YCLOAK

Neda Saiyyada was among a handful of women in India whose company gave her six months of maternity leave last year instead of the mandatory three months. The extended leave helped the young mother enormously.

“When I was pregnant, my biggest worry was that I will not be able to leave my child,” she said. “In three months the child is nothing, can’t even hold the neck straight, and my child was eating and sitting up straight when I joined back, so it was a blessing in disguise.”

About 1.8 million women working in India’s formal sector will soon be legally entitled to get the extended maternity leave that Saiyyada was so grateful for after parliament passed a landmark bill earlier this month doubling maternity leave from 12 weeks to 26 weeks.

WATCH: India maternity leave

India is joining a handful of countries, such as Canada and Norway, that give women generous paid leave of six months or more.

Besides boosting maternal and child health, experts hope the longer maternity leave will encourage more women to return to work and help close a growing gender gap in a country where women account for about one-quarter of the workforce.

Women in workforce

Shachi Irde, executive director of the nonprofit Catalyst India Women’s Research Center, worried that the number of women in the workforce is not only small, it has been declining. 

“In 2004 to 2005 there were about 37 percent women in the workforce, now it has dropped to 29 percent,” she said.

Pointing out that India is the only country facing this downward trend, she said “there are many reasons, but one of them is child care.”

According to a study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, 25 percent of new mothers in India quit their jobs after having their first child. And research by Catalyst shows that family responsibilities make it tougher for women to climb the career ladder: About half of working women do not go beyond junior or midlevel positions.

India has few quality child care facilities and most women fall back on the family to take care of children.

The new law tries to address that problem by making it compulsory for workplaces employing more than 50 people to set up day care facilities.

The extended leave itself also will be a huge help, said Neda Saiyyada, who added, “It will encourage women to stay connected with the workplace.”

Will hiring drop?

However some human resource professionals fear the new bill could discourage employers from hiring women, particularly small companies that would see the extended maternity leave as an additional burden.

“For businesses, it is just not easy to not have an employee for six months,” said Sairee Chahal, founder of SHEROES, a portal for women job seekers. “Instead of saying we will hire you as an employee, they will hire you for noncore roles or for more modular roles so this does not fall on them.”

She pointed out that maternity leave has been doubled at a time when the organized sector is facing multiple challenges and shorter business cycles. 

“It (companies) is also under churn of a different kind, under churn of automation, under churn of globalization. So all those trends are overpowering it at this stage,” she said.

Others say the government should also have looked at involving both parents in the extended leave period instead of only making the provision for the mother.

Caveats

But in a country that is coping with a huge population of 1.3 billion people, the 26 weeks of leave will only be given for the first two children, and women would only be entitled to 12 weeks for a third child.

The bill also brings no benefits to women working in the informal sector, which employs as much as 90 percent of the female workforce. That includes housemaids, laborers or workers in small workshops, who do not get entitlements such as paid leave.

But for the time being, those who stand to get six months off are celebrating.

Traptika Chauhan who is expecting a baby in August was “extremely, extremely relieved” when she heard about the passage of the bill. She pointed out that with more and more people staying in nuclear families, child care is a challenge for working couples.

“I don’t have my parents who stay here or my in-laws who stay here. Then it is really difficult to leave such a small baby all by himself or herself and leave for work,” she said. “Plus your own body is trying to cope up so extremely, extremely great news and perfect for me.”
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Grumbling Venezuelans were lining up for scarce gasoline across the OPEC nation on Wednesday, due to mounting oil industry woes in the country with the world’s largest crude reserves.

Venezuela, which also has the world’s cheapest gasoline, has wrestled with intermittent gasoline shortages in recent months, especially in the central coastal area.

Long lines were reported in capital Caracas, which is unusual, and the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz on Wednesday.

Dozens of cars could be seen snaking into streets and some service stations were shuttered.

“I can’t find 95 octane gasoline anywhere. And we’re an oil-producing country! It’s pathetic,” said Jose Paredes in Caracas’ wealthy Altamira district.

