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VOA’s Zubair Dar brings us the story of ‘Pencil Village’ where a factory provides two-thirds of the wood needed to make pencils in India, which exports the old-school writing implement to scores of countries. This report is narrated by Aisha Khalid.
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U.S. government officials warn that many African countries will continue to face shortages and high food prices as long as Russia continues to wage war against Ukraine, from which Africa gets much of its wheat and cooking oil.

Speaking to journalists online Tuesday, the U.S. representative to U.N. agencies in Rome, Cindy McCain, said Ukraine is the world’s breadbasket, and the attack on its land and people is raising hunger around the globe.

“The Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that as many as 13 million more people worldwide will be pushed into food insecurity as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The truth of the matter is Putin’s war forces us to take from the hungry to feed the starving. As long as Russia continues its brutal campaign, innocent people are going to pay the price,” she said.

Ukraine annually exports 40% of its wheat and corn to Africa. The World Food Program feeds 138 million people in 80 countries, including Ethiopia and Nigeria, with the grain it gets from the European country.

With Ukrainian supplies cut off, food prices are on the rise across Africa. Meanwhile, increasing energy costs have driven up prices for fertilizers such as phosphate used in food production.

Jim Barnhart, assistant to the administrator for USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, says the high cost of living will make life difficult for more families in Africa.

“Reduced food supplies and subsequent price increases in these commodities make it harder for farmers in Zambia to access inputs they need to plant their crops, for families in Malawi to buy nutritious food for their children. So, if that is not mitigated, these price increases could result in significant increases in global poverty, hunger and malnutrition, particularly in regions like sub-Saharan Africa,” he said.

The International Committee for the Red Cross says more than 346 million Africans face a food security crisis, making families skip meals every day.

The ICRC says it will ramp up its operations in 10 countries to combat the food shortages.

The head of ICRC’s global operations, Dominik Stillhart, says the war in Ukraine has impacted their humanitarian work.

“The other impact, which is more indirect, is that the rise in food and fuel prices, as well as supply chains that are seriously affected by the situation in Ukraine, they have an effect on our own capacity to scale up. Lead times are going to be longer, for instance, (and) food imports, and that’s also why we are increasingly resorting to cash transfers to support people in various countries in which we are operating,” he said.

Persistent drought, poor rains in some parts of Africa and conflicts have also exacerbated Africa’s food situation.
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An announcement by the U.S. Commerce Department last week that it would investigate allegations that solar panel manufacturers in Southeast Asia are using Chinese-made parts and evading U.S. tariffs has raised alarms concerning both trade and environmental policy. 

The department announced March 28 that it would investigate claims by California-based solar panel manufacturer Auxin Solar that solar energy equipment manufacturers in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam have close business ties to companies in China that produce the raw materials and some components of solar panel assemblies. 

In 2011, the Commerce Department ruled that China was “dumping” solar panels in the U.S. market, or pricing the panels below the cost of manufacturing them. This forced U.S. firms out of the business because they could not operate at a profit while matching Chinese prices. 

In response, the Commerce Department imposed tariffs on Chinese solar panels of as much as 250% of their sales price. The result was a rapid decline in U.S. imports of Chinese solar equipment, from $2.8 billion in 2011 to less than $400 million in 2020. 

In its complaint, however, Auxin points out that as imports of solar panels from China fell by 86% over that period, imports from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam surged by 868%. The company also produced evidence suggesting that during that period, exports of raw materials and solar panel parts from China to the four named countries also surged.  

Investigation timeline 

In a statement emailed to VOA, a Commerce Department spokesperson confirmed that the investigation had been initiated, saying that “Commerce will conduct an open and transparent investigation to determine whether circumvention is occurring. This inquiry is just a first step — there has been no determination one way or the other on the merits, and no additional duties will be imposed at this time.” 

The Commerce Department said it would complete its preliminary investigation within 150 days and make a final determination within 300 days.  

So far, the response of the four affected countries to the department’s announcement has been limited. The government of Thailand announced that it had filed a formal letter of complaint with the agency. 

VOA reached out to U.S.-based representatives of the governments of Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam for comment on this story. None had replied by the time of publication. 

US solar firms divided 

Auxin’s complaint and the Commerce Department’s decision to pursue it have laid bare a major rift within the solar energy industry in the U.S. Many of Auxin’s competitors, who would seem to suffer from the same disadvantages the company describes, have come out against the Commerce Department’s actions, as have industry trade groups.  

In a joint op-ed, Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute; Heather Zichal, CEO of the American Clean Power Association; and Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said the future for solar energy in the United States would be bleak if tariffs were applied to solar panels coming from the four named countries. 

