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Although India’s economy is growing at a fast rate, it is still not creating enough employment for its massive young population. The government is wooing global manufacturers to generate more jobs, but opportunities are not keeping pace with demand. As Anjana Pasricha reports from New Delhi, the challenge of finding good jobs is greatest for young college graduates. VOA footage by Darshan Singh.
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The world is on course to see its first trillionaire by the end of the decade, according to a report by Oxfam. The charity is warning of a big increase in global inequality, fueled by growing corporate power – as hundreds of world leaders and chief executives head to the Swiss ski resort of Davos for this year’s meeting of the World Economic Forum. Henry Ridgwell reports
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Washington — Artificial intelligence poses risks to job security around the world but also offers a “tremendous opportunity” to boost flagging productivity levels and fuel global growth, the IMF chief told AFP.

AI will affect 60% of jobs in advanced economies, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, said in an interview in Washington, shortly before departing for the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

With AI expected to have less effect in developing countries, around “4o% of jobs globally are likely to be impacted,” she said, citing a new IMF report.

“And the more you have higher skilled jobs, the higher the impact,” she added.

However, the IMF report published Sunday evening notes that only half of the jobs impacted by AI will be negatively affected; the rest may actually benefit from enhanced productivity gains due to AI. 

“Your job may disappear altogether – not good – or artificial intelligence may enhance your job, so you actually will be more productive and your income level may go up,” Georgieva said. 

Uneven effects

The IMF report predicted that, while labor markets in emerging markets and developing economies will see a smaller initial impact from AI, they are also less likely to benefit from the enhanced productivity that will arise through its integration in the workplace.   

“We must focus on helping low income countries in particular to move faster to be able to catch the opportunities that artificial intelligence will present,” Georgieva told AFP.  

“So artificial intelligence, yes, a little scary. But it is also a tremendous opportunity for everyone,” she said. 

The IMF is due to publish updated economic forecasts later this month which will show the global economy is broadly on track to meet its previous forecasts, she said.  

It is “poised for a soft landing,” she said, adding that “monetary policy is doing a good job, inflation is going down, but the job is not quite done.”

“So we are in this trickiest place of not easing too fast or too slow,” she said.

The global economy could use an AI-related productivity boost, as the IMF predicts it will continue growing at historically muted levels over the medium term. 

“God, how much we need it,” Georgieva said. “Unless we figure out a way to unlock productivity, we as the world are not for a great story.” 

‘Tough’ year ahead

Georgieva said 2024 is likely to be “a very tough year” for fiscal policy worldwide, as countries look to tackle debt burdens accumulated during the Covid-19 pandemic, and rebuild depleted buffers.

Billions of people are also due to go to the polls this year, putting additional pressure on governments to either raise spending or cut taxes to win popular support.  

“About 80 countries are going to have elections, and we know what happens with pressure on spending during election cycles,” she added. 

The concern at the IMF, Georgieva said, is that governments around the world spend big this year and undermine the hard-won progress they have made in the fight against high inflation.

“If monetary policy tightens and fiscal policy expands, going against the objective of bringing inflation down, we might be for a longer ride,” she added. 

Concentrating on the job

Georgieva, whose five-year term at the IMF’s helm is set to end this year, refused to be drawn on whether she intends to run for a second stint leading the international financial institution.  

“I have a job to do right now and my concentration is on doing that job,” she said. 

“It has been a tremendous privilege to be the head of the IMF during a very turbulent time, and I can tell you I’m quite proud of how the institution coped,” she continued. 

“But let me do what is in front of me right now.
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Frankfurt — The German economy shrank slightly in 2023, official data showed Monday, as costly energy, high interest rates and cooling foreign demand took their toll on Europe’s export giant.

Output contracted by 0.3 percent year-on-year, federal statistics agency Destatis said in preliminary figures.

“Overall economic development faltered in Germany in 2023 in an environment that continues to be marked by multiple crises,” the agency’s Ruth Brand told a Berlin press conference.