The waits heap extra hardship on the nation of 30 million, where many already jostle for hours in hot lines for food and medicines amid product shortages caused by a brutal economic crisis under leftist president Nicolas Maduro.

State oil company PDVSA’s new head of trading blamed the shortages on problems with internal shipping of products and vowed the issue would be solved soon.

“We’re strengthening deliveries to the center of the country to stabilize gasoline supplies,” Ysmel Serrano tweeted.

Industry Woes

The gasoline shortage comes as new top executives are appointed at PDVSA, largely from political and military quarters, and increasing problems in Venezuela’s oil industry.

As of March 22, about a dozen tankers were waiting around PDVSA ports in Venezuela and the Caribbean to discharge refined products, components, and diluents crucial for oil blending, Reuters vessel tracking data showed.

Backlogs and payment delays to PDVSA’s suppliers, which are now demanding to be prepaid, sometimes mean shippers wait weeks to deliver oil products.

And many tankers are idle because PDVSA cannot pay for hull cleaning, inspections, and other port services, according to internal documents and Reuters data.

Union leader Ivan Freites, a PDVSA critic, said Venezuelan refineries, which have been at around half capacity for months amid outages, only had oil inventories for around two days versus a standard of 15.

“To solve this immediately, we would need deliveries from at least 10 tankers,” he said.

In Venezuela’s industrial city of Puerto Ordaz, the problem has been increasing this week and National Guard soldiers were trying to maintain order at operational service stations.

“We’ve been working extra hours, opening before 6 a.m and closing after 11 p.m. because of the lines,” said Caura service station manager Felix Rodriguez, tired and with blood-shot eyes, adding he had not been given a reason for the slow deliveries.
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Dozens of German companies including Siemens attended meetings in Bolivia this week to discuss building a coast-to-coast railway through Brazil, Bolivia and Peru that could speed up the export of corn and soybeans to Asia, German and Bolivian officials said on Wednesday.

The massive, $10-billion project would involve building a 3,700-kilometer (2,299 miles) rail line across the continent, linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, through mountains and jungles.

“This is the project of the century,” said Germany’s State Secretary of German Transport, Building and Urban Development Rainer Bomba.

Representatives from Brazil, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia as well as Germany and Switzerland are still studying the feasibility of the train route, which would drastically shorten shipping routes from Brazil’s coast to Asian markets for key commodities.

Siemens, Europe’s top engineering group, participated in the meetings “to get more information about the project,” spokesman Dennis Hofmann said in an email.

“The project is at an early stage and questions have to be clarified,” he wrote.

The discussions, on Tuesday and Wednesday, come after a similar, Chinese-led project build a trans-South America railway ran into roadblocks late last year due to cost and environmental concerns.

Bolivian and German officials did not name other companies that attended the meetings, but Bomba said: “The presence of 40 German companies here demonstrates that Germany is not only in the planning phase, but also in the realization phase.”

Bolivia’s Public Works Minister Milton Claros told Reuters Bolivia and Germany had signed agreements for technical assistance and financing for the project. The ministry said the project would connect the Brazilian port of Santos to the Peruvian port of Ilo and had a preliminary cost estimate of $10 billion.

Brazil is expected to export 28 million tons of corn and 61 million tonnes of soybeans in the 2016/17 crop year according to the USDA. It is the world’s largest soybean exporter and second-largest corn exporter.

China and Peru agreed in 2015 to study a 3,000-mile-long railway through the Andes, but Peru balked when China estimated its cost at $60 billion. Peru’s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski later said the rail should go through Bolivia.

Land-locked Bolivia has long pined for a corridor to the Pacific, blasting Chile for taking its coastline in a war in the late 19th century and maintaining its Navy on Lake Titicaca.

Brazil had also questioned the Chinese project and would likely back the Bolivian route, a member of the Brazilian delegation said.

“We identified problems in the reports made by the Chinese group. We communicated the points of disagreement to Chinese authorities and we are seeing how we can continue the studies,” said Joao Carlos Parkinson, coordinator of economic affairs at Brazil’s Foreign Ministry, who attended the meetings.

