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San
José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, July 22, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 143
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 Casa
Presidencial
photo
Fire fighters
and friends celebrate the inauguration of a new stationin the canton of La Cruz. The event took place Tuesday. The fire fighters there in northwest Costa Rica also protect the Parque Nacional Santa Rosa and lands of the Área de Conservación de Guanacaste. Chinese stores targeted by inspectors By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Not only western expats have problems with their special foods and medicines passing through Costa Rican customs. A multi-agency force raided Chinese food stores Monday and Tuesday in San José. Two outlets were closed and many products were confiscated. The Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Comercio said it participated with Tributación Directa, Policía de Control Fiscal, Fuerza Pública, and the Policía Municipal, the Ministerio de Salud and immigration agents. They were seeking food items and medicines that had not been approved by the health ministry. They also were checking receipts and licensing. The ministry also said that products were found without labels and there were health violations. The two store that were closed also had their inventories confiscated because conditions there were considered unfit for the sale of items for human consumption, said the ministry. Costa Rican law also requires labels to be affixed in Spanish even if the majority of the customers speak another language. Thee sweep is expected to last the rest of the week.  Ministerio de
Obras Pública y Transportes
photo
The Consejo Técnico de Aviación Civil said that it has
completedimprovements of the runway surface at Daniel Oduber airport and that additional concrete work fixed sections of the ramp where there has been collapses. Additional work is planned. Our reader's opinion
Value-added tax seen as most fairDear A.M. Costa Rica: Personally I feel the value-added tax is one of the most fair taxes provided it is on everything. It is better than personal income tax in that you only can spend what you have, no loopholes. Regardless how you got your income, either by employment, or investment or by illegal activities, we all need food clothing and shelter, regardless who we are, and you can only pay with what money you have. The wealthier will buy more expensive items, and the poor will buy less expensive items. The people visiting will purchase items, food and lodging and contribute, too. They are using resources while they are here, so why should they not contribute. If you feel you want to avoid taxes because you don’t feel you need to pay your fair share, then buy cheaper items and less of them. That way you will be paying less tax. People could save their money and not have to worry about taxes on their investments. This may encourage the strength of the currency as it would give the banks more money for loans. This would help in the loans to businesses as the banks would have more money to work with. If loans are cheaper, then more people would borrow and improve their living through education and home improvements. Keep it simple and fair. Governments always seem to complicate things. Then it makes the ordinary people feel that they are getting shafted or are missing out. Patti Fraser
Baseball first:
Orioles sign Chinese
player
Tamarindo By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services U.S. professional baseball's Baltimore Orioles organization has signed Chinese infielder Xu Guiyuan, 19, to a professional contract, the first such signing since Major League Baseball opened developmental centers on the Chinese mainland in 2009. The international free agent deal for Xu, known in major league baseball circles as Itchy, covers 2016 and places him in the Orioles' minor league developmental organization. Orioles Executive Vice President Dan Duquette is quoted by MLB.com as saying the 1.8-meter, 85-kilo (5-foot-11-inch, 187-pound) Xu has been working hard at the developmental center, "and we hope he'll be the first of many future MLB players from China." Duquette went on to praise Xu's athletic prowess, saying he has very good left-handed batting power, which he believes will be effective at Baltimore's Camden Yards ballpark. The park's right-field wall is just 97 meters (318 feet) from home plate. Xu won most valuable player honors in the China National Youth Baseball League in 2012 and 2014. He also was an MLB Taiwan Elite Camp All-Star in 2013 and 2014. He won China's National Youth Baseball League home run derby in 2012. MLB.com said Xu inherited the nickname Itchy after identifying Japanese baseball legend Ichiro Suzuki as his baseball idol. Experts cite China's rich baseball history in the first half of the 20th century. Chinese teams traveling to the United States to compete. U.S. All-Star teams that included Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig reciprocated, playing exhibition games on the mainland in the 1930s. Water main breached by man with a rock in Guácimo By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Fuerza Pública officers said they detained a man who bashed a water main with a rock in Río Jiménez de Guácimo. The 22-year-old man was able to put a hole in the main, which is operated by the Instituto Nacional de Acueductos y Alcantarillados. The break resulted in a large spray of water that attracted attention and led to the arrest, officers said.