“Make no mistake — if the complainant is successful, solar energy will become as much as two to three times more expensive than it was just one year ago, setting back our efforts to achieve independence, putting hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs at risk along with the Biden administration’s renewable energy goals,” they wrote.  

“If these tariffs are applied, we expect that far less solar generation will be installed in the U.S. during the four years of the Biden administration as compared to previous administrations,” they added. 

In a statement, Auxin CEO Mamun Rashid called the warnings of the trade groups “classic fearmongering tactics” and said, “We are grateful Commerce officials recognized the need to investigate this pervasive backdoor dumping and how it continues to injure American solar producers.” 

Dilemma for Biden administration 

The solar panel case presents a dilemma for the Biden administration because it puts two of the president’s priorities in conflict: assuring a level playing field for U.S. manufacturers, and leading the country to a carbon-neutral energy future. 

The relationship between solar panel manufacturers in the United States and those in China is a complicated one. On the one hand, foreign-made solar panels made with Chinese parts are in direct competition with U.S.-made panels. However, U.S. solar firms rely on some of those same Chinese firms for raw materials and components. 

Industry officials warned that even the possibility of sanctions being placed on panels imported from the four named countries would cause the rollout of solar energy products in the U.S. to slow dramatically because of uncertainty about costs. This in turn would make it more difficult for the Biden administration to meet its climate goals. 

Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen said the Biden administration should look to other ways of supporting U.S. solar energy companies.  

“I’m disappointed that the administration is initiating this investigation, because we should be repealing existing solar tariffs, not exploring adding new tariffs,” she told The Hill newspaper March 28. “Direct assistance to American solar manufacturers would be much more meaningful to our domestic solar industry than a trade investigation or tariffs that will only increase consumer costs, threaten good-paying jobs, and set us even further back from our climate goals.” 

 
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Russia and Ukraine are two of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat. Sanctions against Russia and the war in Ukraine are driving up global wheat prices. VOA correspondent Scott Stearns reports from the Western U.S. state of Wyoming on what those higher prices mean for U.S. farmers.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken a 9.2% stake in Twitter, purchasing approximately 73.5 million shares, according to a regulatory filing Monday.

Musk’s stake in Twitter is considered a passive investment, which means Musk is a long-term investor that’s looking to minimize his buying and selling of the shares.

Yet in recent weeks Musk has raised questions about free speech on Twitter and if failing to adhere to its basic principles undermines democracy.

He has also pondered starting up a rival social media network and industry analysts are skeptical about whether the mercurial CEO would remain on the sidelines for long.

“We would expect this passive stake as just the start of broader conversations with the Twitter board/management that could ultimately lead to an active stake and a potential more aggressive ownership role of Twitter,” Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities said in a client note early Monday.

Twitter’s stock surged 25% before the opening bell Monday.

Musk told is more than 80 million followers on Twitter that he was ” giving serious thought ” to creating a rival social media platform and has clashed repeatedly with financial regulators about his use of Twitter.

Early last month, Musk asked a federal judge to nullify a subpoena from securities regulators and throw out a 2018 court agreement in which Musk had to have someone pre-approve his posts on Twitter. U.S. securities regulators said they had legal authority to subpoena Tesla and Musk about his tweets, and that Musk’s move to throw out a 2018 court agreement that his tweets be pre-approved is not valid.

Musk’s revelation about his stake in Twitter shares comes two days after Tesla Inc. posted first-quarter delivery numbers. While the company delivered 310,000 vehicles in the period, the figure was slightly below expectations.
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Armed troops in Sri Lanka blocked a Sunday opposition protest march staged in defiance of an emergency curfew to protest the island nation’s worsening economic crisis, after authorities imposed a social media blackout to contain public dissent.

The South Asian island nation is facing severe shortages of food, fuel and other essentials, along with sharp price rises and crippling power cuts, in its most painful downturn since independence from Britain in 1948.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa imposed a state of emergency on Friday, the day after a crowd attempted to storm his home in the capital Colombo, and a nationwide curfew is in effect until Monday morning.

The Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), Sri Lanka’s main opposition alliance, denounced a social media blockade imposed Sunday to quell intensifying public demonstrations, and said it was time for the government to tender its resignation.

Armed troops moved to stop a protest by more than 100 opposition lawmakers and supporters attempting to march to the capital’s Independence Square from the home of opposition leader Sajith Premadasa.

“President Rajapaksa better realize that the tide has already turned on his autocratic rule,” SJB lawmaker Harsha de Silva told AFP.

Fellow SJB legislator Eran Wickramaratne said the spiraling situation raised the prospects of martial law.

“We can’t allow a military takeover,” he said. “They should know we are still a democracy.”

Anonymous activists had called for mass protests Sunday on social media before the ban order went into effect.

There was a heavy presence of troops elsewhere in the capital as the curfew was strictly enforced.