Brazil’s Ambassador to Bolivia Raymundo Santos said talks would continue.

“Our delegation confirmed Brazil’s interest in participating,” he said. “The political side has been resolved, but now the technical work has to move forward.”
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The big snowstorm in the U.S. Midwest and East last week was a respite for some small-business owners whose revenue took a hit from the generally mild winter and who now are rethinking their cold-weather strategies.

Retailers who sell winter clothing or snow shovels have had fewer customers this season. Plumbers who expected to fix frozen pipes have had less work, and people who make money removing snow have had idle equipment. On the flip side, better weather means more business for companies that cater to people who want to be outdoors.

The period from December through February was the sixth-warmest winter on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. government agency that compiles statistics about the weather. The average January temperature in the lower 48 states, which excludes Alaska and Hawaii, was 33.6 degrees Fahrenheit (less than 1 degree Celsius). That’s a few degrees above the 20th-century average. And February was downright hot in some places — nearly 12,000 local warm records were set or tied, including a 99-degree (37-degree Celsius) reading in Oklahoma.

Meanwhile, snow was sparse in many places. Chicago, which has often had 1 foot (0.3 meter) or more in February, was virtually snowless last month. The temperate weather meant dog owners didn’t need warm coats and protective booties for their pooches. Hope Saidel, co-owner of the retailer Golly Gear in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, had half the normal amount of sales during January.

‘Devastating’ drop

“When we heard the 10-day forecast was going to be up in the 60s [Fahrenheit], we thought, ‘This is not going to be good,’ ” Saidel says. “It was devastating.”

Saidel quickly changed her strategy to focus on warm-weather items like leashes, harnesses and bicycle baskets that can carry small dogs, and moved the coats and booties away from the front of the store. That helped salvage the season.

The warmer weather saved homeowners from frozen and burst pipes, but their good fortune has curtailed business for Ted Puzio’s plumbing and electrical company in Roanoke, Virginia. The average low temperature in the area this winter has been several degrees above normal, according to the government figures. Southern Trust Home Services, whose business is entirely residential, also isn’t getting as many service calls as usual for heating system repairs.

Puzio’s overall business is growing, but he notices the shortfall from the plumbing side of the company.

“We’re not getting the bump-up we typically do,” Puzio said.

Atlantic Westchester, a Bedford Hills, New York, company that services commercial heating and air-conditioning systems, makes more money when it’s colder and heating systems have to work harder. But this has been the second mild winter in a row, and President Bud Hammer estimates revenue is down 15 percent from a typical season.

Maintenance work

To make back some revenue, the company has sought work at buildings that hadn’t maintained their heating systems during and after the Great Recession that began nearly a decade ago. Hammer’s salespeople are contacting building managers and keeping watch for potential customers with telltale signs of trouble — like a building that has open windows because the heating system is in overdrive.

Temperatures that the U.S. government said have been several degrees higher than normal have hurt both of Tara Saxton’s businesses in the Fremont, New Hampshire, area. Saxon’s contracting company, KTM Exteriors & Recycling, has missed out on cold-weather work like clearing snow off roofs. It also has been unable to start on warmer-weather projects like replacing roofs and siding, because temperatures that made it into the 60s (more than 15 degrees Celsius) have also quickly nose-dived. Although Saxton has been doing more interior work like kitchens, revenue is still down more than $200,000 this winter.

Saxton’s other business, Maple Rock Racing, a promoter of snowmobile races, was hurt when several races had to be postponed because of the lack of snow — the second straight year a mild weather has disrupted the schedule. For the races that were held, attendance was in the hundreds, not thousands. Some sponsors already withdrew after last winter, and Saxton is uneasy about the future.

“I’m sure after this year, we’ll be in a similar situation when we go calling [sponsors] this summer,” she said.

But some companies got a revenue boost this winter.

At Sunnyland Furniture in Dallas, a patio furniture retailer whose sales usually slow in winter, warmer weather enticed people to buy fire pits and seating so they can sit outside when the temperature is in the 50s (more than 10 degrees Celsius), Vice President Brad Schweig said. Shoppers are also looking ahead to spring.

