Day: August 20, 2017

The port of Tripoli in northern Lebanon wants the world to know it’s ready for business.

British safety managers are training local hires to operate heavy machinery and Chinese technicians are running diagnostics on two new container cranes that tower over the harbor, just 28 kilometers (18 miles) from the Syrian border.

After six years of civil war in Syria, markets across the Middle East are anticipating a mammoth reconstruction boom that could stimulate billions of dollars in economic activity. Lebanon, as Syria’s neighbor, is in prime position to capture a share of that windfall and revive its own sluggish economy.

Battles still rage in Syria’s north and east, and in pockets around the capital, Damascus, but the survival of President Bashar Assad’s government now appears beyond doubt.

That is introducing an element of stability into forecasts not seen since 2011, when the war broke out. The Damascus International Fair, a high-profile annual business event before the war, opened on Thursday evening for the first time since war broke out. The 10-day event kicked off with much fanfare, with participants from 43 countries and hundreds of attendees.

The World Bank estimates the cost to rebuild Syria at $200 billion.

For Lebanon, that could be just the stimulus it needs — the tiny Mediterranean country’s growth rate has hovered around 1.5 percent since 2013. And though the capital, Beirut, has grown visibly richer over the years, Tripoli and the impoverished north have lagged behind.

“Lebanon is in front of an opportunity that it needs to take very seriously,” said Raya al-Hassan, a former finance minister from northern Lebanon who now directs the Tripoli Special Economic Zone project that’s planned to be built adjacent to the port.

Ahmad Tamer, the port manager, estimates Syria’s reconstruction will create a demand for 30 million tons of cargo capacity annually.

Syria’s chief ports, Tartous and Latakia, also on the Mediterranean Sea, have a combined capacity of 10 to 15 million tons, he says. He wants Tripoli port to be ready to step in for a portion of the rest.

“We could provide up to 5 or 6 or 7 million tons,” he says.

The port is nearing the completion of the first phase of an expansion project first drawn up in 2009, then revised with an eye on Syria in 2016. Capital investment has reached around $400 million, according to the port manager.

On a map, Tamer pointed to a vacant quadrant where preparations are underway to build silos to hold grain destined for regional markets.

Syria’s conflict has decimated its food production, which included an average of 4.1 million tons of wheat annually before the war, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

In 2017, it managed to produce just 1.8 million tons.

Lebanon’s businessmen and politicians have always maintained close relations with Syrian counterparts. Syria is among Lebanon’s largest trade partners, and arguably its most reliable supplier of cheap labor. Lebanon, in exchange, is the banker to many of Syria’s enterprises and its wealthy elites.

These ties give Lebanon — and Tripoli in particular — an edge over competitors vying for the Syrian market.

The city’s location is also attracting foreign investment. Tripoli port signed a 25-year lease with the Emirati port operator Gulftainer in 2013, to manage and invest in the terminal.

“Our aim was to invest here in anticipation of Syria’s reconstruction,” said Ibrahim Hermes, the CEO of Lebanon’s subsidiary of Gulftainer.

Lebanon is now a fixture on itineraries of prospective investors. Hermes said he has seen delegations arriving from Europe, Asia and especially China, to scope out trade opportunities.

Before the war in Syria, goods coming through Lebanon’s ports used to transit as far afield as Iraq — saving ships from having to take the sea journey through the Suez Canal and around the Arabian Peninsula.

There is talk now that Tripoli could even be a terminal in China’s trillion-dollar new “Silk Road” project, carving a trade route from east Asia to Europe.

The Chinese firm Qingdao Haixi Heavy-Duty Machinery Co. sold the two 28-story container cranes now at the port. Safety signs inside the structures are posted in English and Mandarin.

“Tripoli can be a main transshipment hub for the eastern Mediterranean,” said Ira Hare, a sunburned British manager working for Gulftainer.

Lebanon has officially sought “dissociation” from the Syrian war so as not to fuel rancor among political parties split between those aligned with Damascus and those against it.

But there is also an air of inevitability about the re-normalization of relations, as Assad looks, for the short-term at least, to stay on in power.

Syria’s chief champion in Lebanon, the militant Hezbollah group, which is fighting alongside Assad’s forces, evinces little doubt.