News photographers were denied access to Independence Square, a popular venue for demonstrations in Colombo.

Overnight, however, hundreds defied the curfew and staged small demonstrations in various Colombo neighborhoods and dispersed peacefully, police and residents said.

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp were among the platforms shut down Sunday on the orders of defense authorities, internet service providers told their subscribers.

Private media outlets reported that the chief of Sri Lanka’s internet regulator resigned after the order went into effect.

Demonstrations trending

Cracks in the government have emerged, with the president’s nephew Namal Rajapaksa publicly announcing he had urged the government to reconsider the partial internet blackout.

“I will never condone the blocking of social media,” said Namal, also the country’s sports minister.

“The availability of VPN, just like I’m using now, makes such bans completely useless.”

The anti-government hashtags “#GoHomeRajapaksas” and “#GotaGoHome” have been trending locally for days on Twitter and Facebook.

A social media activist was arrested Friday for allegedly posting material that could cause public unrest. He has since been bailed.

Hundreds of lawyers have volunteered to represent any anti-government protesters arrested by the authorities. Sri Lanka’s influential Bar Association has also urged the government to rescind the state of emergency.

Western diplomats in Colombo expressed concern over the use of emergency laws to stifle democratic dissent and said they were closely monitoring developments.

A critical lack of foreign currency has left Sri Lanka struggling to service its ballooning $51 billion public debt, with the pandemic torpedoing vital revenue from tourism and remittances.

The crisis has also left the import-dependent country unable to pay for sorely needed goods.

Diesel shortages have sparked outrage across Sri Lanka in recent days, causing protests at empty pumps, and electricity utilities have imposed 13-hour blackouts to conserve fuel.

Many economists also say the crisis has been exacerbated by government mismanagement, years of accumulated borrowing, and ill-advised tax cuts.

Sri Lanka is negotiating with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout.
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Sri Lanka blocked access to social media platforms Sunday after authorities imposed a weekend nationwide curfew to contain protests over a worsening economic crisis.

The South Asian nation is facing severe shortages of food, fuel and other essentials, along with sharp price rises and crippling power cuts, in its most painful downturn since independence from Britain in 1948.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa imposed a state of emergency Friday, the day after a crowd attempted to storm his home in the capital, Colombo, and a nationwide curfew is in effect until Monday morning.

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp were among the platforms shut down by internet service providers on the orders of defense authorities, the pro-government Ada Derana news channel said.

“On the request of the defense ministry, service providers advised to temporarily restrict social media platforms,” the broadcaster said, quoting Sri Lanka’s media regulator.

Anonymous activists had called for mass protests Sunday on social media before the order went into effect.

Hundreds of people defied the curfew on Saturday night and staged small demonstrations in various Colombo neighborhoods, but dispersed peacefully, police and residents said.

The anti-government hashtags “#GoHomeRajapaksas” and “#GotaGoHome” have been trending locally for days on Twitter and Facebook after severe shortages of essentials, sharp price rises and crippling power cuts.

Police said one social media activist was arrested on Friday for allegedly posting material that could cause public unrest.

Western ambassadors in Colombo have expressed concern over the use of emergency laws to stifle democratic dissent and said they were closely monitoring developments.

Armed troops have been deployed around the country to maintain order.

Foreign exchange shortage

A critical lack of foreign currency has left Sri Lanka struggling to service its ballooning $51 billion public debt, with the pandemic torpedoing vital revenue from tourism and remittances.

The crisis has also left the import-dependent country unable to pay for sorely needed goods.

Diesel shortages have sparked outrage across Sri Lanka in recent days, causing protests at empty pumps, and electricity utilities have imposed 13-hour blackouts to conserve fuel.

Many economists also say the crisis has been exacerbated by government mismanagement, years of accumulated borrowing, and ill-advised tax cuts.

Sri Lanka is in negotiations for an International Monetary Fund bailout and ratings agencies have cast doubt over the government’s ability to service its spiraling $51 billion in public debt.
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America’s employers extended a streak of robust hiring in March, adding 431,000 jobs in a sign of the economy’s resilience in the face of a still-destructive pandemic and the highest inflation in 40 years.

The Labor Department’s report Friday showed that last month’s job growth helped reduce the unemployment rate to 3.6%, the lowest level since the pandemic erupted two years ago.

Despite the inflation surge, persistent supply bottlenecks, the damaging effects of COVID-19 and now a war in Europe, employers have added at least 400,000 jobs for 11 straight months.

Inflation may be starting to weaken consumer spending, the main driver of the economy. Americans increased their spending by just 0.2% in February, down from a much larger gain in January.