“We’ve seen things ramp up earlier than usual,” Schweig said.

Swimming in customers

Jason Askins’ pool remodeling and repair franchise had an 80 percent increase in business the first two months of this year because of the warmer weather in Edmond, Oklahoma.

“People are starting to think about getting the pool ready,” said Askins, whose phone at America’s Swimming Pool doesn’t usually start ringing until April. The extra business allowed Askins to hire seasonal workers early; he’s already brought in five and expects six more, giving him a staff of 15.

When Michelle and Frank Griffith started their food truck business, Firehouse Grilling Co., last year, they expected to take the winter off, as Cleveland usually has high temperatures around 37 (3 degrees Celsius). But the average since December has been several degrees above that, with February’s highs around 50 (10 degrees Celsius), according to government figures — warm enough to bring people outdoors to get something to eat.

“The snowblower hasn’t been even taken out,” Michelle Griffith said. She estimated that the couple picked up an extra 20 percent in revenue because they kept the converted firetruck operating through the winter. But they did change the menu to fit the calendar.

“We’ve done chili, hot chocolate, warm comfort foods,” Griffith said. “I wouldn’t sell chili in the middle of the summer at an amusement park.”
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Sears, once the monolith of American retail, says that there is “substantial doubt” that it will be able to keep its doors open.

 

Company shares, which hit an all-time low last month, tumbled more than 12 percent Wednesday.

 

Sears has been a member of the retail dead pool for years, but until this week the company had not openly acknowledged its tenuous existence, said Ken Perkins, who heads the research firm Retail Metrics LLC.

 

Sears has long maintained that by balancing the sale of key assets while at the same time enticing customers with loyalty programs, it would eventually turn the corner.

 

Yet industry analysts have placed the staggering sums of money that Sears is losing beside the limited number of assets it has left to sell, and concluded that the storied retailer may have reached the point of no return.

 

The company has lost $10.4 billion since 2011, the last year that it made a profit. Excluding charges that can be listed as one-time events, the loss is $4.57 billion, Perkins says, but how the losses are stacked no longer seem to matter.

 

“They’re past the tipping point,” Perkins said. “This is a symbolic acknowledgement of the end of Sears of what we know it to be.”

 

For Sears to survive, Perkins believes it would need to do so as a company running maybe 200 stores. It now operates 1,430, a figure that has been vastly reduced in recent years.

 

Analysts see not much of a future

As for Kmart, which Sears also owns, Perkins does not see much of a future.  

 

Millions of dollars have been funneled through the hedge fund of Chairman and CEO Edward Lampert to keep Sears afloat but with sales fading, it is burning through cash. Lampert combined Sears and Kmart in 2005, about two years after he helped bring Kmart out of bankruptcy

 

According to a regulatory filing late Tuesday, Sears Holdings Corp. lost more than $2 billion last year. Adjusted for one-time charges, its loss was $887 million.

 

Sears has been selling assets, most recently its Craftsman tool brand. But it says its pension agreements may prevent the spin-off of more businesses, potentially leading to a shortfall in funding.

“Our historical operating results indicate substantial doubt exists related to the company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” Sears said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

 

Sears, which employs 140,000 people, announced a major restructuring plan in February with hopes of cutting costs by $1 billion through the sale of more stores, jobs cuts and brand asset sales.  And it’s reconfiguring its debts to give itself more breathing room.

But it has to get more people through the doors or shopping online for what it’s selling.

 

Sales at Sears and Kmart locations that have been open at least a year, a key indicator of a retailer’s health, dropped 10.3 percent in the final quarter of 2016.

 

The company plans to use a big portion of the $900 million it got for Craftsman to shore up its pension plan. It will put $250 million in cash and some income from annual payments toward the plan as part of a deal with the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp., a federal agency that protects private pension plans.

 

The company said in its regulatory filing, however, that its agreement with the agency might stand in the way of more asset sales that would buy it more time.

 

Lampert has long pledged to return Sears to greatness, leveraging best-known brands like Kenmore and DieHard, as well as its vast holdings of land.

