Economy

When Richard assessed his decision to return to the UK after 20 years of working in Asia, he was taken aback by the “astronomical” costs of moving back. The move cost him £3,400 for a spouse visa, £10,600 on one-way flights for himself, his wife and two children and £17,600 for a 20ft shipping container with associated packing and unpacking.“The pinnacle of stress, though, was moving our pet bird,” says Richard, whose name has been changed at his request. He explains that the paperwork for transferring Teri, the family’s parakeet, took five months. It eventually cost him £9,400 to bring the pet back — nearly as much as the transport bill for the rest of the family combined.British expats have been leaving Asia — particularly Hong Kong — in increasing numbers in the face of draconian Covid-19 containment policies.

Moving Teri the parakeet from Asia to Britain cost one family more than £9,000

A net 170,000 Hong Kong residents have left the former British territory so far this year, according to analysis of Hong Kong immigration statistics by database Webb-site Who’s Who. In Singapore, which has also had strict lockdown policies, the number of people employed fell by almost 150,000 in the 12 months to June 2021. Escalating prices of all kinds mean bigger bills for those returning to Britain. Average airfares for global outbound travel from Hong Kong are up by 95 per cent in the first half of 2022, compared with 2019, according to travel data company ForwardKeys.Inflation is a significant problem, but those returning to the UK after a long stint abroad can face bigger challenges when moving and settling back in. Tax rules and residency rules are notoriously complex, pensions often difficult to transfer, and managing the timing of your move and the sale of any assets can make a big difference to your tax bill.Experts say the efficient arrangement of your tax position and assets could have the biggest impact on your finances, so it can pay to start planning well in advance of a move. FT Money offers six key issues for returning British expats to consider. 1. Is the timing right?

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If you are considering a move home, preparation is key — and one of the top priorities is tax. When Simon Cahill, a chartered financial planner at Octopus Wealth, moved back to the UK in 2020 having spent four years in Dubai and a year travelling, colleagues and friends pestered him for advice about the process. He decided to write a guide on how to overcome the main hurdles, interviewing 30 former British expats who had lived in the UAE. “The most common mistake people made was not planning enough in advance,” he says, explaining that one person was hit with a £32,000 tax bill that he could have avoided with a deferral of his return.

Simon Cahill: Plan well in advance of a move back to the UK © Richard Cannon/FT

First, you should work out how much tax you have to pay on your return to the UK. This can depend on how much time you have spent living overseas. As soon as you have become a non-resident of the UK for tax purposes, you will not have to pay dividend tax or capital gains tax on any of your UK assets. However, under the so-called “temporary residence rules”, if you have lived abroad for less than five years, any tax savings you have made on UK dividends or capital gains since you left would have to be paid to the exchequer on your return. “The temporary residence rules are designed to stop people from going away for a short period of time to incur tax-free capital gains,” says Tim Stovold, partner at accountancy firm Moore Kingston Smith. “If, say, I had bought a ton of bitcoin years ago and decided to go and live in a low tax jurisdiction for a year, sold the lot, made £1mn in profit, and come back a year later, I haven’t saved any tax at all because it’s as if the capital gains arrive at Heathrow with me and it is taxable there,” he explains.The other timing consideration is the moment in the tax year at which you choose to move back. If you can time the move so you arrive on or shortly after April 6, the beginning of the UK tax year, that will save you the possibility of having to complete a “split year” tax return, the rules of which are “really fiddly and horrible”, Stovold says. The split year rules allow you to have only UK tax liabilities from the date you move back, rather than from the whole tax year of your return. But they will only apply if certain conditions are met, relating to working days, property ownership and a partner’s working patterns.2. Sort out any assets

