Author: Steven Sahiounie

Projects worth over $1.6 billion were launched in Khabarovsk last year, the governor says Ukraine-related Western sanctions against Russia have failed to stop the flow of investment in the country’s far-eastern Khabarovsk Region, bordering on China, Governor Mikhail Degtyarev said this week. According to the official, a total of 26 new investment projects worth 133 billion rubles ($1.6 billion) were launched in the area in 2022, including a large-scale infrastructure project to build the Pacific Railroad. “It is comparable to the historical construction of the BAM (Baikal–Amur Mainline railway). It is the first private railroad in Russia to have a…

Japanese consumers were hit with the biggest price spikes in over 40 years in March, with especially severe increases for food and electricity, government data shows. The core consumer price index (CPI), which excludes fresh food but includes energy costs, jumped 3.1% in March from a year ago. The reading was unchanged from the previous month and sharply lower from January’s 4.2%, mainly due to the government’s subsidies to soften the cost of utility bills for households. Excluding both food and energy in the index, inflation was measured at 3.8% in March from February’s 3.5%. It has been well above…

Major processing plants are reportedly squeezing out smaller players for supplies from the sanctioned country China’s largest state-owned and private refineries are buying more Russian crude, driving up its price, and forcing smaller independent producers, known as ‘teapots’, to search for cheaper options, Reuters reported this week. Top Chinese buyers, which shunned Russian oil when the EU and G7 imposed an embargo and a price cap on the commodity in December, have restored confidence since then and joined the race for discounted oil. In February, state refiners PetroChina and Sinopec resumed imports, and in March, large private oil refiners Hengli Petrochemical…

There is no threat to the country’s energy security thanks to vast domestic supplies, deputy head Sergey Mochalnikov has said Russia has enough coal reserves to last for centuries, deputy head of the country’s Energy Ministry, Sergey Mochalnikov, said on Friday during a board meeting of the Federal Subsoil Resources Management Agency. When taking into account both tapped and untapped subsoil resources, the country will be well supplied with the coal for 300 years, he said. “We have enough reserves. In terms of coal, we have more than 100 years of explored reserves, and if we use all the resources,…

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that in the event of a complete ban on exports from European Union countries to Russia, it will be possible to buy goods from friendly countries. Speaking at the “Knowledge Marathon” event today, Monday, Siluanov said: “The European Union countries are calling for a ban on exports to our country. Good, they think that we can only buy goods from them. The same goods, perhaps with better quality, we will buy them from friendly countries if necessary.” The Russian minister stressed that the European Union has already exhausted the possibilities of imposing sanctions that…

Alexandria Governorate is preparing to open the Tahya Misr station, which operates with the latest means of shipping and handling goods. Press reports revealed that there are many major projects that Alexandria Port is working on and the Ministry of Transport is interested in them, given that Alexandria Port is one of the most important Egyptian ports. Whether it is general cargo containers, it is managed by a global company specialized in the field of management and operation, the French CMA, which owns shipping lines, which is the second in the world. After entering the Tahya Misr station within the…

Standard & Poor’s credit rating agency expected that the Gulf countries would provide additional economic aid to Egypt if the economic situation needed it. In a recent report, the Foundation said, “We assume that any external funding gaps will be covered by additional support from the GCC government. This is despite media reports that the GCC countries are pressuring Egypt to implement reforms before disbursing funds to buy companies.” Egyptian state-owned. With regard to external financing, Standard & Poor’s expects that net inflows into the financial account will be sufficient to offset the current account deficit during the period up…

Early morning of April 24, two Ukrainian naval drones targeted the Russian city of Sevastopol.The drones attempted to strike at the Russian Black Sea Fleet stationed in the city bay. At least two loud explosions were heard in the city. The attack took place at 3.30 a.m. Moscow time. According to the governor of Sevastopol, one of the naval drones was destroyed by the anti-submarine/sabotage defense forces and the second one blew up on its own. The Black Sea Fleet repelled the night attack, all services are in full readiness in the city. The attack failed. The Russian Black Sea…

The move came after South Korea removed Japan 3 years ago.  Three years after removing Japan from the “white list” of preferred trading partners, South Korea reinstated Japan on Monday, according to the South Korean Trade Ministry. The ministry published a revised version of its public notice of strategic commodities imports and exports. Tokyo is once again identified as Seoul’s preferred trading partner in the updated edition of the document, allowing South Korean businesses exporting strategic items to Japan to employ streamlined registration procedures and acquire authorization in five days rather than 15. Japan, for its part, is still considering when to add South Korea back…

The Defense Ministers of Russia, Syria, Turkey, and Iran will meet tomorrow in Moscow to discuss security issues in the region. A quadripartite meeting between Defense Ministers of Russia, Syria, Turkey, and Iran will take place tomorrow in Moscow, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar announced on Monday. “It is planned to hold a meeting of defense ministers and intelligence leaders of Turkey, Russia, Syria, and Iran in Moscow tomorrow,” Akar said, as quoted by the Anadolu news agency. The Deputy Foreign Ministers of the countries met earlier in April to discuss a possible process for the normalization of ties between Syria and Turkey. …