“Our national interest is for the border between Lebanon and Syria to be open … because, tomorrow the routes will open to Iraq and to Jordan and we want to be able to transport Lebanese goods,” Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said in a speech this week.

A Hezbollah minister, Hussein Hajj Hussein, is one of two Cabinet ministers headed to Syria this week in a highly controversial visit, the first since the start of the war. Prime Minister Saad Hariri, an Assad critic, said the visit did not have government backing.

Damascus also knows it will be brought back in from the cold.

The Damascus International Fair, which promises to attract investors from Russia, China, Iran, and other places, is a telling indicator of the mood in the Syrian capital.

Europe and the United States are hesitant to finance the reconstruction projects so long as Assad, a pariah to the West, remains in power. But Russia, China, and Iran, as well as investors in Lebanon and the Middle East, are showing no signs of hesitation.

“As soon as there is a political agreement to end the war, we will be among the first countries to play a role in reconstruction,” said al-Hassan, the former finance minister.
…

The United States, Canada and Mexico wrapped up their first round of talks on Sunday to revamp the NAFTA trade pact, vowing to keep up a blistering pace of negotiations that some involved in the process said may be too fast to bridge deep differences.

In a joint statement issued at the end of five days of negotiations in Washington, the top trade officials from the three countries said Mexico would host the next round of talks from Sept. 1 to 5.

The talks will move to Canada later in September, then return to the United States in October, with additional rounds planned for later this year, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said.

“While a great deal of effort and negotiation will be required in the coming months, Canada, Mexico and the United States are committed to an accelerated and comprehensive negotiation process that will upgrade our agreement,” the officials said.

One person directly involved in the talks described the schedule as exceedingly fast, given that past trade deals took years to negotiate.

The three countries are trying to complete a full modernization of the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement by early 2018, before Mexico’s national election campaign starts.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to scrap NAFTA without major changes to reduce U.S. goods trade deficits with its North American neighbors, describing it as a disaster that cost Americans hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs.

The joint statement said the three countries made “detailed conceptual presentations” across the scope of NAFTA issues and began work to negotiate some of the agreement’s texts, although it did not provide details on the topics.

Negotiating teams “agreed to provide additional text, comments or alternate proposals during the next two weeks,” ahead of the Mexico round.

Not All Cards on the Table

The source involved in the talks, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said there had been no drama as the three countries exchanged proposals.

Not all cards were put on the table, the source added, saying that during four four-hour sessions on rules of origin, the United States did not reveal its proposed targets for boosting North American and U.S. content for the automotive sector.

Lighthizer had made clear that strengthening rules of origin was one of his top priorities.

“The instructions that the groups received are clear: Work and work fast,” said a second person participating in the talks.

“This is not a negotiation like others we’ve been in. “We will not sacrifice the substance of a negotiation to meet a schedule,” added the source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the talks. Trade experts have consistently said that the schedule is

far too ambitious, given the amount of work and differences on key issues.

“It’s hard to imagine how they can do something very substantive and do it very quickly. It’s almost as if you can have one or the other. You can have it quick, or you can have it meaningful,” said John Masswohl, director of government relations at the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association.
…

Add next week’s total eclipse of the sun to the list of worker distractions that cost U.S. companies hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity.

American employers will see at least $694 million in missing output for the roughly 20 minutes that outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimates workers will take out of their workday on Monday, Aug. 21 to stretch their legs, head outside the office and gaze at the nearly two-and-a-half minute eclipse.

And 20 minutes is a conservative estimate, said Andy Challenger, vice president at the Chicago-based firm. Many people may take even longer to set up their telescopes or special viewing glasses, or simply take off for the day.

“There’s very few people who are not going to walk outside when there’s a celestial wonder happening above their heads to go out and view it,” Challenger said, estimating that 87 million employees will be at work during the eclipse.

To get the overall figure of nearly $700 million, Challenger multiplied that by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest estimate for average hourly wages for all workers 16 and over.

Just as the Earth is a mere speck in the universe, however, Challenger said this is still a small sum.

“Compared to the amount of wages being paid to an employee over a course of a year, it is very small,” Challenger said. “It’s not going to show up in any type of macroeconomic data.”