Still, the job market has continued to rebound with unexpected speed from the coronavirus recession. Job openings are at a near-record level, and applications for unemployment benefits have dropped to near their lowest point since 1969.
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More than 20% of Taiwanese under the age of 40 say they lack savings and 65% report they are in debt, according to new survey findings from a Taiwanese job site, highlighting the growing generational wealth gap here.

Conducted by the job search website “yes123,” the survey further revealed that only one-third of respondents said their income exceeds their expenses, while the rest said their income either only met their monthly needs or fell below them.  

Nearly half of all debt was attributed to tuition fees, followed by debt linked to loans, credit cards and vehicle expenses, according to respondents. Some 41.8% of respondents said their debt was high enough that they felt economic pressure. 

The results highlight the long-term impact of Taiwan’s two-decade wage stagnation, said Taipei-based fair wage advocate Roy Ngerng, who also writes about Taiwan’s economy for local media.

Growth in real wages – the value of wages adjusted for inflation – slowed around 2002 as Taiwan’s manufacturing-led economy underwent major structural changes. Real wages remained roughly the same until 2019 when they finally began to recover, according to government statistics.

“For people in their 40s today, 20 years ago, they were earning higher starting pay, and managed to continue earning higher and higher pay based on annual increments if they stayed on the same job,” Ngerng told VOA.

“But then for younger workers, they started entering the workforce during a time when wages stagnated and do not have the same opportunity to see their wages grow, so there is a massive gap between those above their 40s, and those below their 40s,” he said.

Taiwan’s rising housing costs have also made it difficult for young people to climb the property ladder — a key way to accrue savings — without family help. It is not uncommon to live at home long after graduating as a means to save money as rent has also climbed in urban centers.  

Taiwanese investigative magazine Commonwealth reported last year that Taiwan is undergoing its biggest real estate boom since the 1980s, when the economy took off with advanced manufacturing.

Today, even small housing units in Taipei can command prices exceeding $1 million, depending on location within the city and certain amenities, like elevators and guards for residential buildings, while other parts of Taiwan are catching up. Surveying 70,000 transactions, the magazine found that housing prices across six cities including Taipei rose more than 30% between 2019 and 2021.  

Much of the inflated prices in housing is fueled by the long running problem of property speculation in Taiwan and very little social housing. It is also not uncommon for wealthy landlords in Taipei and elsewhere to own multiple apartments, and even leave them empty rather than face the hassle of tenants.

Last year Taiwan’s Ministry of Finance reported unoccupied houses and apartments make up nearly 12% of Taiwan’s housing stock, or 876,000 units.

Recent university graduates, by contrast, make an average of around $1,000 a month, according to another survey by yes123. The figure is not far off from the average monthly salary of about $975 for a recent graduate in 2000, according to the Labor Ministry.

“The general story over the past couple of decades has been that wage growth has been really, really flat and a lot of that also reflects that minimum wage adjustments … have also been relatively flat,” said Nick Marro, an analyst for China, Taiwan and Macau at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

At $913 a month, Taiwan’s minimum wage is considered extremely low for an advanced economy, but the government has started taking steps to address the imbalance. Last year, the government raised minimum wage 5.21%, the highest rate in 15 years, but it may take more than that to address the wage gap.

“Taiwan has just generally struggled with this culture of a really weak wage environment, and that’s one of the reasons why a lot of Taiwan youth struggle with savings and also look, to move abroad,” said Marro.

“I think a lot of the refrain over the past couple of years has been how the economy has really struggled, but in fact many economic fundamentals are better than people realize,” he also said. “But it’s the mindset, I think, which keeps businesses really, really hesitant on raising wages further.”

Marro said low inflation has kept many Taiwanese relatively complacent, but that could change if Taiwan sees U.S.-style increase in prices from rising energy costs. It could also push even more to seek opportunities abroad, adding to Taiwan’s already high level of brain drain.

The United States is undergoing its worst inflation in 40 years thanks in part to rising energy prices and fallout from the pandemic.

Prices in Taiwan are already up this year, according to the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, which reported food prices were up 5.29% in February from one year earlier, while fuel prices rose 16.88%.
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In his new budget, U.S. President Joe Biden has proposed a 20 percent minimum tax on households with a net worth of more than $100 million. The proposal highlights the debate over what the government should do about the soaring fortunes of the wealthiest Americans. VOA’s Laurel Bowman reports.
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The Democratic Republic of Congo this week became the seventh country to join the East African Community. The regional trade bloc, which includes Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda, now reaches a quarter of Africa’s population, stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic.

The 90 million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo will be able to move freely and do business in six other African countries.

The leaders of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda welcomed Congo to the East African Community in a ceremony Monday. 

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta spoke, stressing cooperation as the group’s cornerstone.