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If you have any assets to sell, including stocks and property, it usually pays to plan this carefully before leaving. Chris left the UK for Hong Kong in 2012, where he set up a business travel agency but returned in May this year, frustrated by the effect of the city’s onerous Covid restrictions on his five-year-old daughter’s education. “Everyone is sick of it,” said Chris, who asked for his full name not to be used.Before leaving Britain for Asia, he rented out his flat near Manchester and sold it for £215,000 shortly before coming home. Having bought it in 2010 for £150,000, he only had to pay capital gains tax on gains made from April 2015, when the then chancellor George Osborne introduced capital gains tax (CGT) on residential property for non-UK residents. CGT in the UK is charged at 10 per cent for basic rate taxpayers and 20 per cent for higher and additional rate taxpayers, rising to 18 per cent and 28 per cent respectively for residential property. If you plan to move back to the UK following a prolonged stint elsewhere, seeing a tax adviser long before you move back could save you money. Cahill suggests that if you have any stocks listed in a low tax jurisdiction, you might want to consider selling them and coming back to the UK with cash, to prevent you having to pay UK taxes on profits accrued abroad. “From the point you are resident in the UK, all your worldwide income is taxable at UK rates,” explains Mike Hodges, tax partner at accounting firm Saffery Champness. “If you are coming back it’s generally not going to be the case that you will benefit from structures, such as an offshore trust, you’ve set up while you were offshore.”Different rules apply to the “non-dom” status, which enables people domiciled in another country to live full time in the UK for up to 15 years without paying any tax on their foreign income, provided they keep it overseas.Unlike other countries, the US tax system works on a citizenship basis, so if you hold US citizenship, you are generally taxed on your worldwide income. The UK and the US have an agreement designed to prevent double taxation, but Dhana Sabanathan, partner at law firm Winckworth Sherwood, suggests you might want to seek advice if it looks like both countries will seek to tax you on the same income or gains.Once you’re in the UK, Cahill recommends you start building or rebuilding assets if possible in the tax-efficient structures available. UK residents over the age of 18 can open an individual savings account (Isa), which can grow free of tax up to a substantial £20,000 maximum in the current tax year. If you’re an employee, you should automatically be enrolled into a workplace pension. You can also set up a self-invested personal pension, which will give you income tax relief on money paid in at your marginal rate, and you will also pay income tax on money withdrawn while being able to access 25 per cent tax free. 3. Transferring your pension

© Dom McKenzie

Those moving back to the UK to retire should check their national insurance records to see how much of the state pension they will be eligible for, says Andrew Tully, technical director at Canada Life. “Work out if you have paid enough to get the full state pension and, if not, consider buying added years,” he suggests.If you have a pension pot overseas, you might also want to look into transferring it back to the UK, bearing in mind the potential impact of currency exchange fluctuations. “It could be better to leave the funds in the overseas pension if it includes contributions prior to 2017 as there are certain tax breaks you may be able to take advantage of,” says Rachel De Souza, private client partner at tax adviser RSM UK. Some pension funds, such as Australia’s superannuation fund, will only let you transfer your pension in very specific circumstances before you reach retirement age. “We recommend expats should check procedures and requirements in their local country and apply to a Sipp provider to accept a transfer,” De Souza adds.If you’re lucky enough to have a pension pot with a value in excess of the lifetime allowance, currently £1,073,100, an additional charge is applied when you start to draw down on your pension — or when you reach the age of 75 — whichever is sooner. “Expats should consider whether they need to apply for a lifetime allowance enhancement factor, which provides an increase to the lifetime allowance for periods worked abroad,” De Souza suggests. 4. The relocation process

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Anyone thinking about moving back soon with a lot of belongings will have to navigate the global shipping crisis which has “really impacted global mobility,” says Jeremy Chandar, director at Bournes Relocation Solutions, which has helped around 500 families relocate to the UK over the past year. While home removals represent a fraction of maritime freight, Chandar says there’s still a post-pandemic “boom market” in UK relocations. Disruptions at ports are causing significant delays and household goods are afforded lower priority than shipping lines. “The US ports in particular are heavily congested, meaning shipments are delayed until space becomes available on a vessel and we have seen inbound delays of around four to six weeks,” Chandar said. Expats should brace themselves for high prices, especially if moving from Asia where freight costs are among the highest. Chandar says he had seen rate increases of between 20 and 60 per cent worldwide, for a variety of reasons — from freight, labour costs and fuel and port surcharges — and capacity constraints.Finding suitable accommodation in the UK can also be a problem. On moving back to the UK in May, Chris and his wife and two daughters stayed with his parents while they looked for a place to rent. He described the UK property market as “crazy”, explaining that as soon as he found a place he liked, in Hale Barns, a village in Greater Manchester, he had to sign the rental agreement on the same day. Completing the contract was a struggle in itself. When he went through the process of proving his right to rent, the fact that his income was still paid from a Hong Kong company caused further delays. Chandar says the rental housing climate has changed significantly in a relatively short space of time. “On average there are 30 to 40 per cent fewer properties available than there were in 2019, and everyone has put their charges up.” 5. Getting a visa

