Category: Finance

The largest triceratops skeleton ever found was sold for $7.74 million Thursday at an auction in Paris to a private American collector.

In a statement on its website, the Drouot auction house said the fossilized remains of “Big John,” as the skeleton is known, was expected to go for between $1.4 and $1.7 million. But they said the prehistoric remains aroused the enthusiasm of bidders onsite at the auction house, on the phone and online.

An anonymous U.S. collector finally won the bidding battle. A representative for the buyer told reporters “the individual is absolutely thrilled with the idea of being able to bring a piece like this to his personal use.”

Triceratops, which means “three-horned face” in Latin, was a large plant-eating dinosaur that lived between 66 million and 84 million years ago. It was distinctive for the two large horns on its forehead and a third on its nose. Big John is named after the owner of the parcel of land where the bones were discovered in 2014 in the upper midwestern U.S. state of South Dakota.

Experts say Big John is unique and rare among dinosaur fossils because more than 60% of its skeleton and 75% of its skull are complete.

Last year, a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton was sold in New York for a record-breaking $31.8 million. Paleontologists say enthusiasm for dinosaur bones by private collectors is pricing them out of reach of the world’s museums.

Source: Voice of America

WASHINGTON —

Climate change is an “emerging threat” to U.S. financial stability that regulators should address in their everyday work, a top U.S. regulatory panel said Thursday, a first for the United States, which has lagged other wealthy countries on tackling financial climate risks.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) issued a 133-page report that could lead to new rules and stricter oversight for Wall Street. It provided a road map for integrating climate risk management into the financial regulatory system.

That includes filling in data gaps, pushing for climate-related disclosures by companies, beefing up climate expertise at agencies, and building tools to better model and forecast financial risks, such as scenario analysis.

The FSOC comprises heads of the top financial agencies and is chaired by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Created following the 2007-09 financial crisis, its role is to identify and address vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system.

The report is part of President Joe Biden’s plan to aggressively tackle climate change and comes ahead of his trip to Glasgow, Scotland, for a United Nations climate summit.

“It’s a critical first step forward to the threat of addressing climate change, but will by no means be the end of this work,” Yellen said of the report.

With Biden’s climate agenda stalling in a divided Congress, the report will signal to the world that the United States is serious about tackling climate risks, adding to the global debate on the issue.

“This is the first time that all of the banking and financial regulators will come out in one document and talk about what they can do on climate change,” said Todd Phillips, director of financial regulation at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Climate change could upend the financial system, because physical threats such as rising sea levels, as well as policies and carbon-neutral technologies aimed at slowing global warming, could destroy trillions of dollars of assets, risk experts say.

In a 2020 report, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) cited data estimating that $1 trillion to $4 trillion of global wealth tied to fossil fuel assets could ultimately be lost. With a record $51 billion pouring into U.S. sustainable funds in 2020, investors are pushing for better information on risks companies face from climate change.

U.S. regulators have done little to date to tackle climate risks, and the United States lags its peers on the issue. Biden, a Democrat, has said he wants every government agency to begin incorporating climate risk into its agenda.

The report also calls for the FSOC to create two new internal committees. One would consist of regulatory staff who will frequently report on efforts to police climate risks. The second will be an advisory committee of outside experts, including from academia, nonprofits and the private sector.

The lack of recommendations for tough new rules frustrated some progressives and environmental groups, who are anxious for bold steps from Washington to address what Biden himself has called an existential crisis.

Steven Rothstein, managing director of Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets, a climate advocacy group, said it was good regulators identified climate change as an undeniable risk, but more needs to come quickly.

“With a very small window to prevent the next climate disaster, each agency must now provide specific timelines when they plan to put in place measures to protect the safety and soundness of our financial system, our institutions, our savings and our communities,” he said in a statement.

Source: Voice of America

Consumer rights groups in Malawi are calling on the government to roll back or reduce a recent fuel price increase they say the average Malawian cannot afford. President Lazarus Chakwera said this week he was concerned with the 22 percent increase but stressed that it was the result of rising petroleum prices globally.

Sylvester Namiwa, executive director for the Center for Democracy and Economic Development Initiatives, one of the groups demanding government action on the increase, said the higher price has come at the wrong time.