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, July 21, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 143 | |
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| Green season hotel occupancy rates seen suggesting a new
emphasis |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The green season is a rough road for many hotel operators. The Cámara Costarricense de Hoteles reported that the average occupancy in May was 51.7 percent, and similar figures were anticipated for the following months. The occupancy was nearly 5 percentage points higher than the same month a year earlier, according to the chamber. The chamber staff makes monthly surveys to assess the state of the industry. The results, which are available HERE, are broken down by the quality ratings of the hotels, from two to five stars, and the location. According to the survey, the average room rate was $113.80 a night. The rainy season that promoters now call the green season |
always
has been a stressful time for hotel operators. During the
December
to
March high season, occupancy was perhaps 40 percentage points higher. Gustavo Araya, president of the chamber, said in an editorial posted online that this gap is a good reason for more of an emphasis on the convention and meeting business. He cited data from the International Convention and Congress Association that said Costa Rica could have hosted 367 meetings, congresses and conventions of groups between 50 and 500. He said this would have meant 90,000 more visitors who would spend $130 million between May and October. Araya noted that the governmentt plans to build a convention center in Heredia and that private enterprise must be committed to the concept too, in the same way that Uruguay, Spain, Argentina and Perú have done. Up until now, he said, Costa Rica has not even gotten a crumb of the convention business. |
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Museum
brings Guanacaste to city
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff If expats cannot go to Guanacaste for the Anexión del Partido de Nicoya holiday, the Museo Nacional is bringing Guanacaste to San José. Or at least the Guanacaste culture. The museum plans a Festival Puro Guanacaste Sunday with a presentation by the Ballet Folclórico Nacional and the group Folclórico La Trinidad. Typical foods will be on sale, and the event is free for Costa Ricans and residents. There also will be items on sale by artisans from Guanacaste, said the museum. The province is Costa Rica's Wild West, so there are a lot of traditions unique to the region. The Banda de Conciertos de San José will be there playing music composed by Guanacaste residents, the museum added. The festival starts at 9 a.m. The group Folclórico La Trinidad from the school of the same name in Rosario de Desamparados takes the floor at 10 a.m. followed by the Banda de Conciertos at 11. The 35 members of the Ballet Folclórico Nacional perform at 12:30 p.m. |
 Ministerio de
Cultura y Juventud photo
A pair of dancers of the
Ballet Folclórico Nacional |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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be
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, July 22, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 143 | |||||
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| Genetic analyses confirm early arrival of Australasia settlers |
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By the Harvard Medical School news staff
Native Americans living in the Amazon bear an unexpected genetic connection to native people in Australasia, suggesting a previously unknown wave of migration to the Americas thousands of years ago, a new study has found. “It’s incredibly surprising,” said David Reich, Harvard Medical School professor of genetics and senior author of the study. “There’s a strong working model in archaeology and genetics, of which I have been a proponent, that most Native Americans today extend from a single pulse of expansion south of the ice sheets, and that’s wrong. We missed something very important in the original data.” Previous research had shown that Native Americans from the Arctic to the southern tip of South America can trace their ancestry to a single founding population called the First Americans, who came across the Bering land bridge about 15,000 years ago. In 2012, Reich and colleagues enriched this history by showing that certain native groups in northern Canada inherited DNA from at least two subsequent waves of migration. The new study, published in Nature, indicates that there’s more to the story. Pontus Skoglund, first author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher in the Reich lab, was studying genetic data gathered as part of the 2012 study when he noticed a strange similarity between one or two Native American groups in Brazil and indigenous groups in Australia, New Guinea and the Andaman Islands. “That was an unexpected and somewhat confusing result,” said Reich. “We spent a really long time trying to make this result go away and it just got stronger.” Skoglund and colleagues from Harvard Medical School and several universities in Brazil analyzed publicly available genetic information from 21 Native American populations from Central and South America. They also collected and analyzed DNA from nine additional populations in Brazil to make sure the link they saw hadn’t been an artifact of how the first set of genomes had been collected. The team then compared those genomes to the genomes of people from about 200 non-American populations. The link persisted. The Tupí-speaking Suruí and Karitiana and the Ge-speaking Xavante of the Amazon had a genetic ancestor more closely related to native Australasians than to any other present-day population. This ancestor doesn’t appear to have left measurable traces in other Native American groups in South, Central or North America. The genetic markers from this ancestor don’t match any population known to have contributed ancestry to Native Americans, and the geographic pattern can’t be explained by post-Columbian European, African or Polynesian mixture with Native Americans, the authors said. They believe the ancestry is much older, perhaps as old as the First Americans. In the ensuing millennia, the ancestral group has disappeared. |
 Harvard Medical School photo
Xavante midwife“We’ve done a lot of sampling
in East Asia and nobody looks like this,” said Skoglund.