Europe’s largest economy likely saw a 0.3-percent drop in gross domestic output in the final quarter of the year, the agency calculated, again in preliminary figures.

It also revised the data for the third quarter from a 0.1-percent contraction to a stagnation, meaning Germany avoided a year-end technical recession of two successive quarters of negative growth.

The German economy has faced severe headwinds since Russia’s war in Ukraine sent inflation, particularly the cost of energy, soaring.

The price spikes contributed to a steep downturn in Germany’s energy-hungry manufacturing sector, while the construction sector also took a hit.

Increasing competition from China, once a reliable destination for “made in Germany” goods, as well as aggressive eurozone rate hikes to tame inflation further added to Germany’s woes.

The limp economic performance was widely expected, with the International Monetary Fund predicting that Germany would be the only major advanced economy not to grow in 2023.

If confirmed in the final figures, the 2023 contraction makes it Germany’s weakest year since the coronavirus pandemic battered the economy in 2020. 

“Despite recent price declines, prices remained high at all stages in the economic process and put a damper on economic growth” in 2023, said Brand.  

“Unfavorable financing conditions due to rising interest rates and weaker domestic and foreign demand also took their toll.”

Uncertain outlook

A modest recovery is expected to get under way in 2024, with Germany’s Bundesbank central bank recently forecasting growth of 0.4 percent.

“We see a silver lining for the economy in 2024,” said KfW chief economist Fritzi Koehler-Geib.

“Thanks to strong real wage growth, private consumption in particular is likely to pick up again. Together with an expected recovery in export demand, gross domestic product is likely to grow,” she added.

But ING bank economist Carsten Brzeski was less optimistic, pointing to fresh uncertainty stemming from the German government’s recent budget upset and shipping delays in the Suez Canal as a result of conflict in the Middle East.

“Looking ahead, at least in the first months of 2024, many of the recent drags on growth will still be around and will, in some cases, have an even stronger impact than in 2023,” Brzeski said.

He predicted that gross domestic product would shrink again this year, in what would “be the first time since the early 2000s that Germany has gone through a two-year recession, even though it could prove to be a shallow one.”

Concerns about slowing exports and the slump in the crucial manufacturing sector, coupled with a chronic shortage of skilled labourers, have begun to raise fears of a “deindustrialisation” in Germany.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government, whose popularity has been sliding in the polls, has sought to counter those concerns with pledges to invest heavily in the transition to green energy and in modernising infrastructure. 

But a shock court ruling at the end of last year blew a multi-billion-euro hole in the government’s budget, upending its spending plans and leaving Scholz and his coalition partners scrambling to find savings.

Anger over Berlin’s proposal to cut some subsidies for agriculture prompted farmers to stage tractor blockades across the country last week, culminating in a major demonstration in Berlin on Monday.
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BEIJING — Trade between China and Russia hit a record high in 2023, official data from Beijing showed on Friday, as commerce with the United States fell for the first time in four years on the back of geopolitical tensions.

China-Russia trade reached more than $240 billion, customs figures showed, overshooting a goal of $200 billion set by the neighbors in bilateral meetings last year.

The figure is a record for the two countries, who have grown closer politically and economically since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Beijing has drawn criticism from Western countries for its stance on the Ukraine war, on which China insists it is neutral.

It has refused to criticize Moscow’s invasion.

The trade figures represented a year-on-year increase of 26.3%, according to the data.

In contrast, trade between the U.S. and China fell for the first time since 2019.

Commerce with the United States was valued at $664 billion last year, down 11.6% from 2022.

Wang Lingjun, vice minister of the General Administration of Customs, told a news conference that the country’s trade would face more hurdles in 2024.

“The complexity, severity and uncertainty of the external environment are on the rise, and we need to overcome the difficulties and make more efforts to further promote the growth of foreign trade,” he said.

The figures also showed China’s exports fell 4.6% over the year, the first retreat since 2016, while imports were down 5.5%.