 

Failing to reach new kind of consumer

Those aspirations have been scrambled by a new consumer that has ripped up the decades-old playbook that the industry has relied upon for years.

 

There are also new and dynamic players that have also revolutionized the market, namely Amazon.com.  

 

Department stores have been among the hardest hit by those seismic changers as Americans spend money on their homes or on dinners out, rather than on clothing. When they do buy clothes, they’re not spending much, hitting up places like T.J. Maxx for fat discounts.

 

Sears has upped its presence online, but is having a hard time disguising its age. Its stores are in need of a major redo.

 

Longtime rivals like Wal-Mart and Target are spending heavily to revitalize stores and they’re intensely focused on a new consumer that goes online before stepping into a store.  Meanwhile, J.C. Penney has been hitting Sears hard by bringing back major appliances to its stores. Penney, Macy’s and others have been shuttering locations as well. But real estate research firm Green Street Advisors says about 800 stores, or 20 percent of all U.S. mall anchor space, would need to close to match the inflation-adjusted sales productivity of 2006.

 

Sears in January said it would close 108 additional Kmart and 42 more Sears locations.

 

In its most recent quarter, Sears, based in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, just northwest of Chicago, lost $607 million. Revenue declined to $6.05 billion from $7.3 billion during the same period the year before.

 

It was the sixth consecutive quarter of losses.

 

“They’ve been delusional about their ability to turn around the business,” said Perkins.
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Farmers in the U.S. agricultural heartland who helped elect Donald Trump are now pushing his administration to avoid a trade dispute with Mexico, fearing retaliatory tariffs that could hit over $3 billion in U.S. exports.

The value of exports at risk is based on a Reuters analysis of a tariff list that Mexico used in a trucking dispute six years ago and that  Mexican officials have said could serve as a model if Trump sets new barriers to Mexican goods.

Pork producers contacted Trump’s transition team soon after the November 8 election to stress that tariff-free access to Mexico has made it their top export market by volume, said John Weber, president of the National Pork Producers Council.

The council has sent the administration multiple letters, including one signed in January by 133 agricultural organizations, and is arranging for several hog farmers to fly to Washington next month to talk to officials.

‘Pounding them’ on trade

“We just keep pounding them on how critical trade is to us,” said Weber, who fears Mexico could revive the list of mostly agricultural products it successfully used to push Washington into letting Mexican truckers on U.S. highways in 2011.

Pork products topped that list and, if revived, the tariffs would apply to over $800 million worth of annual pork exports, according to data compiled by IHS Markit’s Global Trade Atlas.

“We’ll be the first to take the hit,” Weber said.

The lobbying effort by U.S. businesses that rely on the Mexican market shows how Mexico can press its case in Washington despite having an economy 1/17 the size of America’s and relying on the U.S. market for nearly 80 percent if its exports.

In Iowa, where pigs outnumber people 7 to 1, hog and grain farmer Jamie Schmidt voted for Trump in part on his promise to cut regulatory burdens for businesses.

 

Now he and others who farm the flat, rich land around Garner, Iowa, worry about trade. Schmidt gets about half of his income from hogs, earning $4 to 5 for each of the 425 pigs he sells per week, usually to a Tyson Foods packing plant in nearby Perry, Iowa.

Tariffs from Mexico could depress U.S. wholesale prices and wipe out his profits, Schmidt said. “It would be devastating.”

Targeting states

In December, after fears of a trade dispute fueled a deep peso slump, Mexico started mapping out U.S. states that are most reliant on its market, replicating the strategy it used in the trucking dispute, said two senior Mexican officials.

Mexican officials also prepared briefs, seen by Reuters, on Mexico’s own risks in a dispute, including losing much of its cost advantage in building cars, such as the Ford Fusion made in Hermosillo, Mexico.

Reuters could not verify a complete list of products and states Mexico considered targeting this time around.

But the country’s foreign minister said last month that tariffs could target Iowa, which raises a third of U.S. hogs and exports about a quarter of its pork production, $100 million of which went to Mexico last year.