© Dom McKenzie

Anyone needing to apply for a visa in the UK should brace themselves for a tortuous process. Owing to Ukraine’s humanitarian crisis, applications for family member visas currently take 24 weeks to process, twice as long as normal, according to the UK government’s website. Ben Pearcy, chief strategy officer at food and agriculture group Olam, based in Singapore, plans to return home after three years working in Singapore, with his spouse of 23 years, a Brazilian citizen. “We paid approximately £6,000 in fees to apply in June — including a lawyer as the forms are so complex that it’s needed,” Pearcy says. “The system is designed to deter.”Having hoped to come back in August, they now have to wait until a spouse visa decision is given — a process for which he says a date is never provided — and will miss his daughter starting university in the UK in the autumn. Priority and “super-priority” visa services have been temporarily suspended for new study, work and family visa applications, removing any option to pay more to speed things up. 6. The cost of living

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Despite low taxes, having factored in Hong Kong’s sky-high rents and schooling costs, and the UK’s NHS, Chris thinks his life in the UK may work out cheaper. However, he was taken aback by the “crazy” cost of energy bills in the UK, which is due to get worse in October when the energy price cap rises. The annual consumer price inflation in the UK is currently 9.4 per cent, compared with 1.9 per cent in Hong Kong, 2.5 per cent in the UAE, 6.7 per cent in Singapore, 9.1 per cent in the US and 10.8 per cent in Spain. Fluctuations in currencies can also mean that the timing of your move could have a significant impact on your wealth. The lesson is that coming home may sound straightforward, but the process may be much more elaborate and expensive than you expect. One FT Money reader, who returned to the UK in 2018 after 38 years overseas, offered some reassuring advice: “Don’t wing it as far as HM Revenue & Customs is concerned. Take good advice, pay a little to confirm it, and it should be relatively stress free from a tax liability perspective.” More

Boris Johnson briefly chaired a crisis meeting with energy companies on Thursday as a riposte to claims that he is leading a “zombie government”, but all big decisions have been put on hold until a new UK prime minister is in place.Civil servants may be working behind the scenes on policy options for the new prime minister when he or she takes office on September 5, but Johnson has accepted the convention that big fiscal and policy decisions must be left to his successor.With an economic crisis building during this hiatus, whether it is Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak who walks into 10 Downing Street next month, they will have a daunting in-tray. Their political honeymoon could be short. Cost of living By far the biggest immediate problem is how to ease the crushing squeeze on household incomes caused by inflation and the apparently inexorable rise of domestic energy bills to £4,000 a year or more.Sunak has accepted the need to expand direct support for the most vulnerable by billions of pounds. He has yet to say how big the package should be or exactly how much extra borrowing will be required.Truss has promised an emergency Budget in September with tax cuts. That would include a reversal of Sunak’s 1.25 percentage point national insurance rise, but this would offer only £59 to someone on the national minimum wage. Economists say that other tax cuts, for example on income tax or VAT, would also fail to target the most needy. Truss said this week that she would do “all she can” to help the most vulnerable: it will be a major early test of her priorities.Windfall taxNew chancellor Nadhim Zahawi is drawing up a list of options to tackle the economic crisis to present to the new prime minister, including going beyond the £5bn windfall tax on oil and gas producers introduced by Sunak.The former chancellor previously proposed a new £3bn-£4bn levy on electricity generators, and Zahawi has kept it on the table. There is also pressure to extract more from oil and gas producers by cutting back investment allowances.Truss opposes windfall taxes. Kwasi Kwarteng, business secretary and potentially her new chancellor, is also opposed. But the political pressure from opposition parties to impose heavier windfall levies will be huge.Bank of EnglandWhoever becomes the next prime minister will immediately find themselves in a fight with Andrew Bailey, the BoE governor, in a row that could unsettle markets at a perilous time.Truss’s supporters have accused the central bank of being too slow to put up interest rates, and the foreign secretary has said she will review the bank’s mandate. It is unclear what changes, if any, she will actually make.Meanwhile, both Truss and Sunak want to give ministers the power to review decisions by regulators “in the public interest” if they feel that the watchdogs are not being rigorous enough in rewriting EU rules.Bailey is insisting on regulatory independence, arguing that political interference could undermine investor confidence and make the City of London less competitive.BrexitBoth candidates have promised to embrace the “opportunities of Brexit”, with Sunak vowing to “keep Brexit safe” by reviewing all retained EU law within 100 days with a view to scrapping some of it.