Friday also saw gloomy economic figures on the domestic front, with data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showing deflation in China continued for the third straight month in December.

The consumer price index (CPI) fell 0.3% on-year.

China slipped into deflation in July for the first time since 2021 and following a brief rebound the following month, prices have been in constant decline since September.

Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expected a drop of 0.4% last month, having sunk 0.5% in November.

While deflation suggests goods were cheaper, it poses a threat to the broader economy as consumers tend to postpone purchases, hoping for further reductions.

A lack of demand can then force companies to cut production, freeze hiring or lay off workers, while potentially also having to discount existing stocks — dampening profitability even as costs remain the same.

By way of comparison, inflation in the United States stood at 3.4% in December.

Inflation in China for the whole of 2023 rose by an average of 0.2%, in contrast to other major economies, which saw prices soar once again.

The NBS also said producer prices sank 2.7%, the 15th consecutive month of declines.

The PPI index, which measures the cost of goods leaving factories and provides an insight into the health of the economy, fell 3% in November.
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London — More than 60 world leaders will join hundreds of business executives and campaigners at the Swiss ski resort of Davos Monday for the five-day annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, where they will discuss some of the biggest global challenges.  

Critics say the summit is a meeting of the super-rich and that it fails to tackle growing global inequality. 

The issues on the Davos agenda appear daunting: in the immediate term, worsening conflicts in many parts of the world along with Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea; and wider threats including potentially catastrophic climate change, a weak global economy and fears over the adverse impacts of artificial intelligence. 

In its Global Risks Report 2024, published Wednesday, summit organizers highlighted misinformation and disinformation as the biggest short-term risk.

“The potential impact on elections worldwide over the next two years is significant, and that could lead to elected governments’ legitimacy being put in question. And this, in turn, could, of course, threaten democratic processes that lead to further social polarization, riots, strikes, or even intra-state violence,” report co-author Carolina Klint of the risk consultancy Marsh McLennan, told a London press conference Wednesday. 

The report labeled extreme weather events and climate change as the top long-term risks over a 10-year time frame.  

“Yes, it’s a very gloomy outlook, but by no means is it a hard, fast, set prediction of the future,” Saadia Zahidi, the economic forum’s managing director said. “The future is very much in our hands. Yes, there are structural shifts under way but most of these things are very much in the hands of decision-makers across different stakeholders and that’s where the effort really needs to be,” she told reporters. 

The Davos summit takes place against the backdrop of two major wars, in Ukraine and Gaza. 

Among those due at the Alpine ski resort are Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.  

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres will attend, along with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron. 

Alongside the political leaders will be hundreds of the world’s most powerful chief executives, including the head of OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Microsoft’s chief executive officer, Satya Nadella.   

Critics say the wealth of the world’s super-rich has increased, while billions around the world have become poorer over the past decade – and Davos will do little to reverse that trend. 

“Across the world people are feeling extraordinary hardship. And at the same time there’s a few sprinting off at the very top into the distance. And some of them will be in Davos,” said Nabil Ahmed of aid agency Oxfam International. 

“It is, yes, a space for dialogue, for important discussions, even for holding political and business leaders to account. It’s why organizations like Oxfam take part. But it’s also not an international, democratic space in which transparent, accountable decisions are being made,” Ahmed told VOA. 

The summit organizers say it’s vital to bring together political and business leaders to find solutions to the world’s myriad challenges.
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More than 60 world leaders will join hundreds of business executives and campaigners at the Swiss ski resort of Davos for the five-day annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, starting Monday. On the agenda at this year’s meeting are some of the biggest global challenges including the impact of disinformation worldwide. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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Geneva — The International Labor Organization warns global unemployment is set to rise this year, putting a brake on the gradual recovery of nations from the dire economic straits brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Data from the ILO’s World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2024 report finds global unemployment in 2023, which stood at 5.1%, was at its lowest level since the start of the pandemic in 2019. That rate is projected to increase to 5.2% in 2024.