The minister also said tariffs could aim at Wisconsin, the center of U.S. cheese production, and has singled out Texas for its “notable” trade surplus with Mexico. All three states voted for Trump in the 2016 election, with the president taking Iowa and Wisconsin by slim margins.

 

Trump has accused Mexico of destroying U.S. jobs and has vowed to leave the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico if he cannot renegotiate better terms with Mexico. The United States went from running a small trade surplus with Mexico in the early 1990s to a $63 billion deficit in 2016.

Besides pork, cheese was also a top target in the trucking dispute in which Mexico retaliated with tariffs against rules that banned its trucks from U.S. roads.

$3B-plus in U.S. exports

Some $200 million in current annual exports of cheese would be targeted if the tariff list were revived, according to the IHS database, which the U.S. government uses to measure the impact of trade disputes. The full tariff list would apply to $3.25 billion in current U.S. exports.

John Holevoet, the director of government affairs at Wisconsin’s Dairy Business Association, said he has attended multiple meetings with Wisconsin federal lawmakers this year where risks of Mexican trade were discussed.

Weber of the pork producers group said he believed the Trump administration understands the vulnerability of U.S. farm exports. Republican Representative Steve King, who represents Iowa’s agriculture-focused 4th Congressional District, also pointed out that Iowa’s role as the first state in the presidential nominating process helps keep farm interests in Washington’s view.

But King told Reuters he was worried the White House was still not taking trade risks seriously enough.

A possible 20 percent tax on Mexican imports, which White House spokesman Sean Spicer has said could also pay for Trump’s proposed border wall, would cause a trade war, he said.

King said he had been in contact with the White House on the matter but had yet to secure a one-on-one meeting with the president. “I’m making sure that here in Washington they know what this means.”
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Oil prices dipped on Wednesday as rising crude stocks in the United States underscored an ongoing global fuel supply overhang despite an OPEC-led effort to cut output.

Prices for front-month Brent crude futures, the international benchmark for oil, were at $50.79 per barrel at 0451 GMT, down 17 cents, or 0.3 percent, from their last close.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were down 18 cents, or 0.4 percent, at $48.08 a barrel.

“Crude oil prices fell as concerns over rising U.S. inventories resurfaced,” ANZ bank said on Wednesday.

U.S. crude oil inventories climbed by 4.5 million barrels in the week to March 17 to 533.6 million barrels, the American Petroleum Institute (API) said late on Tuesday.

“The American Petroleum Institutes’ crude inventories stuck the knife into crude overnight, coming in at a 4.5 million barrel increase against an expected increase of 2.8 million barrels,” said Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at futures brokerage OANDA in Singapore.

“If the API stuck the knife in, tonight’s EIA Crude Inventory figures may twist it. A blowout above the 2.1 million barrel increase expected, may well torpedo oil below the waterline,” he added.

Official U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) oil storage data is due on Wednesday.

The bloated storage comes as U.S. oil production has risen over 8 percent since mid-2016 to more than 9.1 million barrels per day (bpd), levels comparable to late 2014, when the oil market slump started.

Rising production in the United States and elsewhere, and bloated inventories, are undermining efforts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to cut output and prop up prices.

“OPEC’s market intervention has not yet resulted in significant visible inventory draw-downs, and the financial markets have lost patience,” U.S. bank Jefferies said on Wednesday in a note to clients, although it added that the cutbacks would likely start to show by the second half of the year if OPEC extends its production cuts beyond June.

Despite cuts, analysts warned of renewed or ongoing oversupply in coming years, especially as U.S. shale producers ramp up and once OPEC returns to full capacity.

U.S. bank Goldman Sachs warned its clients in a note this week that a U.S. shale led production surge “could create a material oversupply in 2018-19.”
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Brazil’s government plans to announce spending freezes of 30 billion to 35 billion reais ($9.7 billion to $11.3 billion) this week to help meet part of its 2017 budget deficit target, the Senate leader said on Tuesday.

The rest of the shortfall will have to come from raised taxes and higher revenues from such sources as infrastructure concessions to private companies, Senator Romero Jucá said in an interview.