The problem with any bonfire of EU red tape is that the more Britain diverges from the EU rule book, the more friction arises at the border, including on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.Both candidates have vowed to enact the Northern Ireland protocol bill, which would rip up part of Johnson’s Brexit deal, arguing that it is essential to help restore Northern Ireland’s power-sharing executive in Stormont.However, unless the new prime minister backs away from unilateral action, the EU will retaliate by cutting British scientists out of Horizon, the world’s largest research programme, and could eventually trigger a trade war.Overseas aidThe UK overseas aid programme has been thrown into chaos after the government blocked “non-essential” new payments for the rest of the summer over concerns that Ukraine relief work will breach a spending cap.The new PM will have to allow spending to exceed the “temporary” 0.5 per cent of GDP spending cap — a Tory manifesto pledge of 0.7 per cent of GDP was scrapped — or put aid projects in the developing world at risk.Cutting overseas aid is popular with many voters, as well as Conservative members, but risks further alienating “soft” Tory voters, particularly young graduates and professionals in marginal seats.Internet regulationThe future of the sprawling Online Safety Bill is one of the most complex dilemmas facing the new prime minister after detailed consideration of the legislation was booted into the autumn.The bill would crack down on “legal but harmful” material, and Truss is anxious about its impact on free speech but has also expressed concerns about the kind of material that might be seen by her teenage daughters. Her principle is that the same rules should apply online as apply in the real world. Sunak has also been equivocal, also talking about the “horrific” material that his own children might see online.“The ‘legal but harmful’ bit is something I would want to spend some time as prime minister going over and making sure that we’re getting that bit exactly right,” he said. More

(Reuters) -San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Mary Daly said on Thursday that while a half-percentage-point interest rate hike in September “makes sense,” she is open to the possibility of a bigger hike to fight too-high inflation.”I still think 50 basis points is the case, but I am open to 75 should the data evolve differently,” Daly told Bloomberg TV, saying she does not want to be “head-faked” by the recent improvement in inflation readings and noting there will be more data on employment and inflation before the Fed’s next meeting, on Sept. 20-21. Daly’s hawkish tone came a day after a Labor Department report showed consumer prices did not rise in July from the month before and after a report on Thursday showed producer prices unexpectedly fell in July.The hint of relief from what had been relentlessly accelerating inflation sent traders of interest-rate futures piling into bets on the 50-basis-point rate hike that Daly sees as most likely at the Fed’s upcoming meeting. Equity markets also rose on the notion that the Fed would soon slow rate hikes. Rising stock prices threaten to undo some of the Fed’s efforts to tighten financial conditions and slow the economy by raising borrowing costs.”We don’t want financial conditions to relax,” Daly said, noting that she looks not only at the stock market but also at borrowing costs for businesses and consumers as well mortgage rates — which have risen sharply — to gauge financial conditions. “I really do want those to remain tight and tight and tightening as we go,” she said.Daly pushed back on market expectations for interest rate cuts to follow swiftly on the current round of rate hikes. Rate futures prices traded at CME Group (NASDAQ:CME) show investors expect the Fed to cut rates by about 50 basis points next year.”I don’t see this hump-shaped part where we raise interest rates to really high rates and then bring them down,” Daly told Bloomberg TV. “I think of raising them to a level that we think is going to be appropriate and then holding them there.” Since March, the Fed has raised its short-term policy rate from near zero to a current range of 2.25%-2.5%, and Daly repeated her view that rates need to rise to about 3.4% this year and higher next year to restrict growth and reduce inflation.Even with the slight easing in price pressures in this week’s data, consumers are still paying 8.5% more this year than last year for the same goods and services, a point Daly noted repeatedly in the interview. “Inflation is too high,” she said. More