While the report finds labor markets in 2023 showed “surprising resilience despite deteriorating economic conditions,” it says a deeper analysis of economic trends finds worrying signs of growing fragility and imbalances in labor markets.

“In a time of interacting and multiple crises, this is eroding progress toward greater social justice in the world,” said Gilbert Houngbo, ILO director-general, at the launch of the report in Geneva Wednesday.

“There is still a significant shortage of decent work, jobs in which employees are secure and treated with respect…We believe high quality, decent work is a pre-requisite for sustainable development and for building social justice.”

The ILO chief said an area of great concern was the worsening jobs gap rate, that is, the number of people who would like to work but cannot find employment.  

“In 2023, 189 million people were officially reported as being unemployed worldwide. However, more than double that number, 435 million people, wanted employment but could not find it,” he said.

The report finds high income countries are doing better than lower income countries in narrowing the jobs gap rate, which stood at 8.2% in the richer countries compared to 20.5% in the poorer ones. Similarly, it notes unemployment in rich countries stood at 4.5% in 2023, while it was 5.7% in low-income countries.

The ILO reports the absolute number of workers living in extreme poverty grew by about one million last year to more than 241 million people, each of whom earned less than $2.15 a day.

On a slightly more positive note, the report observed that the rates of informal work have returned to close to pre-pandemic levels, “though the number of informal workers reached two billion people in 2023 because of the growing labor force.” 

It notes that informal work will account for around 58% of the global workforce in 2024.

The return to pre-pandemic labor market participation rates has varied between different groups. While women’s participation has bounced back quickly, the report found that “a notable gender gap still persists,” especially in emerging and developing nations.

“The gap between men and women is not improving and that is very worrisome,” said Houngbo. “In the post-COVID environment, women workers have gone more in the informal sector than in the formal economy which in itself has a direct impact on the quality of the job.”

The report also found that youth unemployment rates continue to present a challenge for long-term employment prospects.

“Youth unemployment is a particular problem in Africa,” said Richard Samans, director of research at the ILO.  “Worldwide, young people — that is people in the workforce of working age, but less than 24 years old — they have an unemployment rate three-and-a-half times that of working age adults. 

“Part of the problem here is that in Africa, the number of youths who are not in education, employment, and training is high and is going up quite strongly. So, this is also a worrying development in the case of Africa,” he said.

After a brief post-pandemic boost, the ILO report notes labor productivity has returned to the low level seen in the previous decade. It finds that despite technological advances and increased investment, productivity growth has continued to slow.

Samans blames under-investment in addressing skills shortages as a main reason for technology’s failure to boost productivity.

“We see in countries like the United States a historic under investment in active labor market policies, which is to say skilling as well as employment services and income support during that period.  

“All of these things, the low pay, precarity, health issues, ageing populations, and particularly under investment in skills in a very dynamic and changing economic environment are some of the most salient issues that will persist and arguably and potentially even grow larger in the U.S. and a number of other high-income countries,” he said.
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London — False and misleading information supercharged with cutting-edge artificial intelligence that threatens to erode democracy and polarize society is the top immediate risk to the global economy, the World Economic Forum said in a report Wednesday.

In its latest Global Risks Report, the organization also said an array of environmental risks pose the biggest threats in the longer term. The report was released ahead of the annual elite gathering of CEOs and world leaders in the Swiss ski resort town of Davos and is based on a survey of nearly 1,500 experts, industry leaders and policymakers.

The report listed misinformation and disinformation as the most severe risk over the next two years, highlighting how rapid advances in technology also are creating new problems or making existing ones worse.

The authors worry that the boom in generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT means that creating sophisticated synthetic content that can be used to manipulate groups of people won’t be limited any longer to those with specialized skills.

AI is set to be a hot topic next week at the Davos meetings, which are expected to be attended by tech company bosses including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and AI industry players like Meta’s chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun.

