In Brief
Bad weather cuts output; Balkan harvests enough SOFIA (Reuters) – Bad weather has cut wheat output and hit grain quality across central and eastern Europe but harvests will be enough to feed the region and allow for robust exports from the Balkans, farmers and officials said. Farmers in Bulgaria, Hungary and the Czech Republic are reaping less wheat than a year ago due to torrential rains and floods, while dry weather in July after a rainy spring has hurt yields in Poland, central Europe’s biggest wheat producer. Sprouting in rain-soaked Romanian fields has cut yields. A devastating drought has hit crops of major Black Sea grain-growers, forcing Russia, which was the world’s No 3 exporter last year, to ban exports through the end of the year. Ukraine, the world’s sixth-largest exporter, where rainstorms and extreme heat damaged crops, is to decide tomorrow whether to limit its grain shipments abroad. Grain analyst Strategie Grains cut on Thursday its estimate for this year’s European Union soft wheat crop to 128.2 million tons, down 1 percent from a year ago, mainly due to lower output in Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary. The analyst increased by 3 million tons its forecast for EU soft wheat exports for marketing 2010/11 to 18.7 million tons to match exports in 2009/10, but said prospects for further rises were limited due to a decline in projected stocks. In terms of origin, the hike mostly concerned France, the Baltic countries, Bulgaria and Romania. Heavy rains delayed harvesting in Bulgaria and hit quality but with 3.7 million tons of wheat harvested from 98 percent acreage, it will more than meet domestic needs. It has already shipped 285,000 tons abroad. Jobless rate in Turkey drops to 11 percent ANKARA (AFP) – Turkey’s unemployment rate fell to 11 percent in the three months to the end of June from 13.6 percent in the same period last year, official data showed yesterday. The number of jobless was down by about half a million people to 2.85 million on a 12-month comparison, the statistics institute said on a basis of a survey of some 97,000 people. Youth unemployment slowed to 19.8 percent from 24.9 percent in the same period, it said. Analysts, however, said the improvement was mainly due to a weak base effect from last year, warning that economic recovery was slowing down. «While most of this sharp decline is related to the very weak base term, seasonally adjusted figures show that the improvement in labor market conditions came to a halt,» Fortis Bank said in a research note. «The slow improvement in labor market conditions may reappear in the upcoming months but economic recovery seems to be slowing down… in line with the global trends,» it said. Profits fall EFG-Hermes Holding SAE, the biggest publicly traded Arab investment bank, said second-quarter profits fell 45 percent because of the impact of Europe’s debt crisis on regional capital markets. Net income was 97 million Egyptian pounds ($17 million) in the three months through June compared to 176 million pounds in the same period a year earlier, the Cairo-based firm said in an e-mailed statement. Total operating revenues fell to 346 million pounds from 383 million pounds, it added in the statement. «The regional capital markets were affected by the global capital market turbulence onset of the Greek financial impasse,» it said. (Bloomberg) Leu may weaken Romania’s leu currency may weaken 2.6 percent versus the euro within three months, because further austerity measures are needed to narrow the nation’s budget deficit and the recession may last another year, ING Groep NV said. The currency is poised to depreciate to 4.35 per euro from 4.2350 as of last week’s close, Nicolaie Alexandru-Chidesciu, an ING chief economist in Bucharest, wrote in a report dated yesterday. Romania, which is relying on international loans to stay afloat, raised the value-added tax to 24 percent from 19 percent in July and cut public wages by 25 percent to narrow its budget gap to within an International Monetary Fund-mandated target of 6.8 percent of gross domestic product this year. While ING doesn’t rule out the possibility of some leu appreciation in the next year, «any such move would be temporary and reversed quickly as it may not be justified (again) by fundamentals,» the analyst wrote. (Bloomberg)
