London, United Kingdom (AHN) – European Central Bank (ECB) officials left the benchmark interest rate of 1 percent unchanged. The bank has not changed the rate since November.

The ECB has provided European banks with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of loan-interest loans in an effort to keep financial markets supplied with cheap cash. The ECB also has bought government bonds from countries such as Spain and Italy in an effort to help lower borrowing costs for governments within the troubled eurozone that have been hit by the sovereign debt crisis.

ECB president Mario Draghi says that the strategy of loosening credit has improved the risk environment.

However, the strategy isn’t expected to help the eurozone economies to grow.

The ECB revised its previous forecast that called for growth and now expects the eurozone economy to shrink by 0.1 percent this year. It was the third consecutive quarter the ECB revised its economic estimate downward.

It also revised downward its growth forecast for 2013 to 1.1 percent compared with the earlier forecast of 1.3 percent growth.

Moreover, ECB officials also now say that they expect inflation to grow at a faster pace than the bank’s medium-term target rate.

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Brighton, England, United Kingdom (AHN) – British Business Secretary Vince Cable hinted over the weekend at the GMB union conference that the government is considering tighter strike rules to avert massive industrial action in response to the coalition’s austerity measures.

Cable warned that the government will legislate harsher conditions to make it harder for unions to initiate massive and widespread strikes. However, the secretary said there is still no immediate reason to amend the country’s strike laws despite a push for amendments by some influential politicians, such as London Mayor Boris Johnson.

Johnson had accused the government of being soft on anti-strike laws after the Tube workers threatened last month to walk off their jobs again The mayor pushed for a higher legal threshold to trigger a strike from the current simple majority requirement.

Johnson pointed out that in some strike ballots, many union members do not cast a vote. But because of the simple majority rule of those who voted, London Underground workers struck in October 2010 on the strength of a 33 percent “Yes” votes from union members who cast their ballots.

Johnson is in favor of requiring 50 percent of all union members who voted for industrial action to trigger a strike, while the Chamber of British Industries suggested a smaller 40 percent threshold.

Cable said that there is no compelling reason for now to change the country’s strike laws because despite workers’ restiveness over the budget cuts, strike levels are at a historic low level, particularly in the private sector. The secretary’s assumed that this strike pattern will remain in the coming months.

But he warned that if the patterns change and strikes threaten Britain’s economic recovery, the coalition would be pressured to change drastically the country’s strikes laws to make it harder for unionized employees to threaten the nation with an industrial action if they disagree with certain government policies.

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LONDON, United Kingdom (IRIN) – Most of us, when we worry about food prices, think short term – the price today compared with yesterday; the chance that the price will have gone up again tomorrow. But Oxfam this week risked some long term predictions, and came up with alarming results. They foresaw the steepest rise of all in the price of rice, with rice in China, for instance, becoming 80 percent more expensive by 2020, and 180 percent dearer by 2030.

The price of rice is obviously of huge concern in China, India and the rest of Asia, where it has always been the basis of the diet – just as the Middle East has traditionally depended on bread, Italy on pasta, northern Europe on potatoes and Africa on maize, cassava and root crops like yams.

But tastes in food are changing, driven by urban lifestyles and global communications. Consumers, no longer limited to what they can grow in their own area, look for foods which are easy to prepare and eat. The losers have been staples which need lengthy preparation – soaking, peeling and pounding. The winners have been pasta, noodles, and above all, rice, making the price of rice a matter of pressing concern far beyond the traditional rice-eating countries.

Nigeria has a rich tradition of foods based on local crops, amala (yam skin porridge) and eba (made from cassava), ogi (fermented cereal) and pounded yam. Rice used to be a party food, noodles practically unheard of. Now rice and noodle dishes are the staple of roadside food stalls, and every night in TV advertisements, smiling housewives feed their perfect families on instant noodles and jollof rice.