AI-powered misinformation and disinformation is emerging as a risk just as billions of people in a slew of countries, including large economies like the United States, Britain, Indonesia, India, Mexico, and Pakistan, are set to head to the polls this year and next, the report said.

“You can leverage AI to do deepfakes and to really impact large groups, which really drives misinformation,” said Carolina Klint, a risk management leader at Marsh, whose parent company Marsh McLennan co-authored the report with Zurich Insurance Group.

“Societies could become further polarized” as people find it harder to verify facts, she said. Fake information also could be used to fuel questions about the legitimacy of elected governments, “which means that democratic processes could be eroded, and it would also drive societal polarization even further,” Klint said.

The rise of AI brings a host of other risks, she said. It can empower “malicious actors” by making it easier to carry out cyberattacks, such as by automating phishing attempts or creating advanced malware.

With AI, “you don’t need to be the sharpest tool in the shed to be a malicious actor,” Klint said.

It can even poison data that is scraped off the internet to train other AI systems, which is “incredibly difficult to reverse” and could result in further embedding biases into AI models, she said.

The other big global concern for respondents of the risk survey centered around climate change.

Following disinformation and misinformation, extreme weather is the second-most-pressing short-term risk.

In the long term — defined as 10 years — extreme weather was described as the No. 1 threat, followed by four other environmental-related risks: critical change to Earth systems; biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse; and natural resource shortages.

“We could be pushed past that irreversible climate change tipping point” over the next decade as the Earth’s systems undergo long-term changes, Klint said.
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Taipei, Taiwan — For 61-year-old atemoya farmer Tsou Yun-shing in Taiwan’s Taitung County, the last two years have been a tough time for his business.

Since China banned the import of atemoyas from Taiwan in September 2021, his revenues have been slashed in half and he has had to look for alternative markets.

“Before the ban, around 80 to 90% of my atemoyas were sold to China. But since they banned the import of Taiwanese atemoyas, I have to start selling my atemoyas through different sales channels in Taiwan, hoping to at least even the costs,” he told VOA during an interview at his sprawling orchards in Taitung county in eastern Taiwan.

In addition to redirecting his atemoyas to the domestic market, Tsou also reduced the number of atemoyas he grows and started growing other fruits that are more popular in Taiwan, such as guava.

China markets

Tsou is not alone. His experience reflect a dilemma many Taiwanese fruit farmers have faced over the past two years, as China banned imports of several Taiwanese fruits that rely heavily on the Chinese market, including pineapples, wax apples and atemoyas.

While the Taiwanese government has been able to help some farmers, with fruits such as pineapples, find alternate markets like Japan to neutralize the potential losses they face, the heavy reliance of atemoya farmers on the Chinese market makes finding a solution more difficult.

“Since there is uncertainty about whether China would let Taiwanese atemoyas enter the Chinese market or not, some farmers have shifted to growing other fruits, such as custard apples, avocados, passion fruits and guavas, to reduce their reliance on the Chinese market,” Lai Xi-yao, chairman of Chi-Gen Vegetable and Fruit Co-operative, told VOA in an interview in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung.

In his view, China’s intention to allow large amounts of specific Taiwanese agricultural products into the Chinese market is an attempt to “win over the hearts and minds” of Taiwanese farmers and acquire Taiwan’s expertise in growing certain species of fruits or fisheries.

“When [Beijing] wants Taiwanese farmers to export their products to China, they will agree to whatever requests the farmers have but once they acquire the know-how about how to grow certain species of fruits, they will start blocking the imports from Taiwan,” Lai said.

He said the agricultural trade with China is not “normal” because Chinese authorities can use any excuse to ban imports of Taiwanese agricultural products.

“It’s obvious that these bans all have political elements behind them,” he told VOA.

In a statement announcing the end of the import ban on Taiwanese groupers released last month, the Chinese Communist Party’s Taiwan Affairs Office, which handles cross-strait relations, said as long as both sides of the Taiwan Strait adhere to the 1992 Consensus, a compromise agreement that Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang interprets as the two sides agreeing there’s one China, with each free to define what that is, and oppose Taiwan independence, the two sides are one family and “family matters can be discussed and resolved,” referring to import bans on several Taiwanese agricultural products.

