Aurelia Butler

ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) -Turkey’s largest business group urged President Tayyip Erdogan’s government on Saturday to abandon a monetary policy based on low rates that has prompted a crash in the lira, and called for a return to “rules of economic science”.The lira hit a record low beyond 17 against the U.S. dollar on Friday following fears of an inflationary spiral brought on by Erdogan’s new policy in the face of soaring prices. At the low, the currency had lost some 55% of its value this year, including 37% in the last 30 days.The TUSIAD business group said it had warned the government of the negative impacts of the low-rates policy, and that the economic woes were harming businesses and citizens.”As a result of the instability we have been experiencing in recent times, it has become clear that goals under this economic programme that is being attempted will not be achieved,” it said in a statement. It said “an environment of distrust and instability has been created” and the economic model risked causing “much bigger” problems in the future.”Even exports, expected to benefit the most from this, have been harmed under this environment,” it said.Under pressure from Erdogan, the central bank has cut rates by 500 basis points since September. Erdogan has said the model will boost exports, employment and investments, while achieving high growth. Economists have called his experiment “reckless”.Later on Saturday, Turkey’s banking association said Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati had briefed the association, the BDDK banking watchdog, and state bank managers over the new economic model at talks aimed at discussing “healthy, consistent growth”.Devlet Bahceli, an Erdogan ally and leader of the nationalist party MHP, dismissed the “problematic” statement by TUSIAD and said the new economic policy would succeed despite a “siege” on the economy.But Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) repeated a call for immediate elections and Meral Aksener, Chairwoman of the opposition Iyi party, said on Friday that Erdogan should resign.”You have no fear of God, we understand, but at least have shame in front of people,” she wrote on Twitter (NYSE:TWTR).Several polls have shown support for Erdogan and his ruling AK Party at multi-year lows. Elections are scheduled for latest mid-2023.Erdogan announced a 50% increase in the minimum wage that is widely expected to boost overall consumer price inflation by 3.5 to 10 percentage points. Economists expect inflation to soar beyond 30% next year.Bakery worker Zeki Erdogan said the planned increase in the minimum wage was insufficient.”It is really hard to make a living and pay the rent, gas, electricity, and water bills with 4,250 lira per month,” he added. “The future is not bright.” More