Forty years ago Nigerians ate an average of three kilograms of rice a year; now it is 35kg and rising. Nigeria is one of the world’s biggest rice importers, lying third (behind the Philippines and Iran) in 2008, the last year for which International Rice Research Institute figures are available.

It should add up to big profits for the international rice traders, and it does, but they are acutely aware of the vulnerability of the system. A senior executive from one of the world’s biggest global dealers in agricultural produce said this week he was really concerned about threats to, and the sustainability of the supply chain.

“Look at Africa,” Chris Brett, senior vice-president and global supply chain manager for Olam International, told an audience at the UK’s Institute of Development Studies (part of Sussex University). “It’s absolutely amazing how much food is imported. We know that the food security agenda is very important.”

Vulnerable to price fluctuations

Of all the world’s food commodities, rice is perhaps the must vulnerable to sudden shocks. The world may produce a huge amount of the grain, but nearly all of it is eaten in the countries where it is produced – only somewhere in the region of 5-7 percent is traded on the international markets. So there is a disproportionately large effect on the price when in a major producing country has a bad harvest, or stops exporting, as India did in 2008. The supply is not limitless. 1.3 million tons is the most rice Olam has traded on the international market in a year, but that has now fallen back a little to 1.1 million. Brett told his audience: “We seem to have hit a ceiling.”

The hunger for security of supply has led Olam into production and processing, and it is now working with 12,000 rice farmers and operating two mills in Nigeria, the country where it first started as a produce buying company more than 20 years ago. “We have decided that rice is a good business for us to be getting into. Nigeria imports 2.4 million tons of rice a year; it’s not rocket science to think that if you can produce it, there’s a market.”

Production has flourished. With help from US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) MARKETS scheme, an agribusiness initiative, the farmers’ associations have received loans for inputs and improved seed, and raised their yields from 1.5 to 4.4 tons a hectare. The once-derelict mills are turning out smartly packaged sacks of “Lobi” brand rice.

It is a secure source of supply within Nigeria and insulated from currency shocks, but Olam’s problem is that Lobi at the moment cannot compete with the popular imported brands from East Asia, either on quality or on price.

Poor quality

Among Nigerian customers, local rice has a poor reputation, often well deserved. Ola Bassey, a young professional woman from Lagos, told IRIN she never bought Nigerian-produced rice. “Some people buy it, it’s cheaper, but it’s just too much stress. You have all the bother of picking the sand and stones out of it – they get the kids to do it for punishment. People would rather pay extra and not have the hassle.”

Olam’s rice mills can deal with the sand and stones, but Brett admitted to IRIN that the quality of the Lobi rice itself was still not as good as that of Mama Gold, Olam’s premium brand of imported rice, just because of the varieties of rice used by the farmers.

Growing rice in Nigeria is also more expensive than growing it in Thailand, the Philippines or China. It is dry upland rice, produced without irrigation, and only one crop a year is possible. Farmers in East Asia cultivate wet paddy rice and can have three harvests a year.

At the moment Olam can sell Lobi more cheaply than the imported varieties because of the duty that has to be paid on imported rice. That duty has already been suspended once, for six months, in 2008. Brett’s nightmare is that a new rise in global food prices will lead to the removal of protection.

“The threat is that I wake up one morning and find the Federal Government has decided to cut import duty on imported rice. Nigerian farmers are never going to be as productive, and at the moment we don’t have the tonnage. But give us another two years, and we should see a stronger commercial viability.”

Currently Nigerian farmers produce only 10 percent of the rice sold on the local market, according to a USAID survey, while Thailand supplies 74 percent of the rice Nigerians buy.

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– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.

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London, England, United Kingdom (AHN) – Credit ratings agency Moody’s placed major British banks on review because of a new British government policy that no bailout would be provided to financial institutions with problems.

Moody’s hinted that 14 banks and building societies may face possible credit rating downgrades over its senior debt and deposit ratings.

The 14 banks and building societies for review include Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander UK.

