04/11/2025

BIZ & FINANCE TUESDAY | NOV 4, 2025

18

New UN report tackles inequality-pandemic cycle o World leaders urged to invest in ‘social protection mechanisms’

Opec+ further hikes oil output LONDON: The eight key members of the Opec+ alliance, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, on Sunday said they had agreed a further slight hike to their oil production. The 137,000-barrels-per-day hike will apply from December and remain at that level for the following three months, signifying a “pause” in what had been regular increases since April this year, the group said in a statement following a virtual meeting. The announced increase, which tallied with analyst expectations, has been seen as a bid by the key members of Opec+ – known as the Voluntary Eight (V8) – to gain greater market share. Since April, the V8 group – comprising Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman – has boosted production by around 2.7 million barrels per day (bpd) in total. The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (Opec+) have sped up output increases at a pace very few had anticipated at the beginning of the year, following a long period of producers seeking to combat price erosion by implementing production cuts to make oil scarcer. But faced with growing competition, particularly from US shale oil producers, gaining a larger share of the oil market has become the group’s main priority. The group’s change in strategy “is working to a certain degree”, said Ole Hvalbye, commodities analyst at SEB bank, just ahead of Sunday’s announced production increase. Supply by US shale producers “is not increasing anymore, it’s going sideways”, he told AFP, adding that there is “less investment in new US production”. As in previous months, the V8 group cited “low oil inventories” to justify the latest increase. According to the US Energy Information Administration, crude oil inventories in the US have recently recorded a sharp drop, allowing the price of a barrel of Brent, the global benchmark for crude, to remain steady at around US$65. – AFP PERTH: US firm ConocoPhillips began drilling its first exploration well as part of larger campaign searching for natural gas offshore eastern Australia, 3D Energi, its junior partner in the project, said yesterday. Work began over the weekend on the Essington-1 well, which will take 32 days to drill down to 2,650 metres, 3D Energi said in a filing to the ASX. The well is the first in the Otway Exploration Drilling Programme to develop new gas for Australia’s eastern domestic market, the company said. Eastern and southern Australia are facing supply shortfalls before the end of the decade, causing tension between gas exporters and domestic manufacturers. The campaign represents one of the first major offshore exploration campaigns in East Coast waters in almost seven years as the old fields in the Bass Strait offshore the state of Victoria run dry. Under the Otway program, Conoco will drill two wells this year, out of a total of six planned, and an option for four additional wells if needed. The tight domestic eastern gas market has been a source of political tension for many years. An “Australian Domestic Gas Mechanism” trigger was introduced in late 2017, limiting the export of spot cargoes when gas was tight from the three liquefied natural gas consortia in Queensland fed by the state’s onshore coal seam gas fields, with backup from Victorian gas supplies. – Reuters ConocoPhillips begins drilling off eastern Australia

The council that produced the report was led by experts including Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, former Namibia First Lady Monica Geingos and renowned epidemiologist Sir Michael Marmot. This “inequality-pandemic cycle” could be seen in recent global public health crises such as Covid-19, AIDS, Ebola, influenza and mpox, they said in a statement. “Failure to tackle key inequalities and social determinants since Covid-19 has left the world extremely vulnerable to, and unprepared for, the next pandemic,” it said. The Covid-19 pandemic in particular “pushed 165 million people into poverty while the world’s richest people increased their wealth by more than a quarter”, they said. Inequality “is a political choice, and a dangerous one that threatens everyone’s health”, Geingos said in a press release. The report called on world leaders to increase pandemic preparedness by investing in “social protection mechanisms” within their countries while also tackling global inequality, including through debt restructuring for developing countries.

“Pandemics are not only health crises; they are economic crises that can deepen inequality if leaders make the wrong policy choices,” Stiglitz said. “When efforts to stabilise pandemic-hit economies are paid for through high-interest on debts and through austerity measures, they starve health, education and social protection systems.” This made societies less resilient and more vulnerable to disease outbreaks. “Breaking this cycle requires enabling all countries to have the fiscal space to invest in health security,” Stiglitz said. The report also urged more equal access to treatments and health technology between richer and poorer countries, calling for increased funding for local and regional production and for an immediate waiver of intellectual property once a pandemic is declared. Stiglitz is also set to present a report on global inequality and poverty to world leaders ahead of the G20 summit on Nov 22 and 23. The Group of 20 (G20) comprises 19 leading economies as well as the European Union and the African Union. – AFP

JOHANNESBURG: High inequality makes the world vulnerable to pandemics and creates a vicious cycle that puts public health and economies at risk, leading economists, health experts and the United Nations said yesterday. The findings were based on two years of research by the UNAIDS-convened Global Council on Inequality, AIDS and Pandemics and published in a report released ahead of meetings of G20 leaders in South Africa this month. “High levels of inequality, within and between countries, are making the world more vulnerable to pandemics, making pandemics more economically disruptive and deadly, and making them last longer,” the report said. “Pandemics in turn increase inequality, driving the cyclical, self-reinforcing relationship,” it said.

Ryanair Q2 net profit jumps 20% as fares rise LONDON: Irish no-frills airline Ryanair yesterday announced a rise in net profit for its second quarter on increased ticket prices. Boeing plane deliveries and strong first-half demand. Delays to Boeing aircraft delivery had caused Ryanair to cut its passenger growth target in the past year. Ryanair branded aircraft steps are seen on the tarmac of Manchester Airport in Britain. – REUTERSPIC

year’s 7% full-year fare decline”. He added that Ryanair forecasts “reasonable net profit growth” in its 2026 fiscal year. The company said it has switched more capacity this winter to regions “cutting aviation taxes and incentivising traffic growth”, such as Sweden, Slovakia, Italy, Albania and Morocco. It added that it has switched flights away from “high cost, uncompetitive markets”, including Germany, Austria and Spain.

Profit after tax jumped to €1.7 billion (RM8.4 billion) compared with €1.4 billion one year earlier, the Dublin-based carrier said in a statement. The group expects full-year traffic to increase more than 3% to 207 million passengers due to earlier-than-expected

Revenue jumped 8% to around €5.5 billion. Fares increased 13% in the first half of its fiscal year, thanks in part to a favourable timing of Easter holidays in its first quarter. Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said the company expects to “recover all of last