“It’s an unknown group that doesn’t exist anymore.”
The team named the mysterious ancestor Population Y, after the Tupí word for ancestor, Ypykuéra. Reich, Skoglund and colleagues propose that Population Y and First Americans came down from the ice sheets to become the two founding populations of the Americas. “We don’t know the order, the time separation or the geographical patterns,” said Skoglund. Researchers do know that the DNA of First Americans looked similar to that of Native Americans today. Population Y is more of a mystery. “About 2 percent of the ancestry of Amazonians today comes from this Australasian lineage that’s not present in the same way elsewhere in the Americas,” said Reich. However, that doesn’t establish how much of their ancestry comes from Population Y. If Population Y were 100 percent Australasian, that would indeed mean they contributed 2 percent of the DNA of today’s Amazonians. But if Population Y mixed with other groups such as the First Americans before they reached the Americas, the amount of DNA they contributed to today’s Amazonians could be much higher, up to 85 percent. To answer that question, researchers would need to sample DNA from the remains of a person who belonged to Population Y. Such DNA hasn’t been obtained yet. One place to look might be in the skeletons of early Native Americans whose skulls some researchers say have Australasian features. The majority of these skeletons were found in Brazil. Reich and Skoglund think that some of the most interesting open questions about Native American population history are about the relationships among groups after the initial migrations. “We have a broad view of the deep origins of Native American ancestry, but within that diversity we know very little about the history of how those populations relate to each other,” said Reich. |
Here's reasonable medical care
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth
news page
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, July 22, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 143 | |||||||
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| Obama demands that Iran send three Americans home By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. President Barack Obama demanded Tuesday that Iran release three Americans it is holding and help find a fourth believed to be in the country. "We are not going to relent until we bring home our Americans who are unjustly detained in Iran," Obama told a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Pittsburgh. "Journalist Jason Rezaian should be released. Pastor Saeed Abedini should be released. Amir Hekmati, a former sergeant in the U.S. Marines Corps, should be released. Iran needs to help us find Robert Levinson. These Americans need to be back home with their families." Some family members, friends and associates of the four have criticized Obama for not winning the release of the captives as part of last week's international deal with Tehran to at least temporarily block its construction of a nuclear weapon in exchange for lifting crippling economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations and Western nations. Obama defended the agreement negotiated by Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the U.S. with Iran, calling it "a smarter, more responsible way to protect our national security." The United Nations Security Council unanimously endorsed the deal Monday, but Republican critics of Obama in the U.S. Congress have promised a thorough review of it over the next 60 days before voting whether to support or reject it. President Obama says he will veto a congressional rejection of the pact, which would force both the House and Senate to produce a two-thirds majority to override the measure. "The same politicians and pundits that are so quick to reject the possibility of a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear program are the same folks who were so quick to go to war in Iraq and said it would only take a few months,'' Obama told the veterans' convention. But Obama acknowledged the U.S. still expects difficult confrontations with Tehran. "Even with this deal, we'll continue to have serious differences with the Iranian government, its support of terrorism, proxies that destabilize the Middle East," he said. "But we can't let them off the hook. Our sanctions for Iran's support for terrorism and its ballistic missile program and its human rights violations, those sanctions will remain in place. And we will stand with allies and partners, including Israel, to oppose Iran's dangerous behavior," he said. Obama called Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday to thank him for Beijing's role in completing the Iranian pact. The White House said the two leaders agreed that cooperation between the U.S. and China is critical to the implementation of the accord. Meanwhile, North Korea said it has no interest in negotiations similar to those conducted with Iran that would result in Pyongyang giving up its nuclear capability. Pope asks for strong stand on climate at U.N. summit By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Pope Francis on Tuesday called on world leaders to take a very strong stand on climate change at a U.N. summit this year in Paris. The pope spoke at a Vatican conference attended by dozens of mayors and governors from major world jurisdictions, who signed a joint declaration demanding action on human-induced global warming. The document states the Paris summit in December "may be the last effective opportunity" for world leaders to negotiate meaningful environmental policy. "I have great hopes for the Paris summit," Francis said. "I have great hopes that a fundamental agreement is reached." In unprepared remarks Tuesday, the pope told his audience that