Aurelia Butler

Long queues and cancelled flights caused by staff shortages have caused chaos at times, prompting airlines to cut back their schedules as the industry struggles to keep up with a surge in demand after the COVID-19 pandemic.The new charter will help passengers know what to do if they are confronted by cancellations, delays or missing baggage, the government said, with guidance on how to complain if they feel they have been treated unfairly.”Passengers deserve reliable services, and to be properly compensated if things don’t go to plan, and the chaotic scenes we’ve seen at airports are unacceptable,” transport minister Grant Shapps said.”The new charter will help to give UK passengers peace of mind as they enjoy the renewed freedom to travel, whether for holidays, business or to visit loved ones.”Last month, the government published a 22-point support plan to avoid further disruption, including telling airlines to run “realistic” summer schedules and promising to speed up security checks. It said these were now being processed in “record time”.In a sign of the problems, London’s Heathrow Airport this week asked airlines to stop selling tickets for summer departures and capped the number of passengers flying from Britain’s busiest hub at 100,000 a day. More

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Around 1,000 Hungarians demonstrated against Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government on Saturday in the latest of a series of smaller demonstrations this week since his right-wing Fidesz party passed legislation sharply raising taxes on small firms.Nationalist Orban is facing his toughest challenge yet since taking power in a 2010 landslide, with inflation at its highest in two decades, the forint plumbing record lows and European Union funds in limbo amid a dispute over democratic standards.The blockade of a bridge in Budapest on Tuesday failed to derail the approval of a government motion to increase the tax rate for hundreds of thousands of small firms, defying criticism from some business groups and opposition parties.On Wednesday, Orban’s government also curtailed a cap on utility prices for higher-usage households, rolling back one of the 59-year-old premier’s signature policies in recent years due to a surge in electricity and gas prices amid the war in Ukraine.”I have an acquaintance who only heats with electricity. His monthly power bill has been 30,000 forints ($75) so far, which is not a lot, but from now on he will be paying 153,000,” said Miklos Nyiri, a 70-year-old pensioner at the rally.”He is a pensioner, so the pension will be eaten up by the power bill, and they will be left grazing in the field,” he said, adding however that the small-scale protest was unlikely to force Orban to change tack.Saturday’s rally was called by small-town mayor Peter Marki-Zay, Orban’s independent challenger, whose opposition alliance suffered a crushing defeat in an April parliamentary election.The low number of participants at the rally indicated that despite lurking discontent with Orban’s latest reforms to shore up Hungary’s state finances, anti-government sentiment was struggling to gain traction even in Budapest, where the opposition had its strongest showing in April.Ildiko Hende, 52, who works as a cleaner in a bank, also lamented the low turnout at the rally.”I have been working for more than 30 years, but what is going on in this country right now is hell incarnate,” she said.Despite Orban capping the prices of fuel and some basic foods, inflation has surged to its highest in two decades, at 11.7% year-on-year in June, forcing the central bank into its steepest rate tightening cycle since the collapse of Communist rule.Even so, the forint is skirting record lows versus the euro, feeding into inflationary pressures.”I just want to be able to live a normal life, not having to pinch pennies at the end of every month,” Hende said. “Prices are just so high that it makes you go crazy. This is really not sustainable.”($1 = 397.2500 forints) More

