Economics/Buisness

Somebody should remind the few Arab heads of state who attended the Arab League summit in Khartoum Tuesday that we have just had our first modern slave revolt in the Arab region. Well, “slave revolt” may be too harsh a description of the actions of hundreds of mostly South Asian construction workers in Dubai last week. The workers stopped work and went on a little rampage for two days, to protest their harsh working and living conditions, low pay, delayed pay, and general lack of rights.

by Rami G. Khouri

Syria's diminishing role in Lebanon is enabling the Lebanese economy to free itself from the tangles of Syrian induced corruption and transfer of capital outside of Lebanon. A number of other factors all lead to the same conclusion: Lebanon's economy is preparing for a major advancement.

by Meir Javedanfar

Around 200 Chinese workers sat down in protest outside the offices of Malibu-Israel, the construction company that had employed them, on July 5, reported Kav La’Oved’s August 2005 e-news. They insisted that they would not move until a company representative came to negotiate with them on their demand for payment of wages due for the month of May. They also called for the company to give them their pay slips for the entire time they had already worked.

by John Gee

by Jaafar Altaie

The world's most advanced economy and largest oil consumer, the United States, is likely to spearhead efforts to develop alternative energy sources on a global scale. When this happens, producers are likely to respond to a diminishing oil market by trying to diversify their economies to reduce dependence on oil exports. Until such a process begins to materialize, high dependence on oil is a short-term reality for consumers and producers.

According to the US Department of Energy, 2001 world oil demand is forecast to rise by an average of 1.2 percent per year. In a low economic growth scenario this takes demand from a 2001 average of 403.9 million barrels per day (mbpd) to 477.5 mbpd in 2010. In a high growth scenario, demand is forecast to increase by 2.4 percent per year, from 403.9 mpbd to 491.1 mpbd in 2010.

As long as oil remains the world's dominant energy source, net consumers and producers have to improve the management of this strategic resource.

On the consumer side, the US yet again finds itself in a position where the management of its global oil interests must be improved to mitigate persistent price and market shocks.

by M.J. Rosenberg

Washington DC - Anyone who doubts the economic benefits peace can bring should take a look at Northern Ireland.

After decades of decline, Northern Ireland is the United Kingdom's fastest growing economy and one of the most solid in Europe. Belfast, recently a symbol of ethnic strife, is now booming with tourism and industry as Catholics and Protestants reap the rewards that inevitably followed the end of the seemingly endless civil war.

Peace, it's beautiful.

Except for one thing. The Good Friday Agreement which brought peace to Northern Ireland remains, in large part, unimplemented. Almost immediately following its signing in 1998, the two sides began squabbling over their respective obligations. It's not quite peace, yet it is quiet. Ultimately, a cessation of violence and creation of common economic interests may do more to create conditions for peace than all agreements previously signed or not; it's more like an advanced peace process.And that has been enough to improve lives not only in Northern Ireland but in the Irish Republic as well. The entire island, not long ago an economic backwater, is doing very well.

By: Meir Javedanfar- meepas.com

20/04/2005

Introduction

Economically Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the Arab world. This is despite its natural resources which include oil, gas, and abundant tourism attractions. Yemen's economic problems are due to a number of reasons including economic mismanagement, high population growth rates, lack of security, lack of water, unification costs and external debt. The Yemeni government headed by its President Ali Abdallah Saleh has been making a visible effort to improve Yemen's economy and to some extent he has been successful.

by Mohammed El-Samhouri

For sometime now, a consensus has gradually been building up among many political and economic analysts that the continued Israeli settlement drive in, and the subsequent cantonization of, the occupied Palestinian land of the West Bank, is seriously eroding the economic viability of any future Palestinian state, and with it any remaining hopes for a peaceful negotiated settlement of the Arab-Israel conflict based on a two-state solution.

Although the Palestinian right to freedom and self determination does not hinge at all on whether the future Palestinian state will be economically viable or not, the lack of such viability would most certainly constitute a major threat to its very existence and, by implication, to the prospects of lasting peace in the region. That is why the viability question, with its determining elements like land, borders and resources, continues to figure prominently in any serious debate over Palestinian statehood.

Ever since the question of the economic viability of a future Palestinian state started to appear in the political and economic writings of the Middle East a little over a quarter of a century ago, the underlying political assumption behind the term was that the future state would be established on the Palestinian land occupied by Israel in the 1967 war, i.e., in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.