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina’s central bank raised its benchmark interest rate by 950 basis points on Thursday as the country struggles to keep a lid on spiraling inflation that rose to a 20-year high of 71%, according to new data. The central bank raised the benchmark ‘Leliq’ rate for the 28-day term to 69.5% from 60%, a rate the bank set just two weeks ago when it hiked the rate by 800 basis points and the government shuffled its Cabinet to install a new economy “superminister.” New inflation data on Thursday underscored the urgency driving economic policy: Prices rose 7.4% in July, above expectations and pushing annual inflation to a 20-year high of 71%. The month saw the resignation of President Alberto Fernandez’s longtime finance minister followed by the ouster of his replacement. The numbers dashed hopes that this week’s optimistic inflation reports in the United States and Brazil, where prices fell a record .68% in July, might portend good news for the Southern Cone’s largest economy.In Mexico, the central bank on Thursday also raised the country’s benchmark interest rate three-quarters of a percentage point to 8.5%, its highest level since the bank’s current regime was put in place in 2008. Mexico’s annual inflation climbed last month to 8.15%, a level not seen since December 2000. Argentina’s central bank in a statement said that its decision “will help reduce inflation expectations for the remainder of the year and consolidate financial and exchange stability.”The bank also said the decision aims to bring rates closer “to a positive terrain in real terms.”A positive real interest rate is one of the points agreed between Argentina and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a recent $45 billion debt deal.Reducing inflation, which is predicted to hit 90% by the end of the year, as well as Argentina’s crippling debt and chronic overspending, are at the top of the agenda for the country’s latest economy minister, Sergio Massa, who has also assumed powers over manufacturing and agriculture.Massa on Thursday conveyed urgency when announcing a plan to give tax and customs benefits to oil companies and to cut some red tape in an effort to turbocharge investments in the country’s Vaca Muerta shale formation.”Vaca Muerta is getting fast-tracked from today,” said Massa. More