Apart from leveraging certain Taiwanese agricultural products’ reliance on the Chinese market to impose pressure on the Taiwanese government, China has unleashed a series of coercive economic measures to influence Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections on January 13. During an interview with Taiwanese media Liberty Times on January 5, Taiwanese Premier Chen Chien-jen said China’s decision to suspend tariff reduction on 12 Taiwanese petrochemical products is of political rather than economic nature.

Recent import actions

In recent weeks, China has partially lifted import bans on groupers, a fish that used to rely heavily on export to the Chinese market, and atemoyas from Taiwan, while suspending tariff reductions on 12 Taiwanese petrochemical products. In a statement released last month, the Communist Party’s Taiwan Affairs office accused Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party or DPP of violating articles in the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement between Taipei and Beijing and install obstacles to viciously disrupt cross-strait economic exchange and cooperation.

Taiwanese authorities have criticized Beijing for politicizing trade issues ahead of the election and promised to work with affected industries to minimize the impact. On Tuesday evening, China’s commerce ministry signaled that it’s considering to further suspend tariff concessions on several products from Taiwan, including agriculture, fishery, machinery, auto parts and textiles, according to a statement posted on its website. In response, Taiwan’s Office of Trade Negotiations urged Beijing to “immediately stop using economic coercion to try to interfere in Taiwan’s election.”

To adapt to the challenges posed by China, Taiwanese authorities try to help farmers reduce their reliance on the Chinese market and redirect their products to alternative markets like Japan and South Korea.

According to data from Taiwan’s Ministry of Agriculture, China accounted for 12.9% of Taiwan’s fruit exports in 2022, down from 22.9% in 2018. Apart from looking for alternative markets, Tsou in Taitung said the government also provided different types of subsidies to help cherimoya farmers like him survive the two-year ban.

“Taiwanese authorities provided different kinds of subsidies and helped promote cherimoyas to large grocery chains in Taiwan,” he told VOA. “While farmers were able to survive the last two years without exporting their fruits, they couldn’t make any profit.”

Despite the subsidies and efforts to help redirect agricultural products to alternative markets, some analysts say the Taiwanese authorities’ response to the challenges may not have been timely enough.

“After Beijing banned imports of Taiwanese pineapples, I urged authorities to consider preparing responses for a potential Chinese ban on atemoyas,” Chiao Chun, an expert on cross-strait agricultural trade and author of the book “Fruit Politics,” told VOA in an interview in Kaohsiung.

“However, Taiwanese authorities’ response to China’s atemoya ban was still too slow, which leaves atemoya farmers in a tough situation even today,” Chiao added.

Domestic policies

China’s targeted sanctions on Taiwanese agricultural products that rely heavily on the Chinese market have also affected domestic politics in Taiwan.

Some farmers in Taitung told VOA that they will vote for the China-friendly opposition party Kuomintang (KMT) in the upcoming election because they believe this is the only way to guarantee China will end import bans on all atemoyas from Taiwan.

But Tsou holds a different view from most of his peers.

“If there is regime change after the election on Saturday, the outcome will make a difference to the situation that most atemoya farmers face,” he told VOA. “Farmers can start exporting to China if the KMT wins the election on Saturday.”

However, he also thinks Taiwanese farmers shouldn’t rely on anyone for their livelihood, since reliance will make them more vulnerable to coercive economic measures like import bans on certain products.

“As long as farmers take good care of the quality and establish different sales channels, they don’t necessarily need to rely on export to sustain their businesses,” Tsou said. “I think democracy is still more important.”
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ROME — As Italy assumes the rotating presidency of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said this week that a focus on developing strategic partnerships with Africa, rather than providing aid, will be key during its one-year tenure.

Developing local economies and raising living standards in Africa, she said, could dissuade prospective migrants from seeking refuge in Europe.