The balance of power is shifting in Britain’s parcel delivery market. And yet again Amazon is the main disrupter as it challenges market leader Royal Mail in what is expected to be one of the toughest Christmases for UK couriers.With the labour market the tightest in four decades and worker availability expected to determine the success or failure of deliveries this season, Amazon has taken the initiative with bonuses of £1,000 to attract staff.The US technology giant has also increased its Christmas workforce to about 75,000 people this year, leaping from less than a third of Royal Mail’s peak headcount before the pandemic to almost half the size.The UK market’s two main groups are both taking on an extra 20,000 seasonal staff to cope with record orders after the online surge during the pandemic as they battle with rivals Hermes, DHL, UPS, DPD and Yodel. “The issue between now and Christmas is one of labour availability,” said Tom Forbes, senior vice-president of carriers at Metapack, whose software links distribution hubs with delivery companies.The spread of the Omicron variant has also exacerbated the recruitment challenges, with Royal Mail worker absences almost double those of Christmas 2018, causing severe problems at delivery offices.Indeed, recruitment has become increasingly vital with the pandemic supercharging ecommerce and condensing years of growth into months. UK carriers delivered 5bn parcels last year or 14m a day, up a third on 2019, according to Pitney Bowes, a technology group.That is expected to grow to about 5.7bn this year and early signs indicate that this Christmas peak could come close to challenging last year’s volumes. Orders increased 11 per cent year-on-year on technology provider Metapack’s system during the Black Friday week that kicks off the peak season but then fell behind the previous year in the most recent weeks.Royal Mail has taken on families and friends of employees rather than rely on bonuses to deal with labour shortages © Anna Gordon/FTYet the spike in demand comes as coronavirus-induced retirements or career changes and Brexit have sucked workers out of the British labour force, most notably lorry drivers. And no pool of furloughed workers is ready to step in this year.The shortages prompted Yodel to raise the salaries of drivers by 16 per cent in October in an extra effort to retain them ahead of the busy period, said chief executive Mike Hancox.But workers on the frontline are still feeling the pressure, with cracks starting to show. Metapack said some carriers were reporting a 20 per cent fall in the rate of processing deliveries at some depots because of labour shortages and poor weather.At Royal Mail’s Jubilee Mail Centre in west London, with Chuck Berry’s ‘Go, Johnny, Go!’ blasting on the radio, postmen were frantically, but methodically stuffing post and packages into delivery bags at sorting stations purpose-built for letters, the company’s legacy product.“It’s hectic. It’s a mad rush and we’re overwhelmed today,” said Paul Bishop, one of the postal workers preparing to go out and deliver goods in the week after Black Friday.MJ Sebastian, a delivery driver who works for an Amazon subcontractor in Milton Keynes, said the parcels he has to deliver have doubled since last month to 300 a day.“It’s busy, it’s raining and there’s nobody helping us. They’re not thinking about how much pressure they’re putting on their staff,” he added.On top of its recruitment drive and bonus offers, the US group is using technology in locations such as Milton Keynes to push drivers to deliver more with a system that aggregates multiple addresses under a single “stop”.Although drivers say many of the addresses are beyond walking distances from each other, the group insists it sets realistic expectations and makes efforts to prevent workers coming under too much pressure. Other groups are also actively recruiting. DPD said it was focused on hiring permanent staff ahead of the peak and cited its £150m investment in an automated parcel sorting hub in Leicestershire as a big help.“The real potential headaches at this time of year are generally those things that are out of our direct control such as the traffic and weather,” it added.“The biggest challenge is keeping up with the pace of change,” said Shiona Rolfe, Royal Mail’s service delivery director © Anna Gordon/FTMarek Różycki, managing partner at consultancy Last Mile Experts, said recruitment problems in the UK were made worse by relatively poor infrastructure that made courier work labour-intensive. Unlike countries such as China and Poland, few lockers and parcel shops are available to help ease strains.“The only way to deal with massive growth, given the current state of infrastructure is to take on more people,” he said. “Everyone has peak problems, it’s just a question of how big.”However, Royal Mail has tinkered with routes in an effort to improve delivery efficiency. The group, which split from the Post Office retail network in 2012, said it needs 13,000 fewer flexible workers after the changes, which include replanning its routes.The 505-year-old company has taken on families and friends of employees, relying on referrals rather than bonus incentives to attract workers during the seasonal peak, said Shiona Rolfe, the company’s service delivery director.“This was going to be a tougher market to attract people into the operation because we were well aware of the number of employment opportunities that existed in the UK,” she said. “We took the opportunity to start our recruitment activity early.” Royal Mail is making changes, such as hiring dedicated parcel delivery drivers, but it needs to go further to modify its “feet-on-the-street” model.With the parcel arm now the main profit driver, it can no longer rely on a system built to cope with much smaller letters, particularly with the increasing size of packages, some as large as 8ft long.“The biggest challenge is keeping up with the pace of change,” Rolfe said. “The important part about making those changes is bringing everybody with us,” she added, referring to the need to improve efficiency without alienating workers. More

Total profits of the firms totalled 2.3 trillion yuan in the first 11 months of the year, with significant profitability improvement in the oil, steel and coal sectors, according to an official with the regulator, China Securities Journal reported. Hao Peng, head of the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC), also urged the companies to strictly control debt risks, and cut the scale of perpetual bonds in an orderly manner in the new year, according to the report. ($1 = 6.3748 Chinese yuan renminbi) More

“There are indications that there’s a danger that inflation comes in higher (than the current forecast),” Holzmann told Austrian broadcaster OE1 in an interview. “But it’ll be possible to control this assessment very quickly when we see where the inflation rate goes next year.””If there’s no sharp decline, other (central bank) colleagues will certainly review their positions and we’ll change our monetary policy,” he said, calling this week’s ECB decision “well balanced” also in light of uncertainty caused by the new Omicron coronavirus variant.A diverse group of policymakers spoke out on Friday, warning the ECB may be underestimating inflation risks after the bank extended stimulus measures.Sources had told Reuters that Austria’s central bank governor Holzmann was among conservative policymakers who dissented from the ECB’s decision to continue bond purchases.Holzmann declined to comment on how he voted, adding differences in voting behaviour were based on nuances rather than big divergencies.”All of us in the ECB governing council stand ready to take action in case the inflation forecast goes up. Then measures still in place can be reduced or stopped,” he said. More