It also pales when compared with the myriad other distractions in the modern workplace, such as the U.S. college basketball championship known as March Madness, the recent U.S. shopping phenomenon called Cyber Monday and the Monday after the Super Bowl.

During the opening week of March Madness, the firm estimated employers experienced $615 million per hour in lost productivity as people watched games and highlights, set up pool brackets and avidly tracked their standings rather than performed actual work.

The Monday after the Super Bowl, meanwhile, resulted in an estimated $290 million in lost output for every 10 minutes of the workday spent by workers discussing the game or watching game highlights and re-runs of their favorite Super Bowl commercials.

And Cyber Monday on the heels of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday at the start of the annual holiday shopping season resulted in $450 million in lost productivity for every 14 minutes spent shopping, not working.

Events like this are likely to have an outsized effect on smaller companies, Challenger said. When their workers are absent, small firms may not have sufficient coverage from coworkers, especially in the current tight labor market where it is hard to find skilled workers.

“When three or four people are missing from an office of 15, it’s a lot more disruptive,” Challenger said.

EVENT AMOUNT IN LOST PRODUCTIVITY

Total Eclipse:   $694 million for the 20 minutes it takes to go outside and watch the eclipse

Cyber Monday:   $450 million for every 14 minutes spent

shopping

March Madness:   $615 million for each hour spent on March Madness activities

Super Bowl:   $290 million for every 10 minutes lost

discussing the game

Fantasy Football:   $990 million for each hour of work time

spent on Fantasy Football

 
…

Brexit minister David Davis called on the European Union on Sunday to relax its position that the two sides must first make progress on a divorce settlement before moving on to discussing future relations.

After a slow start to negotiations to unravel more than 40 years of union, Britain is pressing for talks to move beyond the divorce to offer companies some assurance of what to expect after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019.

This week, the government will issue five new papers to outline proposals for future ties, including how to resolve any future disputes without “the direct jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ)”, Davis said.

“I firmly believe the early round of the negotiations have already demonstrated that many questions around our withdrawal are inextricably linked to our future relationship,” Davis wrote in the Sunday Times newspaper.

“Both sides need to move swiftly on to discussing our future partnership, and we want that to happen after the European Council in October,” he wrote, saying the clock was ticking.

EU officials have said there must be “sufficient progress” in the first stage of talks on the rights of expatriates, Britain’s border with EU member Ireland and a financial settlement before they can consider a future relationship.

That has frustrated British officials, who say that until there has been discussion of future ties, including a new customs arrangement and some way of resolving any future

disputes, they cannot solve the Irish border issue or financial settlement, two of the more difficult issues in the talks.

“There are financial obligations on both sides that will not be made void by our exit from the EU,” Davis wrote. “We are working to determine what these are – and interrogating the basis for the EU’s position, line by line, as taxpayers would expect us to do.”

He said the Brexit ministry would “advance our thinking further” with the new papers next week.

On the role of the ECJ, Davis said Britain’s proposals would be based on “precedents” which do not involve the “direct jurisdiction” of the court, which is hated by many pro-Brexit ministers in the governing Conservative Party.

EU officials say the court should guarantee the rights of EU citizens living or working in Britain after Brexit.

“Ultimately, the key question here is how we fairly consider and solve disputes for both sides,” Davis wrote.

 
…

Sometimes, it just doesn’t pay to manufacture in the United States. Labor and land are expensive. It is why most consumer products sold here come from overseas. But a multinational electric guitar manufacturer still produces one-third of its instruments near where it started decades ago. Arash Arabasadi names that tune from Maryland.
…

Danelle Johnson started designing her own clothes when she was a teenager. Not just because sewing was her hobby. She wanted to stand out among her classmates with a personal, distinctive look. Johnson’s vision of fashion motivated her to start her own design company … on wheels. As Faiza Elmasry reports, the fashion entrepreneur attracts customers who prefer her rolling retail boutique to big malls and online shopping. Faith Lapidus narrates.
…

Hansaben Rasid knows what it is like to live without a water tap or a toilet of her own, constantly fearful of being evicted by city officials keen on tearing down illegal settlements like hers in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad.