MUMBAI (Reuters) – India’s economy has remained resilient in the face of global headwinds and with inflation coming off its recent peak is expected to stay on course to become the world’s fastest-growing economy, the Reserve Bank of India said on Saturday.The recent revival of the southwest monsoon and renewed planting raised expectations that rural demand will soon catch up with urban spending and consolidate a recovery, the RBI said in a bulletin.”Knock-on effects of geopolitical spillovers are visible in several sectors, tapering the pace of recovery,” the central bank said.”In spite of this overwhelming shock, there are sparks in the wind that ignite the innate strength of the economy and set it on course to becoming the fastest growing economy in the world, though besieged it might be by fears of recession.”It did not give a time frame.RBI said if the commodity price moderation witnessed in recent weeks endures alongside the easing of supply chain pressures, the worst of the recent surge in inflation will be over.India’s annual consumer inflation remained painfully above the 7% mark and beyond the central bank’s tolerance band for the sixth month in a row, data last week showed.”There is some evidence now that supply-chain pressures are peaking globally and in India, so that a major source of upward inflation pressures may be ebbing,” the bank said.Referring to the impact of high global crude prices on India’s current account deficit (CAD), RBI said the CAD could widen to 2.3% of GDP in 2022/23 if oil prices average $105 per barrel. It would widen to 2.8% if oil averages $120 per barrel but still remain “within the sustainable limit of 3%”.CAD stood at 1.2% of GDP in 2021/22, data released in June showed.”External debt remains modest as a proportion to GDP and has actually declined between March 2021 and March 2022,” RBI said. More

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan is likely to get $4 billion from friendly countries this month to bridge a gap in foreign reserves highlighted by the International Monetary Fund, the country’s finance minister said, two days after sealing a deal with the lender.The IMF has reached a staff level agreement with Pakistan that would pave the way for a disbursement of $1.17 billion. The board is also considering adding $1 billion to a $6 billion programme agreed in 2019.”As per the IMF, there is a $4 billion gap,” the minister, Miftah Ismail, told a news conference in Islamabad, referring to the shortfall in foreign reserves.”We will, God willing, fill this gap in the month of July,” he said. “We think that we will get $1.2 billion in deferred oil payment from a friendly country. We think that a foreign country will invest between $1.5 to $2 billion in stocks on a G2G (government-to-government) basis, and another friendly country will perhaps give us gas on deferred payment and another friendly country will make some deposits.”Depleting reserves, a widening current account deficit and the depreciation of the Pakistani rupee against the U.S. dollar have left the South Asian nation facing a balance of payment crisis.Without the IMF deal, which should open up other avenues for external finance, Ismail said the country could have headed towards default. He said the country will also get around $6 billion from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank in FY2022-2023. Pakistan secured a $6 billion IMF programme in 2019, but less than half of that amount has been disbursed to date.Pakistan’s central bank has hiked its key interest rate to 15% to curb inflation, which hit 21.3% in June. More

OTTAWA (Reuters) -The Bank of Canada expects inflation to go “a little over” 8%, as soon as next week when June’s data is released, and stay in that range for a few more months, Governor Tiff Macklem told a business group in a webcast transcript released late Friday.Macklem, who spoke to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business the day after Wednesday’s shock 100-basis-point interest rate hike, also urged small business owners to avoid building the current pace of price increases into their contracts.”Inflation is high sevens. It’s probably going to go a little over eight (8%). We have the next CPI next week. We know oil prices were very high in June, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see it move up,” Macklem said.Canadian inflation was 7.7% in May, the highest since January 1983. Analysts surveyed by Reuters expect June inflation to hit 8.3%, which would be the highest since 1982. The data will be released on Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. ET (1230 GMT).Macklem reiterated the Bank of Canada now expects inflation to average around 8% for the next few months, then fall to around 3% by the end of 2023 and to the 2% target in 2024. He also made clear the bank is very concerned about a wage-price spiral, where businesses raise wages to keep workers and then pass the higher costs on to households, who then want higher wages to compensate for inflation.”You can see this creates a self-perpetuating cycle,” he said, adding the central bank will take the action needed to get inflation back on target.”So as a business, don’t plan on the current rate of inflation staying. Don’t build that into longer-term contracts. Don’t build that into wage contracts. It is going to take some time, but you can be confident that inflation will come down.” The CFIB had planned to release a recording of the webcast on Thursday, but due to technical glitch it was not actually recorded, it said. Instead the business group put a transcript up on its website late Friday night. More