Meloni told a news conference that the Mattei Plan — named after Enrico Mattei, founder of the state-controlled oil and gas giant Eni — includes specific projects beyond energy deals. Details will be unveiled later this month at a Rome conference, she said.

Professor Nicholas Westcott of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London welcomed the announcement.

It’s an “encouraging development, but it needs to be delivered on,” he told VOA, saying that previously “there has been more talk than delivery along these lines.”

Westcott, who was formerly the European Union’s managing director for Africa, said the EU had put up “a significant sum of money to encourage investment, but it hasn’t had much impact yet.”

He said the EU needs to “up its game in terms of effective investment in Africa.”

“Now is a good time to do it. Africa is starved of investments,” Westcott said. “The demands for investment allow for the economies to adapt to climate change, which is already having quite a dramatic impact in Africa.”

Most of the nearly 261,000 migrants who crossed the Mediterranean Sea from northern Africa in 2023 entered Europe through Italy, according to the United Nations. Italy’s stringent immigration laws and restrictions on sea rescue charities have not stemmed the tide.

Meloni’s government says it is open to legal immigration to help plug labor gaps in Italy, which has one of the world’s oldest and shrinking populations.

Westcott said the plan’s underlying motive of reducing illegal migration from Africa is “politically realistic” in Europe.

“The far right … is using this anti-immigrant card to increase their vote in Europe, and without constructive policies to tackle the problem, there will be more destructive policies introduced,” he said.

Maddalena Procopio, an Africa analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations, told VOA that Italy wants “to build cooperation and serious strategic relationships in Africa as equals not predators.” She cited the energy cooperation Africa has provided Italy that helped it move away from Russian gas.

Procopio said that while migration concerns play a big role for Italy and the EU, “the Mattai Plan is more economically oriented.”

“Italy and Europe in general are talking a lot about a shift from aid, from development cooperation to economic partnership,” she said. “But it’s unlikely that we will see a real shift, reduction of aid, so it’s more likely to be both.

“The fact that the focus is an economic partnership and not only development cooperation means a good and pragmatic change of approach. Africa has massive needs in terms of financing: infrastructure, energy access, health, education.”

Procopio said EU and Western public finance alone will not be sufficient to address such development needs, so private funds will be necessary.
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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA — Recent hostilities in the Red Sea have thrown global shippers of vital goods for a loop — but it is hardly the only issue that big carriers are facing as 2024 kicks off. 

Giants like Maersk say the industry, which handles 90% of global trade, faces the possibility of significant disruptions, from ongoing wars to droughts affecting key routes such as the Panama Canal. Complex vessel schedules are likely to be knocked out of sync for giant container ships, fuel tankers and other commodity haulers throughout the year. 

That will increase delays and raise costs for retailers such as Walmart, IKEA and Amazon, as well as food makers such as Nestle and grocers including Lidl. 

“This is seemingly the new normal — these waves of chaos that seem to rise and fall. Before you get back to some level of normalcy another event happens that sort of throws things out of whack,” said Jay Foreman, CEO of Florida-based Basic Fun, who sends toys from factories in China to Europe and the United States. 

Added 2024 risks include a possible expansion of Red Sea attacks to the Arabian Gulf, which could affect oil shipments, and further souring of China-Taiwan relations that could also affect important trade lanes, said Peter Sand, chief analyst at freight data provider Xeneta. Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to affect the grains trade since Moscow invaded its neighbor in 2022. 

Maersk on Friday joined other major ocean carriers in rerouting ships away from the Red Sea to avoid missile and drone attacks in an area that leads to the vital Asia-Europe Suez Canal shortcut. That route handles more than 10% of total ocean shipments and nearly one-third of the world’s container trade. 

While tankers carrying oil and fuel supplies for Europe continue to pass through the Suez Canal, most container ships are rerouting goods around Africa’s southern tip as Yemeni Houthis attack vessels in the Red Sea in a show of support for Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which is fighting Israel in Gaza. 

