Nicaragua’s National Assembly on Tuesday approved a drastic cut to the national budget because of the economic impact of months of anti-government unrest.

The lawmakers adopted a 9.2 percent reduction of the 2018 budget, projecting $180 million less in spending to partly make up for a drop of $220 million in government income.

It was the steepest cut seen in the past 11 years that President Daniel Ortega has been in power. 

The minister for finance and public credit, Ivan Acosta, blamed the reduction on protesters accused of trying to stage a “coup” against Ortega’s government.

The demonstrations against Ortega began in April in anger at moves to cut back social security. But when security forces cracked down, they quickly spread to become marches demanding Ortega’s ouster. 

More than 300 people have died and thousands of Nicaraguans have fled what they say is harsh repression and persecution.

After operations against protest hubs in July, the president claimed the unrest was over and the country was getting back to normal. But demonstrations are continuing.

Contraction possible

Acosta said that before the protests, the economy had been expected to grow 4.3 percent this year. The government has now lowered that target to 1 percent, although some independent analysts say a contraction of 3.5 percent could be in the cards.

The minister told the National Assembly that the fallout from the unrest had forced 8,700 small businesses to close, leaving 71,000 people without work. The important tourism sector has lost $235 million, he said.

The private sector estimates that 200,000 people were left unemployed by the continuing crisis.

Acosta said the budget cuts would not affect social spending, public investment or the level of government employment.

“This reform is tough,” he said. “Right now we are working on the premise that the country is returning in the direction of normality and stability.”

Fiscal and tax reform was needed to make up for the diminished growth, he added, warning that “those who must pay will be made to pay.”

That warning appeared to be aimed at Nicaragua’s business owners who have abandoned Ortega because of the deadly violence ordered against the protesters.
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Last year, Brazilian farmer Gustavo Lopes sized up his sugar cane plantation against his soybean fields.

He looked at global trends, including rising U.S.-China trade tensions and a stubborn sugar-market glut. Then he tore up the last of his cane fields and ditched a decades-old supply contract with a local sugar mill.

Lopes planted soybeans across his 1,600-hectare (4,000-acre) farm in Sao Paulo state – a bet that paid off earlier this month when Chinese buyers loaded up on South American soy after Beijing imposed tariffs on U.S. beans. The farmer got his highest price ever for soybeans.

“It was unusual for this time of year,” Lopes said in an interview at his farm, where he’s prepping to plant another soy crop in September. “It’s got to be a result of Chinese demand.”

Shifting trade flows are redefining the Brazilian landscape, spurring more farmers to align their crops with Chinese appetites. The nation’s soy plantings have expanded by 2 million hectares in two years – an area the size of New Jersey – while land used for cane shrank by nearly 400,000 hectares, according to government data.

China’s growing demand for meat has supercharged soy imports for animal feed. The Asian nation paid $20.3 billion last year for 53.8 million tons of soybeans from Brazil, nearly half its output — and up from 22.8 million tons in 2012.

A new 25 percent Chinese tariff on U.S. soybeans — a retaliation for U.S. levies by President Donald Trump — is expected to boost Brazil’s soy exports to an all-time record this year.

Brazilian soybean exports to China rose to nearly 36 million tons in the first half of 2018, up 6 percent from a year ago.

In July, they surged 46 percent from the same month a year earlier to 10.2 million tons.

Brazil’s grains boom has it rivaling United States as the world’s top soy producer this year, after outpacing U.S. exports over the past five years.

All that soy is eating into Brazil’s sugarcane belt, which is reeling from sugar prices near multi-year lows. Chinese sugar tariffs have weighed on the global market for the sweetener as developed nations continue to cut back consumption.

“We lost 3,000 hectares of cane area to grains in the last two years,” said Roberto de Rezende Barbosa, chief executive of Nova América, one of the largest cane growers in Brazil, managing 110,000 hectares.

Rezende said he had seen farmers migrating from sugarcane into grains in nearly every state where both crops are viable.

Shuttered Sugar Mills

The crop swap is catching on quickly with farmers, threatening the survival of cane mills they once supplied.

About 60 cane mills have closed in the past five years in Brazil’s center-south cane region. About 270 that remain open must fight harder than ever to secure cane supplies.

Agroconsult, an agribusiness consultancy, said it has received requests from mills to calculate the premium they will have to pay producers to keep them from switching to grains.

Douglas Duarte, a director at the Londra mill in Itaí — which used to lease part of the Lopes farm — said he has plans to add 500,000 tons of capacity at the mill but has yet to line up enough cane supplies.

With so many farmers focused on grain, Duarte has worked to sign leases with families who are not interested in actively managing their land.