“Fuel price hike is coming at a time when Malawians are already struggling to make ends meet due to punitive taxes, levies and high interest rates,” he said. “As a result, this has pushed up the price for basic services and amenities, for example, cooking oil, water, transport, even airtime for mobile phones.”

Namiwa said officials could scrap levies attached to fuel, which drive prices even higher.

“I am saying every liter of fuel in Malawi has eight levies in total on top of tax. Now it is time that we should take away some of these levies that are unjustifiable. Out of eight levies we have a road levy. But if you go around Malawi there is no construction of a road that is funded through this levy,” Namiwa said.

The Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority said in a statement this week that the price change was in response to a global rise in fuel costs — an explanation echoed by Chakwera.

The regulatory body also cited a recent depreciation of Malawi’s currency, the kwacha, against the international currencies like the U.S. dollar and the British pound.

Gospel Kazako, Malawi’s government spokesperson, told reporters at a press conference Tuesday that the government is taking measures that will strengthen the value of Malawi’s currency.

“As of now we are increasing exports that would help beef up our foreign reserves as well as preventing our local current from depreciating,” he said.

So far, there have been no public protests against the price increase.

Rights campaigner Namiwa said his organization will take action should the government fail to ease the impact of the increase on the average Malawian. He did not elaborate.

Source: Voice of America

Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the African Development Bank, is holding a series of meetings with senior U.S. government officials and business leaders in Washington to encourage increased investments in Africa.

VOA’s Peter Clottey spoke with Adesina, a Nigerian economist, to discuss why he thinks the continent is ripe for foreign investment – especially from the United States.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

VOA: How do you plan to encourage foreign investment in Africa?

Adesina: I think first and foremost … remember that Africa — even before the pandemic – has six of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world. You look even with the African Continental Free Trade Area that is going to be a free trade area with 1.3 billion people and a collective GDP of $3.3 trillion…And so when you look at what that means, you have big consumer and business expenditures on the continent going to rise to $6.7 trillion by 2030. So that tells you that the fundamentals of Africa are strong as they were. And so basically my mission into the U.S. is to encourage the U.S. private sector to invest massively in Africa — in particular in infrastructure and energy in terms of renewable energy and digital infrastructure.

So basically, our role as the African Development Bank is to tell the investment story of Africa. Second is to actually give the investors the confidence that they can invest because we can help to source the deals, we can design bankable projects, we can do risk projects and we can ensure that governments actually do the right thing in terms of the business investment and regulatory environment.

VOA: Speaking about the pandemic, you have been very vocal around the issue of vaccine inequity. Why this stance?

Adesina: I’ve been quite vocal about access to vaccines. Take a look at it today in Africa. Only 24 million Africans have been vaccinated. And so, you have a continent that is not being treated fairly in terms of access in terms of the equity with regard to vaccinations. And that’s because you have a situation wherein the developed countries bought up all the vaccines, advanced purchase agreements, locked it all up.

And so the key really is making sure that Africa doesn’t go through this again. So, we want to make sure that we’re dealing with this in three ways. One is to encourage global manufacturing companies of vaccines to relocate to Africa, and I think we’re making some good headway there. You need to build your own indigenous research and development capacity. And at the African Development Bank, we are working right now to support Africa in this. We need to have an African health care defense system.

Look at this as a defense system that requires greater investment in pharmaceuticals, greater investment in vaccine manufacturing on the continent, but also joining that with greater investment in quality health care infrastructure — primary health care, secondary, tertiary health care infrastructure and diagnostic facilities. So those three things have to work in tandem to secure the health of Africa.

VOA: One of the African Development Bank’s annual flagship events, which has drawn significant investor interest from around the world in the last three years, is the bank’s Market Days to be held in December. Tell me a little bit more about it and your expectations for this year.

Adesina: The Africa Investment Forum has become Africa’s premier investment marketplace. And what makes it very unique is that there are actually no speeches in these meetings. You know, it’s all transactions, deals and deals and deals.

What investors will tell you is, ‘Why will I want to invest in Africa because I actually don’t know whether they are bankable projects.’ Well, we’ve shown that there are really bankable projects. In 2018, when we had the Africa Investment Forum’s first premiere edition, we were able to mobilize $38.7 billion dollars of investment interest in Africa on bankable projects in less than 72 hours. Just think of that. And we did it again in 2019 and were able to secure investment interests of $40.1 billion U.S. dollars. And so that means that the investment opportunities are actually there.

