arms from the United States and Britain since then, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute think-tank says.

On Tuesday, May held talks with a string of officials including Saudi Crown Prince and Interior Minister Mohammed Bin Nayef and Defence Minister Mohammed Bin Salman, who is second in line to the throne.

The British premier also met Sarah Al Suhaimi, the first woman to head the Saudi stock exchange and a Saudi investment bank, and Princess Reema Bint Bandar, head of the women's section at the General Authority for Sports.

As part of its economic diversification strategy, Saudi Arabia has announced plans to increase women's participation in the workforce from 22 to 28 per cent by 2020.