Glencore and other global trading groups have stopped supplying Chinese metals merchant Huludao Ruisheng after $500mn worth of copper went missing in a scandal that threatens to squeeze commodity financing in the country.Glencore and Geneva-based IXM have stopped supplying the Hebei-based group, according to people familiar with the matter. Glencore had also transferred some of its existing metal stocks from the port city of Qinhuangdao to alternatives such as Qingdao in an effort to avoid similar problems, added a trader.The case has put the spotlight on the financial health and corporate governance of commodity traders in China, the world’s largest metals consumer. “It’s not the first time we’ve had the problem with material going missing in China,” said Colin Hamilton, managing director of commodities research at BMO Capital Markets. “Onshore financing in China for any foreign bank or trading house will become harder.”A total of 13 Chinese trading companies — 12 of which are state-owned — have a total claim on 300,000 tonnes of Huludao Ruisheng’s copper concentrate worth about Rmb5bn ($740mn).But only one-third of that was in the warehouses, said the trader involved. The Chinese companies are bracing for potential losses as high as Rmb3.3bn ($490mn) and dispatched a team to the city of Qinhuangdao last week to investigate the situation and determine subsequent legal action.Several onshore and foreign traders said the exposure of western companies to the Huludao Ruisheng scandal was limited. Some of those traders said the Chinese state-owned enterprises acting as letter of credit agents for Huludao Ruisheng — which include Jiangxi Copper International Trading, Zhuhai Huafa Group and Wanxiang Resources — are likely to have suffered the brunt of the losses. “Glencore had letters of credit in place on some cargoes” that were bound for Huludao Ruisheng, said a person with direct knowledge of the matter, explaining that Glencore had hedging arrangements in place to mitigate losses. “But if you have the ability to divert cargo then it’s less of an issue.”Glencore and IXM declined to comment. Jiangxi Copper International Trading, Zhuhai Huafa Group and Wanxiang Resources did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment. Huludao Ruisheng did not respond to a request for comment.Huludao Ruisheng, together with its sister company Ningbo Hesheng International Trading, sold copper concentrate to multiple buyers because of a severe liquidity crunch, according to a Chinese-based trader. The medium-sized trading company purchases between 800,000 and 1mn tonnes of imported copper concentrate a year for distribution to domestic Chinese smelters.The alleged mishandling of the copper trades by Huludao Ruisheng is not the first metals financing scandal in China. In 2014, Citigroup and Mercuria, one of the world’s biggest commodities traders, went to court over a $270mn financing agreement on metal-backed lending deals in north-east China. Chinese authorities are also investigating the repeated pledge of aluminium stocks as collateral for loans in Guangdong province.

Hongyuan Hengyi, a unit of middle-sized Chinese brokerage Shenwan Hongyuan Securities, has sued Foshan CICC ST Source Warehouse Management after it failed to collect 4,125 tonnes of aluminium stockpile from the warehouse, according to a June stock exchange filing. Hongyuan Hengyi is seeking compensation of up to Rmb85.6mn. Foshan has not publicly contested the litigation so far. The Shanghai Futures Exchange disqualified it as a designated delivery warehouse in late June. Several trading sources said the string of incidents could shake the willingness of western banks to extend financing for commodity trading activity in China. “It’s not great,” said one trading source. “You don’t want these kinds of things. It begs questions from the banks to be answered.”“The bigger problem is western banks and whether their appetite for further financing takes a hit,” said another trader. He added that the fallout would have been worse if the banks were taking heavy losses as they did when $800mn of hidden losses at Singapore’s Hin Leong Trading led to the collapse of the company in 2020.Hamilton said the scandals could trigger a push for consolidation of China’s trading industry, much as Beijing is moving to create a centralised iron ore buyer.“Regulations are not there in terms of protection from these sorts of losses,” he said. “It doesn’t build confidence in the Chinese system.” More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – South Korea’s SK Hynix aims to select a U.S. site for its advanced chip packaging plant and break ground there around the first quarter of next year, two people familiar with the matter said, helping the United States to compete as China pours money into the burgeoning sector.The plant, whose estimated cost would be “several billions,” would ramp up to mass production by 2025-2026 and employ about 1,000 workers, one of the sources said, declining to be named because the details surrounding the plant have not been made public.It would likely be located near a university with engineering talent, the person added. South Korea’s second-biggest conglomerate SK Group, which owns one of the top memory chipmakers SK Hynix, announced the new plant last month as part of a $22 billion U.S based investment package in semiconductors, green energy and bioscience projects. The announcement, heralded by the White House, allocates $15 billion to the semiconductor industry through research and development programs, materials, and the creation of an advanced packaging and testing facility.”R&D investments will include building out a nationwide network of R&D partnerships and facilities,” the sources said, adding that the advanced packaging facility would package SK Hynix’s own memory chips with logic chips designed by other U.S. companies for machine learning and artificial intelligence applications. In a statement to Reuters, SK Hynix did not specifically address the new details about the plant but said that of the recently announced investment,”$15 billion will be invested in advanced packaging and other semiconductor-related R&D, of which details have not been decided yet.”The United States long ago ceded most basic, low value chip packaging operations to overseas factories mostly in Asia, where chips are placed into protectives frames which are then tested before being shipped to electronics manufacturers. But fresh battle lines are being drawn in the race to develop advanced packaging techniques, which involves placing different chips with different functions into a single package, enhancing overall capabilities and limiting the added cost of more advanced chips.”While the United States and its partners have advanced packaging capabilities, China’s massive investments in advancedpackaging threaten to upend the market in the future,” the White House said in a 2021 report.An executive at China’s top chipmaker SMIC, which was added to a U.S. trade blacklist in 2020, said last year that Chinese companies should focus on advanced packaging to overcome their weaknesses in developing more sophisticated chips, the report added.The SK move comes after Biden signed into law the CHIPS Act this week, providing $52 billion in subsidies for chip manufacturing and research, as well as an estimated $24 billion investment tax credit for chip plants. The sources said both the R&D facilities and the chip packaging plant would qualify for the funding. The announcements also comes amid a flurry of expansion plans announced by chipmakers in the United States in recent years, from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to Samsung (KS:005930) and Intel (NASDAQ:INTC). More