“In places where the owners have expertise with grains — the equipment and everything — then you can’t compete,” he said.

In some places, the closing of cane mills has also discouraged planting.

Farmer Antonio de Morais Ribeiro Neto gave up planting cane last year after the closure of the sugar mill that he supplied, called Usina Maracaju. Biosev SA, the Brazilian sugar arm of global commodities trader Louis Dreyfus, shut it down in a cost-cutting move.

So Riberio replaced 400 hectares of cane with soybeans, adding to the 2,000 hectares of soy he already had planted. As he watched the U.S.-China trade war escalate, he bought two new grain silos, more soybean-planting machinery and a new harvester.

‘Betting Big’

Plenty of sugar mills, which often grow part of the cane they process, have realized they cannot fight the soy boom and decided to plant their own soybeans as part of a crop rotation strategy.

Cane fields typically need to be replanted after five or six years, and mills are using the renovation window to produce soybeans.

“In the past, those areas subject to renovation would be left fallow until the following year,” said Victor Campanelli, who has exploited the niche.

His firm, Agro Pastoril Paschoal Campanelli, manages the planning, inputs and equipment for sugar mills’ one-off soy crops, sharing in the profits.

While the grains bonanza has many farmers flush with cash, some are wary about relying so much on one crop and one massive importer.

“This Chinese demand has attracted all the farmers,” said Marcos Cesar Brunozzi, who switched part of his land from sugar to grains in the state of Minas Gerais. “I hope the whole situation doesn’t change suddenly, because we are betting big.”

Lopes has no regrets about tearing up his cane fields.

Last year, his sugar cane yielded a net profit of 480 reais per hectare — compared to 2,600 reais per hectare for his soy fields.

“I know it won’t always be that way,” he said. “But still, it’s a huge difference.”
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Vienna has dislodged Melbourne for the first time at the top of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index, strengthening the Austrian capital’s claim to being the world’s most pleasant city to live in.

The two metropolises have been neck and neck in the annual survey of 140 urban centers for years, with Melbourne clinching the title for the past seven editions. This year, a downgraded threat of militant attacks in western Europe as well as the city’s low crime rate helped nudge Vienna into first place.

Vienna regularly tops a larger ranking of cities by quality of life compiled by consulting firm Mercer. It is the first time it has topped the EIU survey, which began in its current form in 2004.

At the other end of the table, Damascus retained last place, followed by the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, and Lagos in Nigeria.

The survey does not include several of the world’s most dangerous capitals, such as Baghdad and Kabul.

“While in the past couple of years cities in Europe were affected by the spreading perceived threat of terrorism in the region, which caused heightened security measures, the past year has seen a return to normalcy,” the EIU said in a statement about the report published on Tuesday.

“A long-running contender to the title, Vienna has succeeded in displacing Melbourne from the top spot due to increases in the Austrian capital’s stability category ratings,” it said, referring to one of the index’s five headline components.

Vienna and Melbourne scored maximum points in the healthcare, education and infrastructure categories. But while Melbourne extended its lead in the culture and environment component, that was outweighed by Vienna’s improved stability ranking.

Osaka, Calgary and Sydney completed the top five in the survey, which the EIU says tends to favor medium-sized cities in wealthy countries, often with relatively low population densities. Much larger and more crowded cities tend to have higher crime rates and more strained infrastructure, it said.

London for instance ranks 48th.

Vienna, once the capital of a large empire rather than today’s small Alpine republic, has yet to match its pre-World War I population of 2.1 million. Its many green spaces include lakes with popular beaches and vineyards with sweeping views of the capital. Public transport is cheap and efficient.

In addition to the generally improved security outlook for western Europe, Vienna benefited from its low crime rate, the survey’s editor Roxana Slavcheva said.

“One of the sub-categories that Vienna does really well in is the prevalence of petty crime … It’s proven to be one of the safest cities in Europe,” she said.
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Venezuela’s heavily subsidized domestic gasoline prices should rise to international levels to avoid billions of dollars in annual losses due to fuel smuggling, President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised address on Monday.

“Gasoline must be sold at an international price to stop smuggling to Colombia and the Caribbean,” Maduro said in a televised address.

Venezuela, like most oil-producing countries, has for decades subsidized fuel as a benefit to consumers. But its fuel prices have remained nearly flat for years despite hyperinflation that the International Monetary Fund has projected would reach 1,000,000 percent this year.

That means that for the price of a cup of coffee, a driver can now fill the tank of a small SUV nearly 9,000 times.

Recently, the average price of a coffee with milk was 2.2 million bolivars, or about 50 cents, local media has reported.

Smugglers do brisk business reselling fuel in neighboring countries.

