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The UK government will shelve its Brexit bill and attempt to secure a general election, should MPs fail to support the planned timetable and the EU agrees to an extension period for the UK's withdrawal from the EU, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said.

Es ist der bitterste Tag in der Karriere von Sunrise-Chef Olaf Swantee: Der Mega-Deal mit UPC ist gescheitert. Im BLICK-Interview sagt er, wie es mit Sunrise weitergeht – und ob er noch der richtige Mann ist, das Unternehmen in die Zukunft zu führen.

La nouvelle est tombée dans la journée d’hier. Herman Mashaba, premier maire non membre de l’ANC (Congrès national africain, en français) de la ville de Johannesburg depuis la fin de l’Apartheid, a donné sa démission de son poste et en même temps, de son parti, l’Alliance démocratique (DA). Raison avancée : profondes divergences avec le […]

L’article Que cache la démission du maire de Johannesburg ? est apparu en premier sur Afrik.com.

In the Azores, where annual rainfall patterns are expected to change with climate change, the main concern for agriculture is the proper management of water resources, which were scarce last year.

Dubé, Rosa, Simpson. Eine seltsame Trainer-Konstellation? Durchaus. Aber vielleicht gerade das Richtige für Gottéron.

En ce mardi 22 octobre a lieu le procès de trois détenus du Hirak. Il s’agit de Bacha Bilal, Djaber Aimad, et Leftissi Messaoud, qui ont été parmi les premiers à être arrêtés le 21 juin dernier pour port du drapeau Amazigh. Le procureur a requis 02 ans de prison ferme contre ces 03 manifestants, […]

The post Procès de trois détenus du Hirak : le procureur requiert 2 ans de prison ferme appeared first on .

The sectarian taboo, music videos and the securitization of sectarian identity politics in Hezbollah’s legitimation of its military involvement in Syria

In Berlin parkt man das Auto besser nicht auf der Strasse. Nirgends in Deutschland werden mehr Autos gestohlen als in der Hauptstadt. Die Diebstahlstatistik des deutschen Versicherungsverbandes kennt zudem die bei den Langfingern beliebtesten Modelle.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Oct 22 2019 (IPS)

Public or state development banking will be vital to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, argues UNCTAD’s Trade and Development Report 2019 (TDR 2019).

Ongoing World Bank led efforts seek to leverage private finance via shadow banking by using public money to guarantee handsome returns managed by giant investment houses. Such financialization introduce new costs and risks to financing investments for sustainable development, decent work and renewable energy.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

TDR 2019 is critical of financialization, which encourages speculation at the expense of productive investments in the real economy. Instead, public banking is far more likely to promote productive investments, and should be enabled to do so.

Development banks different
Public banks are different from private banks, and more likely to serve the long-term public interest, investing in sectors and locations that private commercial banks are more likely to ignore.

Unlike other kinds of state-owned financial institutions, such as state-owned commercial banks or insurance companies, public development banks (PDBs) usually have specific mandates to be more than mere financial institutions.

Certain social and economic objectives are identified to guide their operations. Their achievements are typically due to successfully pursuing positive externalities over the medium and long-term, rather than focusing on short-term returns alone.

Thus, PDBs are supposed to generate both financial returns as well as ‘development dividends’. Sustainable development oriented investments generally involve benefits which are not only commercial, which tends to be the main, if not sole criterion of commercial banking.

PDBs also help counteract the pro-cyclical nature of private finance, which typically fails to adequately finance small enterprises, however innovative, infrastructure as well as environmental projects urgently needed to make economies more dynamic, inclusive and sustainable.

Generally successful, but underappreciated
Despite constant discouragement and many PDB closures as well as ‘commercializations’, PDBs survive in many developing countries. In recent years, Southern-led and Southern-oriented banks and funds have added hundreds of billions of dollars to such finance.

A recent book found PDBs in China, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru generally successful. The PDBs studied served as efficient instruments of national development strategies, helping to overcome major ‘market failures’ flexibly.

Anis Chowdhury

Researchers have also found that PDBs can be both profitable and efficient while being socially proactive and progressive in appropriate institutional settings. Others have shown that PDBs can better avoid inefficient credit allocation as commercial banks cannot fully internalize benefits from publicly desirable projects.

Potential not realized
UNCTAD notes that most public banks, especially development banks, are insufficiently capitalized to be effective in their publicly assigned roles. Nevertheless, some PDBs are very significant, e.g., the China Development Bank’s outstanding loan portfolio is over 13.4% of China’s GDP, while the Korean Development Bank’s is 10.5% of Korea’s GDP.

But PDBs in other countries — including India, Russia, South Africa, Mexico and Malaysia — have modest loan portfolios amounting to less than 2% of their countries’ GDPs.

Many PDBs’ low loan-to-equity ratios are due to imposed requirements to raise resources in capital markets, both at home and abroad. Thus, the scale of such PDB lending is limited by how markets view them, typically through the credit ratings’ lens.