Speaking at an event hosted by Brazil’s banking lobby group Febraban, he acknowledged Pix affected revenues to some degree, since in the past banks charged people for transfer fees, while Pix is free. On the other hand, it offers new services, increases the volume of transactions and reduces cash costs for banks, said Campos Neto.The platform, which is owned by Brazil’s central bank, has been a huge success in the country and winner of international plaudits. It recently surpassed the volume of credit and debit card transactions in the country.Campos Neto said central bankers from other countries have asked about how Pix was implemented, and quoted them as saying their domestic banks would never collaborate.”In Brazil, they collaborated and that’s why we have Pix. Banks understood that, in the end, it’s a win-win model.”President Jair Bolsonaro recently criticized Febraban’s support for manifestos defending democratic institutions saying banks were dissatisfied with Pix. Speaking about the digital currency central bank (CBDC) model being developed in Brazil, Campos Neto said he would like to see it up and running in 2024.According to the central bank’s chief, the Brazilian CBDC will promote new business and will allow for an interaction between physical and digital money, leading banks to start looking at balance sheets in the form of tokens.”Our central bank digital currency is nothing more than a tokenized deposit,” he said. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – California’s High-Speed Rail Authority said Thursday it won $25 million in new federal grant funding to advance its project beyond 119 miles under construction, while pursuing an additional $1.3 billion award.The U.S. Transportation Department (USDOT) grant will provide more than half of the estimated $41 million for a design contract to connect the cities of Madera and Merced. Last fall, the Biden administration awarded it $24 million “for crucial safety, efficiency and construction projects” around Wasco, California said.The new grant helps to fund “design civil infrastructure, track and systems and station platforms,” USDOT said. The project “is expected to reduce vehicle miles traveled by over 200 million miles per year, and the high-speed rail system will run on entirely renewable energy,” it added.The rail will ultimately travel from San Francisco to the Los Angeles basin at over 200 miles per hour (322 kph) in under three hours. The fastest U.S. passenger train, the Acela on the northeast corridor, travels up to 150 miles per hour but aging infrastructure prevents that top speed along much of the route.California is seeking $1.3 billion in federal grant funding to double-track the 119 miles under construction and purchase new train sets.Congress approved $66 billion for rail as part of the 2021 $1 trillion infrastructure bill, with Amtrak receiving $22 billion and $36 billion allocated for competitive grants.In June 2021, the Biden administration restored a $929 million grant for the project. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump pulled funding for the project hobbled by delays and rising costs, calling it a “disaster.”Biden got nicknamed “Amtrak Joe” for commuting between his home state of Delaware and Washington for decades as a U.S. senator. He has called boosting rail a crucial part of his strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cut congestion.California bills its system as the first U.S. high-speed rail project, aiming to begin operations in 2029 and complete much of it by 2033. The cost was estimated at $80 billion in 2020 but in February the authority said costs could ultimately reach $105 billion.California voters approved the initial $10 billion bond for the project in 2008, and $3.5 billion in federal grant money was allocated two years later. More