“I proudly and warmly welcome our brothers and sisters from the Democratic Republic of Congo to the East African Community. We look forward to joining hands in strengthening our community together. Working together, we have more to gain than when we are separate,” Kenyatta said.

Ezra Munyambonera, an economic researcher at the Economic Policy Research Center, says Congo’s addition to the EAC will benefit all the countries in the bloc.

“It (the DRC) has a lot of resources [and it] joining the East Africa Community adds more to microeconomic conditions and microeconomic stability of the region in terms of foreign earnings and attracting investments in the region for wider economic growth,” Munyambonera said. 

The mineral-rich nation is a member of two more regional blocs, the Southern African Development Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, or COMESA. 

Erastus Mwencha, a former secretary-general of COMESA, says the continent needs to scale up its production capabilities to benefit from integration and take advantage of its natural resources. 

“The tradable is not that much and so the region needs to develop trade with production, to really go beyond just looking at trade within but also to cater [to] the production aspect. The economies are not deep enough, we tend to produce primary products and because of that, they are not very much integrated,” Mwencha said.

The countries in the EAC bloc have not been able to fully establish a customs union, and while they are working on having a common currency by 2023, experts say that deadline likely will not be met. 

Mwencha says the DRC technology sector will provide more opportunities for entrepreneurs.   

“Whether you are looking at banking industries, fintech, because it’s a big country, which requires the banks to communicate throughout the country, or other services such as the education sector, health sector, there is a lot, in other words, of e-services,” Mwencha said.

As part of the East African Community, the DRC will enjoy lower tariffs and administrative barriers, something it hasn’t experienced for decades, despite using the ports of Mombasa, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to import most of its goods.
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An inflation gauge closely monitored by the Federal Reserve jumped 6.4% in February compared with a year ago, with sharply higher prices for food, gasoline and other necessities squeezing Americans’ finances.

The figure reported Thursday by the Commerce Department was the largest year-over-year rise since January 1982. Excluding volatile prices for food and energy, so-called core inflation increased 5.4% in February from 12 months earlier.

Robust consumer demand has combined with shortages of many goods to fuel the sharpest price jumps in four decades. Escalating the inflation pressures, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has disrupted global oil markets and accelerated prices for wheat, nickel and other key commodities.

The inflation spike took a toll on consumers, whose spending in February rose just 0.2%, down from a much larger 2.7% gain in January. Adjusted for inflation, spending actually fell 0.4% last month.

The Federal Reserve responded this month to the inflation surge by raising its benchmark short-term interest rate by a quarter-point from near zero, and it’s likely to keep raising it well into next year. Because its rate affects many consumer and business loans, the Fed’s rate hikes will make borrowing more expensive and could weaken the economy over time.

Michael Feroli of JPMorgan is among economists who now think the Fed will raise its key rate by an aggressive half-point in both May and June. The central bank hasn’t raised its benchmark rate by a half-point in two decades, a sign of how concerned it has become about the persistent surge in inflation.

On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.6% from January to February, up slightly from the previous month’s increase of 0.5%. Core prices rose 0.4%, down from a 0.5% increase in January.

Gas prices have soared in the past month in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion, which led the United Kingdom and the Biden administration to ban Russia’s oil exports. The cost of a gallon of gas shot up to a national average of $4.24 a gallon Wednesday, according to AAA. That’s up 63 cents from a month ago, when it was $3.61.

Thursday’s report follows a more widely monitored inflation gauge, the consumer price index, that was issued earlier this month. The CPI jumped to 7.9% in February from a year ago, the sharpest such increase in four decades.

Many economists still expect inflation to peak in the coming months. In part, that’s because price spikes that occurred last year, when the economy widely reopened, will begin to make the year-over-year price increases appear smaller. Yet Fed officials project that inflation, as measured by its preferred gauge, will still be a comparatively high 4.3% by the end of this year.
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The ruble is no longer rubble.

The Russian ruble by Wednesday had bounced back from the fall it took after the U.S. and European allies moved to bury the Russian economy under thousands of new sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has resorted to extreme financial measures to blunt the West’s penalties and inflate his currency.

While the West has imposed unprecedented levels of sanctions against the Russian economy, Russia’s Central Bank has jacked up interest rates to 20% and the Kremlin has imposed strict capital controls on those wishing to exchange their rubles for dollars or euros.

It’s a monetary defense Putin may not be able to sustain as long-term sanctions weigh down the Russian economy. But the ruble’s recovery could be a sign that the sanctions in their current form are not working as powerfully as Ukraine’s allies counted on when it comes to pressuring Putin to pull his troops from Ukraine. It also could be a sign that Russia’s efforts to artificially prop up its currency are working by leveraging its oil and gas sector.