Appropriate policy support crucial
TDR 2019 argues that greater policy support is necessary to enable public development banking to achieve its potential including by:

• Providing development and other public banks with more capital to scale up lending, including through direct financing;
• Supporting development banking with clear government mandates, performance indicators and accountability mechanisms valuing other criteria besides financial ones.
• Preventing PDBs from being subordinated to short-termist commercial criteria, or guaranteeing private investment returns, as recommended by the OECD and World Bank.
• Encouraging sovereign wealth funds, with assets estimated to be US$7.9 trillion, to direct resources in support of PDBs;
• Ensuring that bank regulators treat public banks, especially PDBs, more appropriately; development banks should be regulated suitably, recognizing their distinctive mandates, roles and operations;
• Reconsidering some governments’ insistence that their PDBs achieve high credit ratings; this task should be done by a credible international body of development finance institutions as credit rating agencies cannot be expected to challenge their own criteria;
• Using multilateral development banks to support green investments in developing countries as ‘green credit’ creation (including by quantitative easing’) is unlikely to be feasible in developing countries for fear of provoking exchange-rate and balance-of-payment crises;
• Freeing central banks from their typically narrow focus on price stability, usually by ‘inflation targeting’ in recent decades, to take on bolder, pro-active development roles. This should include creating and directing credit for sustaina

The post Development Banks Needed to Finance Sustainable Development appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Normalerweise regnets Bierbecher oder Konfetti von der Tribüne herunter. Beim Challenge-League-Schlusslicht Chiasso fliegt ein Koffer!

Beim zweiten Wahlgang zu den Ständeratswahlen im Kanton Waadt kommt es zu einem Zweikampf zwischen dem rot-grünen Duo Adèle Thorens und Ada Marra gegen FDP-Kandidat Olivier Français. Drei Listen mit insgesamt drei Kandidierenden wurden bis Dienstagmittag eingereicht.

Mit einer emotionalen Rede hat sich EU-Kommissionschef Jean-Claude Juncker nach fünf Jahren Amtszeit verabschiedet und seine Erfolge herausgestrichen. «Ich scheide aus dem Amt nicht betrübt, nicht übermässig glücklich, aber im Gefühl, mich redlich bemüht zu haben».

L'Ecole de formation de médecine sociale (EFMS) de Parakou va rouvrir ses portes. Cette décision a été prise lors de la séance de travail qui a lieu mardi 22 Octobre 2019 entre les ministres Mahougnon Kakpo de l'Enseignement secondaire, de la formation technique et professionnel et Benjamin Hounkpatin de la Santé et les responsables de l'EFMS.
Cette rencontre a porté sur la situation des apprenants de la filière « aide-soignante », notamment celles qui sont inscrites en deuxième année.
De façon exceptionnelle, la décision de suspension de Formation dans la filière d'aide soignant de l'EFMS de Parakou a été provisoirement levée. Ce qui veut dire que les 537 apprenants de la deuxième année, qui étaient dans l'incertitude quant à leur avenir, peuvent continuer leur formation jusqu'à l'obtention de leur diplôme.
En dehors de cette mesure exceptionnelle, aucune nouvelle admission ne doit être autorisée, l'arrêté de suspension n'étant pas abrogé mais demeure en vigueur.

G.A.

Un patient sous traitement médical avait disparu de l'hôpital cantonal genevois dans la nuit de dimanche. Il a été retrouvé sain et sauf.

Der Grieche Stefanos Tsitsipas (ATP 7) ist ein grosses Versprechen in der Tennis-Welt. Nach den US Open hat er einen neuen Weg eingeschlagen. Vor den Swiss Indoors in Basel erzählt er vom neuen Leben.

Une nacelle des remontées mécaniques de Rotenflue (SZ) était tombée en raison de fortes rafales de vent. Elle sera remise en service ce vendredi.

1993 löschte Zoran P. eine ganze Familie in Bosnien aus. Er wurde geschnappt und verurteilt. Er floh jedoch aus dem Gefängnis in die Schweiz. Hier lebte er 25 Jahre unerkannt.

Der scheidende EU-Kommissionspräsident Jean-Claude Juncker hat mitgeteilt, dass der zu Beginn seiner Amtszeit aufgelegte Investitionsplan dazu beigetragen habe, über eine Millionen Arbeitsplätze in Europa zu schaffen.

Aujourd’hui le Hirak boucle ses 8e mois, aujourd’hui les étudiants déferlent dans les rues pour leur rendez-vous hebdomadaire auquel ils sont restés fidèles pendant les 35e dernières semaines. Comme de coutume, la communauté estudiantine a marché dans plusieurs wilayas du pays notamment à Oran, Tizi-Ouzou, Alger, Béjaia et Constantine .  Soutenus par le reste de […]

The post 8e mois de Hirak et 35e mardi des étudiants: La révolution maintient le cap appeared first on .