The fear and lack of amenities are but a memory today, after she became a community leader in the Jadibanagar slum and pushed residents to apply for a program that gave them facilities and a guarantee of no evictions for 10 years.

“We didn’t even have a water tap here — we had to fetch water from the colony near by, and so much time went in just doing that. People kept falling sick because there was just one toilet,” she said.

“Now that we have individual water taps and toilets, we can focus on work and the children’s education. Everyone’s health has improved, and we don’t need to be afraid of getting evicted any day,” she said, seated outside her home.

Jadibanagar, with 108 homes, is one of more than 50 slums in Ahmedabad that have been upgraded by Parivartan — meaning “change” — a program that involves city officials, slum dwellers, a developer and a nonprofit organization.

Every household pays 2,000 rupees ($31) and in return, each home gets a water tap, a toilet, a sewage line and a stormwater drain. The slum gets street lights, paved lanes and regular garbage collection.

Each home also pays 80 rupees as an annual maintenance fee, and the city commits to not evicting residents for 10 years.

Negotiation skills

A crucial part of the program is the involvement of a woman leader who brings residents on board, deals with city officials and oversees the upgrade.

Nonprofit Mahila Housing Trust has trained women residents to be community leaders in a dozen cities in the country, including more than 60 in Ahmedabad.

“Women are responsible for the basic needs of the family, and most also work at home while the husband works outside, so the lack of a water tap or a toilet affects them more,” said Bharati Bhonsale, program manager at Mahila Housing Trust.

“Yet they traditionally have had little influence over policy decisions and local governance. We train them in civic education, build their communication and negotiation skills, and teach them to be leaders of the community,” she said.

About 65 million people live in India’s slums, according to official data, which activists say is a low estimate.

That number is rising quickly as tens of thousands of migrants leave their villages to seek better prospects in urban areas. Many end up in overcrowded slums, lacking even basic facilities and with no claim on the land or their property.

Yet slum dwellers have long opposed efforts to relocate them to distant suburbs, which limits their access to jobs. Instead, they favor upgrading of their slums or redevelopment.

Earlier this month, officials in the eastern state of Odisha said they would give land rights to slum dwellers in small towns and property rights to those in city settlements in a “historic” step that will benefit tens of thousands.

In Gujarat state, as Jadibanagar is on private land, it is not eligible for the city’s redevelopment plan.

“These homes are all illegal, but that doesn’t mean the people cannot live decently,” said Bhonsale.

“With redevelopment, there is demolition and a move, and that can take longer to convince people of, with the men usually making the decision. But with an upgrade, the women make the decision very quickly by themselves,” she said.

Bottom up

Elsewhere, in Delhi’s Savda Ghevra slum resettlement colony where about 30,000 people live, nonprofit Marg taught women residents to demand their legal right to water, sanitation and transport.

A group of women then filed Right to Information petitions, to improve their access to drinking water, buses and sanitation.

“The women bear the brunt of not having these amenities, and are therefore most motivated to do something about the situation,” said Anju Talukdar, director of Marg.

“The leaders are the ones who show up for meetings, are engaged and keen to learn how to use the law to improve their lives,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Contrary to perceptions that slums are run by petty criminals who resist efforts to redevelop or upgrade, women leaders in Jadibanagar and Savda Ghevra are actively engaged in bettering everyone’s lives.

Leaders often emerge from a bottom-up process, with reputations for getting things done — in particular, resisting evictions and securing basic services, according to research by Adam Auerbach at the American University and Tariq Thachil at Vanderbilt University.

“They are themselves ordinary residents, living with their families and facing the same vulnerabilities and risks as their neighbors; they, too, want paved roads, clean drinking water, proper sanitation and schools for their children,” they said.

Women leaders, while still a minority, are “rarely token figures” serving male heads of households, and are “just as active, assertive and locally authoritative as their male counterparts,” they said in an email.

Rasid in Jadibanagar, whose two sons and their families live in homes alongside hers, is certain her leadership helped residents improve their homes and their lives.

“Everyone wants security and nicer homes, and they are willing to pay. Someone just has to get it done,” she said.

“I am illiterate, I cannot read, but I know now how to talk to officials and the developer and tell them what we want, and make sure they deliver,” she said.
…