The ruble was trading at roughly 85 to the U.S. dollar, roughly where it was before Russia started its invasion a month ago. The ruble had fallen as low as roughly 150 to the dollar on March 7, when news emerged that the Biden administration would ban U.S. imports of Russian oil and gas.

Speaking to Norway’s parliament on Wednesday, Ukraine’s president urged Western allies to inflict still greater financial pain on Russia.

“The only means of urging Russia to look for peace are sanctions,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video message from his besieged country. He added: “The stronger the sanctions packages are going to be, the faster we’ll bring back peace.”

Increasingly, European nations’ purchases of Russian oil and natural gas are coming under scrutiny as a loophole and lifeline for the Russian economy.

“For Russia, everything is about their energy revenues. It’s half their federal budget. It’s the thing that props up Putin’s regime and the war,” said Tania Babina, an economist at Columbia University who was born in Ukraine.

Babina is currently working with a group of 200 Ukrainian economists to more accurately document how effective the West’s sanctions are in stymying Putin’s war-making capabilities.

The ruble has also risen amid reports that the Kremlin has been more open to cease-fire talks with Ukraine. U.S. and Western officials have expressed skepticism about Russia’s announcement that it would dial back operations.

President Joe Biden promoted the success of the sanctions — some of the toughest ever imposed on a nation — while he was in Poland last week. “The ruble almost is immediately reduced to rubble,” Biden said.

Sanctions on Russian financial institutions and companies, on trade and on Putin’s power brokers were crushing the country’s economic growth and prompting hundreds of international companies to stop doing business there, Biden noted.

Russian efforts to counter those sanctions by propping up the ruble can only go so far.

Russia’s Central Bank cannot keep raising interest rates because doing so will eventually choke off credit to businesses and borrowers. At some point, individuals and businesses will develop ways to go around Russia’s capital controls by moving money in smaller amounts. As the penalties depress the Russian economy, economists say that will eventually weigh down the ruble. Without these efforts, Russia’s currency would almost certainly be weaker.

But Russia’s oil and gas exports have continued to Europe as well as to China and India. Those exports have acted as an economic floor for the Russian economy, which is dominated by the energy sector. In the European Union, a dependence on Russian gas for electricity and heating has made it significantly more difficult to turn off the spigot, which the Biden administration did when it banned the relatively small amount of petroleum that the U.S. imports from Russia.

“The U.S. has already banned imports of Russian oil and natural gas, and the United Kingdom will phase them out by the end of this year. However, these decisions will not have a meaningful impact unless and until the EU follows suit,” wrote Benjamin Hilgenstock and Elina Ribakova, economists with the Institute of International Finance, in a report released Wednesday.

Hilgenstock and Ribakova estimate that if the EU, Britain and the U.S. were to ban Russian oil and gas, the Russian economy could contract more than 20% this year. That’s compared with projections for up to a 15% contraction, as sanctions stand now.

Knowing this, Putin has greatly leveraged Europe’s dependence on its energy exports to its advantage. Putin has called for Russia’s Central Bank to force foreign gas importers to purchase rubles and use them to pay state-owned gas supplier Gazprom. It’s unclear whether Putin can make good on his threat.

The White House and economists have argued that the impact of sanctions takes time, weeks or months for full effect as industries shut down due to a lack of materials or capital or both. But the administration’s critics say the ruble’s recovery shows the White House needs to do more.

“The ruble’s rebound would seem to indicate that U.S. sanctions haven’t effectively crippled Russia’s economy, which is the price Putin should have to pay for his war,” said Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa.

“To give Ukraine a fighting chance, the U.S. must sever Putin’s revenue stream by cutting off Russian oil and gas sales globally,” Toomey said in an email to The Associated Press.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, said Wednesday that lawmakers are considering ways to expand the sanctions Biden recently imposed on members of the Russian parliament “and probably widen that to other political players.” Brown, D-Ohio, said lawmakers also are weighing more penalties against banks.

Western leaders, under Biden’s encouragement, embraced sanctions as their toughest weapon to try to compel Russia to reverse its invasion of Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO and not protected under that bloc’s mutual defense policy.

Some of the allies now acknowledge their governments may need to redouble financial punishment against Russia.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Wednesday that the Group of Seven major industrial nations should “intensify sanctions with a rolling program until every single one of (Putin’s) troops is out of Ukraine.”

But that’s a tougher ask for other European countries such as Germany, which depend on Russia for vital natural gas and oil. The EU overall gets 10% of its oil from Russia and more than one-third of its natural gas.

Many of those countries have pledged to wean themselves off that dependence — but not immediately.

If European nations did move more quickly off Russian petroleum, wrote analyst Charles Lichfield of the Atlantic Council, “a more comprehensive embargo from Europe would threaten Russia’s current account surplus — suddenly making it more difficult to pay public-sector salaries and wage war.”