Of course, things got really affected by the COVID-19 situation; however, going back now to the Africa Investment Forum Market Days for 2021, the event will be held December 1-3 in Abuja under a hybrid model. We will have some people in Abidjan that will link to others globally. We will run the investment boardroom sessions where we bring in the investors, the project developers, the insurance companies, the legal facilities and the banks that can help to co-finance or syndicate or do risk projects that are all going to be there with heads of state. Everybody is eager to have investment rebound now in Africa.

VOA: You have been outspoken about the importance of renewable energy, climate resilience, adaptation and mitigation as well as emerging technology. How do you see Africa embracing these issues?

Adesina: Well, quite honestly, we have to. We have no choice. Africa only contributes no more than 3% or 4% of greenhouse gas emissions. But now we have to actually deal with the negative consequences of it. For example, the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that just came out was scary. It basically says that Africa will get drier, much hotter. It will make some parts of Africa probably almost unlivable. I think we have to very quickly respond to that.

Part of responding to that is the African Development Bank and the Global Center for Adaptation, which is chaired by former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. We set up what’s called the African Adaptation Acceleration Program. This is to mobilize an additional $25 billion dollars towards adaptation in Africa. We want to reach 30 million farmers and pastoralists in Africa with digital climate advisory services that will allow them to be able to have good information and therefore be able to adapt to climate change. From other parts of the bank’s work, which is on agriculture, we are providing today access to farmers with drought tolerant maize varieties all across eastern Africa and southern Africa.

Source: Voice of America

Google plans to invest $1 billion in Africa over the next five years to ensure access to fast and cheaper internet and will back startups to support the continent’s digital transformation, it said on Wednesday.

The unit of U.S. tech company Alphabet Inc made the announcement at a virtual event where it launched an Africa Investment Fund, through which it will invest $50 million in startups, providing them with access to its employees, network and technologies.

Nitin Gajria, managing director for Google in Africa told Reuters in a virtual interview that the company would among others, target startups focusing on fintech, e-commerce and local language content.

“We are looking at areas that may have some strategic overlap with Google and where Google could potentially add value in partnering with some of these startups,” Gajria said.

In collaboration with not-for-profit organization Kiva, Google will also provide $10 million in low interest loans to help small businesses and entrepreneurs in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa so they can get through the economic hardship created by COVID-19.

Small businesses in Africa often struggle to get capital because they lack the necessary collateral required by banks in case they default. When credit is available, interest rates are usually too high.

Google said a program pioneered last year in Kenya in partnership with Safaricom that allows customers to pay for 4G-enabled phones in instalments would be expanded across the continent with mobile operators such as MTN, Orange and Vodacom.

Gajria said an undersea cable being built by Google to link Africa and Europe should come into service in the second half of next year and is expected to increase internet speeds by five times and lower data costs by up to 21% in countries like South Africa and Nigeria.

Source: Voice of America

COTONOU, BENIN – Benin set up a service early in the COVID-19 pandemic to allow people to register their business online, and now the West African country is the world’s fastest place to start a business, according to a U.N. agency.

Sandra Idossou, owner of a store selling art in Cotonou, Benin, submitted her business application online and received approval and legal documents within three hours.

She said if the e-registration system did not exist and she instead had to go stand in line to start a business, she never would have done it.

To create her business, Idossou went online to monentreprise.bj, a platform in Benin to create and formally start a business. The site was launched in February 2020 by the country’s Investment and Export Promotion Agency, which did not want people to come into their offices during the pandemic.

Applicants fill out the required information, download the required documents and make a payment online. The documents arrive at the agency’s headquarters, where staff verify the information and mail business certificates to those who are approved.

Laurent Gangbes, general manager of the Investment and Export Promotion Agency, said in 2019 the agency was at 28,000 businesses created. In 2020, the figure went to over 41,000. He said the agency now processes an application in about three hours.

The online service helped make Benin the fastest place in the world to start a company, according to the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.

The businesses must be located in Benin; however, people abroad can use the service if they are in the process of setting up a business inside the country.

Economists like Albert Honlonkou see big benefits for entrepreneurs.

He said the online service reduces costs, reduces delays and avoids corruption. It also avoids carrying papers around and, in the COVID period, it avoids contacts.

The Investment and Export Promotion Agency said it will continue to review the procedures and work with the private sector to further improve the process.

Source: Voice of America