he also hoped the summit would address links between climate change and human trafficking. Conference documents linked the two phenomena, saying that global warming is a key contributor to poverty and forced migration in the developing world. The Vatican conference, attended by 60 government officials from the United States, Europe, South America, Africa and Asia, came just weeks after the pontiff issued the first papal encyclical dedicated to environmental concerns. In that strongly worded landmark letter, Francis said global warming was pushing the Earth toward environmental ruin. He also said human activity linked to climate change could lead to an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems in this century. He also called for massive and immediate political and economic transformation in the developed world, saying it was needed to curb global dependence on highly polluting fossil fuels linked to global warming. President Barack Obama, speaking in June, welcomed the papal initiatives, saying they "make the case clearly and powerfully and with the clear moral authority of position." Climate change skeptics, including some U.S. Republican presidential candidates, have dismissed the pope's environmental messages. Candidate Jeb Bush, a convert to Roman Catholicism, said in June: "I don't get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinal or my pope." Many U.S. conservatives say they do not believe human activity is the cause of global warming. They point to natural fluctuations in global temperatures as the primary cause of rising temperatures. Lebanon hopes recent calm will jumpstart its tourism By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
On a sweltering afternoon at one of the Middle East’s historic treasures, preparations are in full swing to bring visitors back to Baalbeck’s Roman ruins. “Baalbeck International Festival has become a brand,” said Nayla de Freige, president of the renowned cultural gathering set to kick off next Friday in Lebanon’s Beq’aa region. “When you go outside Lebanon, many people know about it. It’s more than just a festival.” However, the festival’s fortunes have been mixed of late. While global stars like Nina Simone and Sting have performed in the site’s ancient temples during the festival's six decade history, in the last two years performances have been held elsewhere due to the threat of jihadists on the nearby Syrian border. Last year, events were moved mid-festival. But this time the Lebanese Army has deemed the situation safe enough. “We have a mission - something to say this year,” said Ms. De Freige. “Our role is to put Baalbeck back on the touristic map.” Not just Baalbek, but the country as a whole, has become a no-go zone for tourists, put off by warnings from their embassies and reports in the media. Once a staple of Lebanon’s economy, tourist numbers fell by 40 percent between 2010 and 2014, including visitors from the Gulf. “Many from the Gulf had big budgets, and would stay for 15 days, or even up to 60 days in the summer,” said Pierre Achkar, head of Lebanon’s Hotel Owners Association. Lebanon’s tourism minister Michel Pharaon admits that the situation has been terrible. “Sometimes you won’t hear about Lebanon for six months,” he said of foreign tourists. “You won’t hear the positives, then you’ll suddenly see that a terrorist bomb has gone off, and you’ll look at the map and see Syria, and its problems.” With refugees making up more than a quarter of the population, military maneuvers continuing along the border and political stalemate leaving the country without a president, Lebanon remains a country facing major hurdles. But a period of relative internal calm in recent months has given many in the tourist industry cause to hope. Beirut has been bomb-free this year; visitor numbers have stopped plunging and risen 25 percent over the past nine months. Sensing an opportunity, the government is stepping up efforts to lure back visitors and change Lebanon’s image in the process. Well-worn clichés posit Lebanon as a conflict-laden country where partying and beaches abound. But this week, a new drive was launched to both target the Lebanese diaspora and diversify the country’s image by emphasizing its rural and cultural attractions in what Pharaon called a new kind of tourism. Martine Btaich, who works at the Lebanon Mountain Trail Association, is among those hoping to change perceptions. Btaich said previous sporadic efforts at promoting ecotourism have become far more co-ordinated. Highlighting a recent organized trek which drew hikers from around a dozen countries, she added, “It’s about countering the negativity conveyed about Lebanon, and offering an alternative Lebanon.” Pharaon said the current campaigns and growth would have been impossible were it not for a tightening of internal security over the past year. “With the security services and army doing a good job on the frontiers we have a space where we can build tourism,” he said, adding that any gains were still fragile in the face of potential security threats. Achkar too expressed caution, claiming that for real progress to be made heavyweight tour companies abroad needed further persuasion that Lebanon was a safe place to send their customers. However, both Pharoun and Achkar were optimistic. “When it comes to recovery, Lebanon is very quick,” added Achkar, who said that the country was fully booked within 10 days of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war. With the Syrian war dragging on, Lebanon is still far from fully booked. Those dependent on tourists will continue to pray for relative stability and seek to close the gap between how would-be tourists perceive Lebanon and the reality on the ground. Strolling around the temples of Baalbeck not far from Ms. De Freige and her team of festival organizers, is Danish engineer Hans Brink. Currently working in Lebanon, Brink is on a day trip to the ruins and is deeply enthusiastic about what the country has to offer. “It’s great, and feels completely safe,” he said. “I’ve been to Byblos, and I’ve been to Tripoli, and the nightlife is great too.” What do his friends back home think? “They say I’m crazy,” he responded, grinning. Famous author E.L. Doctorow reported to have died at 84 By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