Elisabeth Rudman, senior credit officer and bank analyst at Moody’s, said the review is not because of the financial institution’s deterioration in the banking system’s financial strength or the government, but in response to the coalition government’s guidance on the no bailout policy.

Moody’s review, expected to last for three months, could cause an increase in the banks’ borrowing costs. The review includes an assessment of the level of government support available and other factors that could lead to a rating downgrade.

The 11 other banks and building societies that would undergo the Moody’s review are:

• Bank of Ireland Cooperative
• Bank Coventry Building Society
• Nationwide Building Society
• Newcastle Building Society
• Norwich & Peterborough Building Society
• Nottingham Building Society
• Principality Building Society
• Skipton Building Societ
• y West Bromwich Building Society, and
• Yorkshire Building Society.

Barclays and Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation are excluded from the review, but Moody’s have downgrade Barclays to a negative rating from stable and affirmed HSBC’s negative rating.

It is not only the British banks which have been downgraded or are at the risk of a downgrade by ratings agencies. Even the British government’s local and foreign currency sovereign credit rating suffered.

Dagong Global Credit Rating Company, a Chinese rating agency, downgraded U.K.’s rating on Tuesday to A+ from AA- with a negative outlook for solvency. Dagong explained the downgrade to the worsening debt repayment capability of Britain and difficulty in improving its sovereign credit level in a moderately long term basis.

The Chinese rating agency, which had blamed Moody’s, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s for the global financial crisis for failing to properly disclose risk of western banks, said it expects Britain’s economy to register minimal or no improvement in the next 24 months.

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Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service has rattled financial markets by changing its outlook for U.S. government debt from “stable” to “negative” over concerns that lawmakers might not reach an agreement on dealing with the budget deficit.

The news caused the U.S. dollar to drop in value against the euro and oil prices fell. In New York the S&P 500 stock index declined while in Europe the main French, German and United Kingdom stock indexes also fell.

S&P’s move increases the likelihood that it might downgrade the U.S.’s AAA rating within two years unless more is done to bring down government debt.

As one of the three major ratings agencies, if S&P lowers the U.S. credit rating it would make it harder and more expensive for the nation to borrow money.

In changing its outlook to negative, S&P officials said the agency views the U.S. economy as being diverse with a sound monetary policy, but that a downgrade of the AAA rating is possible if congressional lawmakers and the Obama administration are unable to agree on a viable plan to reduce the nation’s deficit.

U.S. Treasury officials did not agree with S&P’s move, saying they have a better ability to deal with the national debt than the ratings agency estimated.

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London, Britain, United Kingdom (AHN) – National minimum wage for adults has increased to $9.93 an hour in Britain.

That represents a 2.5 percent raise for low-income workers over the age of 20. Younger workers got raises too. The new minimum wage for workers aged 18 to 20 went up by 1.2 percent to $8.13 per hour, while 16 to 17 year olds got a 1.1 percent hike to $6.01.

The independent Low Pay Commission (LPC) recommended the government increase hourly wages to the nation’s 890,000 lowest paid workers despite economic uncertainties. The LPC decision was unanimous and government ministers agreed to adopt the recommendations.

October is when the new pay rates will take effect.

Some people in the business community say they think it would have been better to hold off on hiking minimum wage until the unemployment rate comes down.

However, proponents note that research shows that minimum wage workers generally spend 100 percent of any pay hikes in the areas where they live, which will provide a stimulus to local economies.

By comparison, Britain’s minimum wage is higher than that in the United States. Federal minimum wage there of $7.25 per hour applies to workers of all ages with exceptions for disabled workers, restaurant workers, farm workers and employees under age 20.

Workers under age 20 in the U.S. can be paid $4.25 per hour for the first 90 days of employment unless they are full-time students. Then they can be paid 85 percent of the minimum wage as long as they continue to go to school full-time and work no more than 20 hours weekly when school is in session or 40 hours per week when school is not in session.

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