He noted that “such an outcome may be beyond the reach of Western consensus.”
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Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine has not only created one of the world’s most tragic humanitarian crises but resulted in economic devastation that will reverberate far beyond Ukraine’s borders.
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For Mumbai resident Shailesh Kambli a childhood dream is about to translate into reality. The 40-year-old is the third generation of his family living in a cramped, 15-square meter room along with his parents, brother and sister-in-law.

These tenements are housed in dilapidated buildings that stretch across about 37 hectares in the heart of India’s financial capital, where real estate is among the most expensive in the world.

All around the BDD Chawls, as they are called, prime commercial and residential buildings have mushroomed in recent decades as India’s financial capital, home to more than 20 million people, developed at a frenetic pace.

“Whenever I went out, I wanted to own a house, however tiny, in one these buildings,” Kambli recalls. “I even told my uncle that one day I will live in such a place.”

Now that aspiration is within his grasp.

Under a massive $2 billion redevelopment project, the 16,000 dingy settlements built over four floors will be pulled down to make way for high rise buildings in which the occupants will swap their living quarters for a 46-square meter apartment.

It is part of ambitious plans that space-starved Mumbai has long pursued with limited success — clearing up prime land on which old structures, shanties and slums sit to replace them with tall buildings that besides residential units, include office blocks and shopping malls.

Some urban planners however have raised concerns that the project will add enormous pressure in an already crowded city that is short on infrastructure.

The BDD Chawls, where the rooms built by the British a century ago for migrant cotton mill workers stretch on both sides of a corridor, are in urgent need of a revamp.

Inside most homes, a curtain separates the counter at one end that serves as a kitchen from the rest of the space that doubles as a bedroom and a living room. Televisions are mounted over the bed or in a corner. Two bathrooms serve the 20 rooms in each block. The occupants pay a meager rent to the government.

The elderly often spend their day in the corridor between the rooms where clothes hang for drying, or in a courtyard outside as they chat or look after small children, while the young go out to work.

These days, residents sometimes stop by at a sample flat that is showcased opposite one of the blocks to take a peek into what the future may hold.

“I don’t know when my turn will come. It may still take years. But it will be great to have a modern flat,” said 55-year-old Bhagwan Sawant as he proudly points to the neat kitchen, the two bedrooms and two attached toilets.

The new complexes will also have a hospital, hostels, schools, and gyms. “The work has started on the first building and it will be ready in three years,” said Prashant Dhatrak, the executive engineer of the project. “But the entire development will take seven years.”

The redevelopment project took more than two decades to get off the ground after it was first proposed.

However, some urban planners point out that Central Mumbai, where the project is coming up, is already congested with high rise buildings and question how it will bear the additional pressure of more such complexes. They say that in a city with the highest population density in the country, too much of the land is often handed over to developers for residential and commercial complexes instead of making public parks.

“Cities cannot be transformed in this way. Redevelopment is necessary but rebuilding has to be done in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner,” said Sulakshana Mahajan, who as a member of the Mumbai Transformation Support Unit, a state government think-tank set up in 2005, was involved in initial proposals for the redevelopment of the tenements. The think tank was shut down in 2019.

“Our initial idea was not to increase density in the area and to restrict the development for existing residents. But under the new plan, there are too many buildings being constructed,” said Mahajan. “Open spaces available per person will be drastically shrunk and the distance between buildings is too little. It will also create a huge strain on services such as water supply, sanitation and transportation.”

In an island city with little space to grow except vertically, the search for land has intensified in the last two decades. Authorities have also proposed clearing out Asia’s biggest slum, Dharavi, that sits on two square kilometers of prime space to replace it with skyscrapers and shopping malls, but the plan has made little headway so far.

In the BDD Chawls, however the larger question of sustainability is not on the minds of those who have long lived with shared toilets, but only a sense of anticipation. At the same time, there is a creeping sense that a way of life that revolved around the community will end when they eventually move out.

“Here, I never have to worry about my mother. All of us work, but we know that someone will look after her if she is unwell,” said Kambli. “But when we shut the door in the new flat, no one will know what is happening inside.”

“You just give one shout here and everyone gathers,” laughs Ranjana Gurav. “When there are marriages or celebrations or a problem, we are all there to help each other.”
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Australia’s 11-year-old carbon credit scheme aims to reward farmers, landholders and other businesses to store carbon in trees, the soil or to use different methods to cut emissions.

For every ton of greenhouse gases stored or prevented, projects registered under Australia’s official $3.4 billion Emissions Reduction Fund receive a carbon credit. The credit is essentially a certificate or permit allowing the holder to emit a ton of greenhouse gas.

Most credits have been bought by the government in Canberra, while a growing number are privately traded by companies wanting to offset their own emissions.