Maduro said the government would still provide “direct subsidies” to citizens holding the “fatherland card,” a state-issued identification card that the government uses to provide bonuses and track use of social services.

He said the subsidy was only available to those who registered their cars in a vehicle census being conducted by the state.
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Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday his administration will invest more than $11 billion to boost refining capacity in order to curb growing fuel imports.

Lopez Obrador, who will take office on Dec. 1, told reporters his government plans to invest $2.6 billion to modernize existing domestic refineries owned and operated by national oil company Pemex, and spend another $8.4 billion to build a new one within three years.

The $8.4-billion figure is higher than a $6 billion estimate provided by a key energy advisor during the campaign.

Lopez Obrador, set to become Mexico’s first leftist president in decades, did not detail how the projects would be financed or whether private capital would be involved, but he has often said he will not raise taxes or grow government debt.

Mexico is among Latin America’s largest crude exporters, but is also the biggest importer of U.S. refined products. The country’s next president has pledged to lift refining capacity, which he says has declined due to corruption and neglect.

Pemex, formally known as Petroleos Mexicanos, has six domestic refineries with a total processing capacity of some 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd), but the facilities are only operating at about 40 percent of capacity so far this year.

Meanwhile, gasoline and diesel imports have sky-rocketed in recent months amid planned and unplanned refinery stoppages.

Pemex has posted losses in its refining division for years but Lopez Obrador aims to boost crude processing enough to halt imports within three years.

Lopez Obrador also said he plans to invest another $4 billion to drill new onshore and shallow-water oil wells in the states of Veracruz, Tabasco and Chiapas.

Pemex production has consistently declined in recent years to fall below 2 million bpd after hitting peak output of 3.4 million bpd in 2004.

President Enrique Pena Nieto passed a reform to open up Mexico’s state-run energy industry to private producers, which has led to a series of competitive auctions that have awarded more than 100 oil exploration and production contracts.

Lopez Obrador has said he will respect those contracts as long as an ongoing review does not find signs of corruption. He is widely expected to slow down the process of offering more contracts to private players.

($1 = 19.1100 Mexican pesos)
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Turkey’s currency, the lira, continues to slide as the country’s central bank failed to halt the decline Monday. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused the United States of purposely trying to damage his country’s economy. More from VOA’s Bill Gallo.
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Tariffs imposed on goods imported from China, Europe and other parts of the world could hurt American consumers and small businesses more than help them. Analysts point out that in today’s global economy, most manufacturers produce parts and import others to make a final product. Tariffs imposed on Chinese electronic parts have already forced a U.S. TV factory to close down, and there are concerns that U.S. farmers could lose big markets overseas. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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The Turkish lira has fallen more than 40 percent since the start of the year, 20 percent just last week, amid rising tensions between the U.S. and Turkey, and international investors’ concerns over the economy.  For Turkey, the dramatic collapse of the currency signal fears for the future, as Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.

Fruit and vegetable sellers, along with fishmongers, try to drum up business in Istanbul’s old Kadikoy market.  But trade is slow. Most people just look and walk on.

Organic shopkeeper Meltem worries for the future.

She says she is pessimistic about the future because prices will rise and the ability of people to purchase will decrease. She adds that as money in their pockets decreases, people in hardship will buy much less than before.

The fear of plummeting currency values, which continued on markets Monday, will stoke Turkey’s already double-digit inflation, which appears to be the top concern among shoppers.  Turkey relies heavily on imports, especially for energy.

Thirty-year-old Tariq, a teacher doing his weekly shopping, says he is cutting back on spending as he prepares for difficult times ahead.

He says the lira has fallen heavily and predicts unbelievable inflation because Turkey imports so much.  He says everybody in Turkey is afraid the coming inflation, especially for heating bills, will make this winter hard.

Across the street, fishmonger Huseyin proudly displays what he claims is the finest turbot in Istanbul and tries to be more positive. He acknowledges there will be problems. 

He says he does not have much to do with dollars, because if more fish are caught, they are cheaper, if less they are more expensive. But he says buyers may be affected if they are having economic difficulties.  He says if there is a good quantity of fish, then he will keep selling.

Shopkeeper Meltem warns of economic uncertainty ahead.

She says the future does not look good, because when people are hungry, they will be tempted to steal and may choose illegal means to survive.  She said things will not be any good. Many stores are closing because there is no trade anymore.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday an international conspiracy is responsible for undermining the currency, but says the financial fundamentals of the economy remain strong, and order will soon return to the markets.  

Such claims have been met with skepticism by international investors, while many economists warn the damage may have already been done to the economy, and difficult times lie ahead. 
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