American novelist E.L. Doctorow, author of such tomes as "Ragtime," "Billy Bathgate," and "The March," has died in New York at age 84. The writer's son, Richard Doctorow, told reporters his father died Tuesday of complications from lung cancer. Doctorow was characterized by President Barack Obama as one of America's great novelists. The president said in a Twitter message Tuesday that he learned much from Doctorow's books, mixtures of history and fiction, tales unspooled in a variety of experimental narrative styles. Doctorow is said to have covered more than a century of American history in his 10 novels and two short story collections. He also authored a play called "Drinks Before Dinner" and numerous essays and articles. Born in New York City in 1931, Doctorow's grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. He had said that his location in New York City exposed him to the unique cultural offerings of Manhattan as well as those of European émigrés who fled persecution in Europe during the years leading up to World War II. Manhattan plays a prominent role in many of his novels, and he kept a home in the city until his death. Doctorow's works won a series of top U.S. prizes for fiction, the National Book Award for "World's Fair," the National Book Critics Circle award and the PEN/Faulkner award for "Billy Bathgate" and "The March." His novel "Ragtime" was made into an Oscar-nominated movie and later into a Broadway musical that won four Tony Awards. Doctorow was also the recipient of several lifetime achievement awards, among them the 2014 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. He is considered one of the most prominent American authors of the 20th century. China-backed bank debuts as challenge to the West By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A new $100 billion international development bank backed by developing countries launched in Shanghai Tuesday, in what official Chinese media called a challenge to Western-backed international lenders. The New Development Bank came after three years of negotiations among members of BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The launch comes soon after the formation of another multilateral bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which was organized by Beijing. "Obviously, the new institutions are going to break the monopoly of the World Bank. Now, there will be more options for borrowers, who will look for the best terms among different institutions," Bala Ramasamy, professor of economics at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai said. China is expected to dominate both institutions. It has the biggest share at 31 percent in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. In the New Development Bank, it is contributing equally with the four other countries in the $50 billion initial capital, which will be doubled later on. But China has taken a 41 percent share in a $100 billion contingency fund, which was announced by the New Development Bank on Tuesday. "It seems China is going to play an increasingly bigger role through the new institutions," Ramasamy said. "Developed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom will be forced to increase their roles, and review their relationship with the developing world." Some analysts say that the new banks are relatively small compared to the World Bank and that challenging it at a serious level will be difficult. Critics of the new banking institutions also have questioned whether the projects they finance will have provisions protecting human rights and enforcing environmental safeguards. The New Development Bank may not be able to compete with the World Bank in terms of low interest rates because of its higher cost of borrowings. Any future bonds by the New Development Bank will be judged on the basis of the credit ratings of its member countries. "The NDB and the AIIB may want to break the monopoly of World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. That is their ambition. But do they have the confidence to do so at this stage? I have to say no," said Liu Xiaoxue, a researcher at the Beijing-based National Institute of International Strategy. M.V. Kamath, the first president of the New Development Bank, an Indian banker, addressed the bank’s relations with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other major lenders at the inauguration ceremony Tuesday. "Our objective is not to challenge the existing system as it is but to improve and complement the system in our own way," he said. He also indicated the New Development Bank will coordinate policies with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank by establishing a hotline to improve communications. The new institutions might also need help from the World Bank and established institutions like the Asian Development Bank for project assessment expertise and joint financing. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the World Bank are already discussing joint financing of specific projects, and this might be extended to the New Development Bank. “Some parts we learn from the World Bank, some parts we try to do things differently,” Zhu Xian, vice president of the New Development Bank, told China Central Television Tuesday. “We will complement with each other with the World Bank and other international development banks. But in some projects, there will be competition.” Chinese finance minister Lou Jiwei made it clear the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank will work together. "It will also complement the China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and both will share operational experience and strengthen cooperation when the projects start,” he said of the development bank China's goal is to get the new bank to finance its "One Belt, One Road" program that involves constructing a chain of infrastructure projects across the world. Beijing sees it as a means to revive its own economy by obtaining contracts for Chinese construction companies and machinery suppliers. "The bank will provide new driving force to accelerate the global economic recovery by supporting infrastructure projects and expanding global demand," Lou said. Critics say the World Bank takes an overly rule-bound approach to project assessment, and often rejects proposals that its experts consider to be environmentally unsustainable. The new banks are expected to take a different approach. "I would say the NDB will conduct proper environment impact assessment. But it is going to try and reduce the negative environment impact of projects from developing countries instead of entirely rejecting them," Ramasamy said. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, July 22, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 143 | |||||||||
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 Ministerio de Seguridad Pública
graphic
This is
a rendering of the $2 million police station in Liberia thatis expected to be finished this year. It is one of 11 begin built with a $132,441,110 loan from the Interamerican Development Bank. U.S. crude dips below $50 for now By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A strong U.S. dollar and Iran's plans to pour oil on an already glutted market sent U.S. crude below $50 per barrel Tuesday. Cooling economies in oil-hungry Asia and Europe also have weakened demand, sending the price below $50 for the first time since April. With the U.S. Federal Reserve expected to raise interest rates later in the year “a firmer U.S. dollar makes crude more expensive for buyers using other currencies since crude is priced in the U.S. dollar,” explained Victor Shum, vice president of IHS Energy in Singapore. During most of the Asian trading day Tuesday, West Texas Intermediate crude priced on the New York Mercantile Exchange was below $50 per barrel. Iran, anticipating the lifting of embargoes on its supply within months after the recent nuclear deal with Western powers, is said to have loaded super tankers in the Persian Gulf with tens of millions of barrels of oil awaiting purchase orders. “It has been reported that one of these ships has already set sail for Asia. The destination is unknown. But I guess the Iranians are moving crude closer to markets to get ready to supply customers,” Shum said. Iran has the fourth largest oil reserves in the world but sanctions by the U.S., and countries in Europe and elsewhere have stymied its ability to obtain U.S. dollars for international transactions. The slump in oil prices most hurts Middle East producers and nations such as Venezuela, already beset with protracted economic problems. Economists say Russia and Nigeria also need crude prices to be at or above double their current levels to avoid their government budgets sinking into deficits. But a sustained low oil price is welcome news for most of Asia. “Some of the largest importers of crude are located in Asia, China, India, Korea, Japan, these are big importers,” said Shum. “And so these large Asian economies will benefit from low oil pricing. This will help the economies in the Asian region.” Analysts at several major banks, such as JP Morgan and Barclays, do not see prices staying this low later in the year. They predict Brent, the benchmark for traded sweet light crude, to rise above $60 per barrel in the third quarter of this year. Brent was trading in the $56 range Tuesday. |
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| From Page 7: Moderate growth predicted for U.S. By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Economists who help manage companies across the United States say the economy will continue growing at a moderate pace, and some companies are having difficulty finding and hiring people with key skills. The information comes from a survey published Monday by the National Association for Business Economics. Association member and economist Ken Simonson said 80 of these experts expected economic growth to continue between 2 and f4 percent during the next few quarters. He said while none of his colleagues expected growth to decline, they did not expect growth to exceed 4 percent either. Simonson also said some companies in the construction industry and elsewhere said there was a shortage of workers with certain key skills. He said companies were adapting by introducing labor-saving equipment, and boosting training programs. Survey respondents also predict inflation will continue at a moderate pace, as falling gasoline prices are somewhat offset by rising wages and food costs. The survey shows sales grew more slowly in recent months, which could be evidence that overall economic growth was a bit slower over the past three months than earlier thought. In the meantime, the strengthening dollar is hurting companies, such as manufacturers, who depend on exports. A more expensive dollars means U.S.-made goods have higher prices on global markets, making products from other nations more appealing. Later this week, other experts will publish reports on the health of the housing market and the rate of job layoffs. |