The increased costs could translate into higher prices for consumers, although Goldman Sachs said Friday that the inflation shock should not be as bad as the 2020-22 pandemic chaos. 

“The first quarter is going to be a little crazy for everybody’s books” when it comes to costs, said Alan Baer, CEO of OL USA, which handles freight shipments for clients. 

Crossings through the Panama Canal, a Suez Canal alternative, are down 33% due to lower water levels, according to supply chain software provider project44. Such restrictions helped send dry bulk shipping costs for commodities such as wheat, soybeans, iron ore, coal and fertilizer sharply higher in late 2023. 

Increasingly frequent severe weather events are having a more immediate effect than political tensions. Brazil suffered a double-whammy of a historic drought on the Amazon and excessive rains in the north of the country that contributed to a longer-than-usual ship queue at the port of Paranagua in late 2023, just months ahead of peak soybean shipping season. 

“You can always say, ‘It’s a one-off event,’ but if the one-off events happen every other month, they’re not anymore one-off events,” said John Kartsonas, managing partner at Breakwave Advisors, the commodity trading advisor for the Breakwave Dry Bulk Shipping ETF. 
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NEW YORK — United Nations economists are forecasting low growth globally this year, as recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic remains uneven internationally and wild cards such as climate shocks and geopolitical tensions could undermine progress.

The U.N.’s flagship World Economic Situation and Prospects 2024 report launched on Thursday projects global economic growth will slow from 2023’s estimated 2.7% to 2.4% this year, below the pre-pandemic growth rate of 3%.

“The better-than-expected performance for 2023 is chiefly driven by several large economies — notably the United States, but also Brazil, India and Mexico,” said Shantanu Mukherjee, director of the Economic Analysis and Policy Division at the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

But, he said, that growth could slow this year, especially in the United States, because of high interest rates, reduced consumer spending and weaker labor markets.

“We are not out of the danger zone in terms of the general environment being fairly unsettled,” Mukherjee told reporters.

Europe also is not without economic challenges as it copes with high inflation and interest rates and the effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The 27-nation bloc is expected to see 1.2% gross domestic product growth this year.

“That’s a very, very modest growth rate for the region, even to catch up some of the lost output,” said Hamid Rashid, chief of the Global Economic Monitoring Branch at the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs. “So we are seeing direct impact from the war.”

Lingering effects of COVID-19

Developing countries are still struggling to overcome COVID-19 setbacks while coping with high interest rates and rising debt. The economists forecast that in about a quarter of all developing countries, annual inflation is projected to exceed 10% this year.

Worldwide, inflation was forecast to be an average of 3.9% this year, down from 5.7% in 2023.

“That is a rapid change,” says Mukherjee. “Back in 2022, we were seeing 8.1%.”

In China, the U.N. report found, recovery from the pandemic was slower than expected, but the country turned a corner during the second half of 2023, with the growth rate reaching an estimated 5.3% for the year, up from 3% in 2022.

“We are more optimistic about China’s growth outlook in the near-term,” Rashid said. “The outlook is stable.”

Africa is projected to have modest economic growth, creeping up from an estimated 3.3% in 2023 to 3.5% in 2024. The economists say this will be driven mainly by countries in east and southern Africa.

East Asia is projected to see growth slow from 4.9% in 2023 to 4.6% in 2024, mainly because of a slowdown in global demand for exports.

The outlook in Latin America and the Caribbean is deteriorating.

An important factor contributing to global economic health is trade. While it didn’t contract last year, it had very little growth.

“Without global trade picking up, which has been an engine of growth for many developing countries, we will not see the return of growth that we had before the pandemic,” Rashid said.

While the economic outlook is not all gloom and doom, the experts say they will be watching several indicators to gauge economic prospects this year. They include challenges arising from monetary tightening, weakened global trade and investment, and rising debt vulnerabilities.

They say these can be compounded by heightened geopolitical risks and rapidly worsening impacts of climate change.
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