However, new research has uncovered alleged widespread inconsistencies in the system.

The study was undertaken by Australian National University law professor Andrew Macintosh, who was involved in the development of the initial scheme.

He told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that most of the credits do not represent a real or extra carbon abatement.

“What we have got happening at the moment is a collection of things across a range of methods; issuing credits to not clear forests that were never going to be cleared, to issue credits for growing trees that simply are not there, or issuing credits for growing trees that are already there, or in the case of that landfill gas, giving people credits for capturing and combusting methane in circumstances where it would have been done anyway because it is commercially viable to do it,” he said.

Macintosh has called for the entire program to be scrapped and for the process to start again from scratch.

In response, Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator, which runs the initiative, said it would assess the research.

It has, however, insisted the projects it manages are carefully monitored. The regulator rejected assertions in the study that between 70 to 80% of the carbon credits issued were essentially worthless.

Australia’s center-right government pledged last year to deliver net zero emissions by 2050 “in a practical, responsible way…while preserving Australian jobs and generating new opportunities for industries.”

Campaigners, however, have argued that the government’s strong support for the fossil fuel industries is environmentally irresponsible.

Australia has high rates of per capita emissions in large part because of its reliance on coal for much of its electricity generation.
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Last month, not quite two years after the COVID-19 pandemic sent the U.S. and world economies into their steepest downturn in decades, Chris and Amy Hillyard renewed the lease on their downtown Oakland coffee spot, Farley’s East.

The location had notched record sales in February 2020 and then, like all other “non-essential” local businesses, had to shut the following month as authorities moved to curb the spread of the new and deadly infection.

Two years on, most of the nearby office workers who used to pop in for lunch and lattes are still doing their jobs from home, and the cafe still doesn’t bring in enough money to cover monthly expenses, Chris Hillyard said. 

That’s despite their landlord agreeing to a slightly lower rent for the new five-year term, he said. But Hillyard is undeterred.

“Two bad years isn’t going to kill us off,” he said. “We’ll get through it… We are betting on that happening.”

On the face of it, it’s a good bet. COVID cases have dropped, schools have loosened rules, and more local businesses are bringing workers back to their offices. Last quarter, the vacancy rate for U.S. office space fell for the first time since mid-2019, figures from CBRE Econometric Advisors show.

There’s still a long way to go. CBRE economists don’t expect the vacancy rate to ease to its 30-year average of 15% until 2026.

A back-to-work barometer measuring keycard swipes and other building access data from security firm Kastle Systems registered just 40% of pre-pandemic levels across 10 major cities this week; the San Francisco metro area registered around 30%.

“This is about to jump considerably,” said Phil Ryan, director of U.S. Office Research at JLL, citing announcements from large tech and financial tenants to have employees back in the office at least half time beginning in late March. “Over the short-term, foot traffic is likely to rise.”

High inflation, scarce labor

Still, Hillyard’s optimism is challenged by inflation that’s already the highest in 40 years and could rise even more.

Consumer prices were up 7.9% in February year over year, and look set to post an even bigger gain this month as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drives up the price of gas, wheat and other commodities.

The Hillyards are feeling the pinch. Each week brings a new notice from one supplier or another: a March 1 price hike from the bakery that supplies its pastries, a half-gallon of milk now $2.68 instead of $2.25, a 25% increase in the price of coffee beans.

To compensate, Farley’s raised its own prices last month for the first time since the start of the pandemic, about 10% for most items. And though customers seemed to take it in stride, it’s not something Hillyard says he will be able to soon repeat.

“Prices can’t keep going up or the whole system will go down,” Hillyard said.

Meanwhile, he said he can’t hire enough workers, despite offering higher pay. The Oakland-area workforce – the pool of those working or in the market for a job – has been recovering but was about 33,000 people short of its prepandemic level in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a deficit of about 2.3% from February 2020, 2 percentage points greater than the national average.

With only five employees on shifts that really need six, “it’s hard on the staff because they are asked to do more,” he said.

Nonetheless, the Hillyards are hopeful. One reason is the success of their second, smaller operation in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, where sales have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels thanks to plenty of foot traffic from work-from-homers and brisk sales of a new line of merchandise including T-shirts, totes and coffee mugs.

A second reason is the long-planned opening of two airport locations, one in San Francisco, where international travel is still sluggish, and a second one starting last month at Oakland airport, where Southwest Airline’s domestic business is burgeoning.

Yes, local gas prices jumped about a dollar on the gallon in the weeks after Russia’s invasion, and Hillyard says he’s probably in for fuel surcharges ahead as delivery trucks try to recoup losses.

But after two rough years, “I just can’t worry about something so specific,” he said.

“We’re just looking to move forward and sell more coffee.”
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