Jucá said tax increases being studied include one on gasoline and another on financial operations called IOF, both of which would not require legislation.

“The freezes will be a maximum of 30 to 35 billion reais, More than that would be an amputation,” Jucá said.

Brazil’s primary budget deficit target for this year is 139 billion reais, but a severe recession shrunk revenues and the government is expected to miss that goal by 65 billion to 70 billion reais.

Nothing has been decided

Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles told reporters that the freezes have not been decided yet, nor any tax hikes.

President Michel Temer’s key measure to bring the widening deficit under control, reform of Brazil’s costly social security system to make it pay for itself, is facing a battle for approval in Congress.

Jucá said the government is working on an agreement between the Senate and lower chamber on the proposal which established a minimum retirement age among other unpopular changes.

The consolidated report will cover possible adjustments to make the bill more palatable to lawmakers, and some of them will be announced by Temer by the end of this week, Jucá said.

Change in retirement age?

Jucá said he believed the government must insist on the introduction of a minimum retirement age of 65, a controversial move in a country where people on average work until they are 54.

Modernizing labor laws, next on the government’s reform list to lower business costs and help pull Brazil from its worst recession, will get off the ground before the pension bill clears Congress, Jucá said.

An outsourcing bill will be put to a vote this week in the Senate and merged with another proposal from the lower chamber, so that it can be quickly sent to Temer to sign into law.

The bills face fierce opposition from labor unions who see allowing temporary workday contracts as an attack on workers’ rights. Jucá said temporary union payments will be added to the legislation to keep labor leaders happy.
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Amid continuing economic turmoil, Venezuela skipped heating oil contributions to a Massachusetts-based nonprofit for a second consecutive winter, signaling that the popular program that began with fanfare after Hurricane Katrina may be kaput.

The decision by Venezuela’s Citgo Petroleum Corp. to bow out of the program founded by Joseph P. Kennedy II, which has helped hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents, coincides with plummeting oil prices and corresponding economic problems in oil-rich Venezuela.

Hopes of a late contribution to the “Joe-4-Oil” program to help the poor heat their homes faded with spring’s arrival this week, Kennedy said.

“While this is not good news, it certainly isn’t surprising,” the businessman and former congressman told The Associated Press.

Citgo officials declined to comment.

The Citgo heating oil program was launched after Katrina damaged U.S. refining capacity in 2005, causing energy costs to spike as winter approached.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the fiery leader who died in 2013, responded to an appeal from Kennedy to help out after criticizing then-Republican President George W. Bush for failing to do enough for the poor. Houston-based Citgo is a subsidiary of the Venezuelan national oil company.

Over the years, the program has provided $500 million in heating assistance to 2 million program participants in 25 states and the District of Columbia, supplementing federal energy assistance.

Rita Soucier, 80, said she and her husband received assistance many times over the years, helping the couple stay warm in their trailer in Howland, Maine.

This year, there was no help, said Soucier, whose husband, a retired paper mill worker, died last month. But she said she’s grateful for past help, typically 100 gallons of heating oil.

“It helps a lot when you’re not the richest people in the world,” said Soucier, who said her needs are few. “As long as I can get by, I don’t want any more or any less.”

 

Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, has been hurt by declining prices. The unraveling economy, cuts to social programs and growing political divisions have rocked the once-stable country, leading to food shortages and a dramatic drop in currency value.

Citizens Energy continues to operate other programs. The nonprofit was created in 1979 to channel revenue from commercial enterprises to charitable programs.

But the heating oil program may fold. The “Joe-4-Oil” television advertisements did not run this year or last, and a message online said that applications for winter heating oil help were not being accepted.

The nonprofit isn’t giving up hope, however. The Citgo program was suspended in 2009, only to return a few months later.

Citizens Energy continues to operate solar, wind and transmission projects that provide assistance, including solar panels for low-income homes, energy grants for homeless shelters and natural gas subsidies for low-income households.

“The good news is Citizens Energy continues to grow and prosper and provide significant benefits to low-income people around our country as a result of businesses that provide the financial firepower to fulfill our mission,” Kennedy said.
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