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Many companies aim for “Best in Class” status, but some are seeking another “B” — B corporation certification.

Certified B corporations, or “B corps,” address the growing consumer interest in supporting socially and environmentally responsible companies.

B corps are essentially for-profit companies that behave more like nonprofits, tackling global issues such as pollution and income disparity through everyday business practices.

‘Business as a force for good’

“B corporations are companies that are using their business as a force for good,” said Andrew Kassoy, co-founder of B Lab, the nonprofit organization that issues B corp certification. “By having that B corp certification, it makes good easy for the consumer … to know that the company is having a positive impact on society,” he added.

For many companies, doing good may take a back seat to making money. But not for certified B corps.

Multimillion-dollar brands like fashion company Eileen Fisher and ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s are among businesses certified as B corps.

“In some cases, it’s about the company trying to create more value for its workers, to create opportunity for workers to grow in the economy and have a job with dignity,” Kassoy said.

“In other cases, it might be about creating a product that’s more environmentally sustainable or socially responsible,” he said.

Growing around the globe

B corps are a growing global movement. Brands large and small make up the more than 2,000 certified B corporations, representing 130 different industries in 55 countries.

“Our foreign certifications are outpacing our U.S.-based certifications for the last year,” said Jennifer Warden, B Lab’s global partner manager. “We’ve got partners in 13 different regions — a lot in Latin America, Europe, a lot of momentum now in the Asia Pacific regions and Africa.”

To qualify as a B corp, companies must score at least 80 out of 200 points on an assessment that covers four key areas: corporate governance, employee rights, community outreach and environmental impact. Everything from waste reduction efforts to leadership roles for women and minorities are considered.

“You’re able to measure how you rank in terms of taking care of the community, how you rank in taking care of the environment, how you take care of your customer,” said Sean Cullen, project coordinator at Uncommon Goods, a Brooklyn-based online retailer that is a certified B corp.

Assessments are made every two years. In addition to maintaining a minimum score, certified B corps are also required to revise company bylaws to reflect accountability to workers and customers.

Depending on a company’s size, B corp certification costs $500 to $25,000 annually. For many, the payoff is in being among the best in the business.

Look for the logo

“When you see that certified B Corp logo on different products, you know that you’re getting a good product,” Cullen said.

B Lab maintains a website with a B corporation directory so consumers can look up a company and verify its certification.

“The goal is that one day, all companies will be able to manage and measure their impact with the same rigor as their profits,” Kassoy told VOA.

“And by doing that … all companies will compete to be best for the world, not just best in the world,” he said.
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Many companies aim for B Corporation certification. Certified “B corps” address the growing demand for social and environmental responsibility. And more consumers are letting their wallets do the talking, aligning with business that complement their personal values. VOA’s Tina Trinh reports on the category of companies called B corps.
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Mexico’s central bank chief said Wednesday the bank altered course on how to protect the peso after a couple of tweets by U.S. President Donald Trump in early January pummeled the currency to near historic lows and wiped out the effect of a $2 billion currency intervention.

The Banco de Mexico in early January had sold dollars to fight off the peso’s nosedive to record lows amid fears the protectionist policy pronouncements of then President-elect Trump could further hammer Latin America’s second-largest economy.

“I’ll say it like this, in simple terms: with two tweets from you know who, the effect [of that intervention] vanished,” Mexican Central Bank chief Agustin Carstens said Wednesday.

“It was precisely then we thought that instead of using hard currency like dollars, it would be better to move to a scheme in which there was the possibility of offering hedges” without having to eat into Mexico’s currency reserves, Carstens added.

Carstens did not specify what tweets he was referring to. But Trump in early January targeted Toyota Motor Corp. and General Motors Co. with the threat of a “big border tax” over cars built in Mexico meant for U.S. consumers.

Since then, Mexico’s central bank has moved from intervening directly in the foreign exchange market through dollar sales by implementing an exchange hedging program for up to $20 billion.

The bank earlier Wednesday sold its entire offer of $200 million in foreign exchange hedges in an auction in which demand far outstripped supply, reflecting appetite for the program aimed at supporting the country’s peso currency.

Carstens said that the peso, which fell to a low of nearly 22 per dollar following the U.S. elections in November but has since recouped most of those losses, is still undervalued and has room to appreciate.

Future interest rate decisions by the U.S. Federal Reserve should not cause further depreciation in the peso, Carstens added.

Regarding monetary policy, Carstens also said that depending on the evolution of inflation expectations, the Banco de Mexico may be able to stop following Fed decisions in tandem.
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Asia’s developing economies will see steady growth this year and the next, though the evolving policies of President Donald Trump’s administration are a major uncertainty, the Asian Development Bank said in a report Thursday.

The Manila, Philippines-based lender forecast growth in developing Asia at 5.7 percent in 2017 — unchanged from its previous forecast — and said that pace would continue into 2018.  

 

It said 30 of the 45 countries covered in the report will see sustained growth that will help offset the gradual slowdown in China, Asia’s biggest economy.

U.S. to gradually raise rates

 

However, the risks include unexpected changes to U.S. government policies in areas such as interest rates. The ADB said the uncertainty could undermine the outlook for the region, which accounts for 60 percent of global economic growth.

 

The U.S. Federal Reserve, which raised its benchmark interest rate in March for the second time in three months, plans to gradually raise rates over the next three years as the economy improves.

 

If those rate increases come more rapidly because of stronger than expected U.S. economic growth, the “sharper than expected monetary tightening could have further consequences for developing Asia,” the ADB said in its Asian Development Outlook.

Trump not mentioned

Economies with high corporate or household debt in particular would be most vulnerable to the shock of higher interest rates, the report said.

 

It said that “possible shifts in trade and tax policies, especially policy changes being discussed in the U.S., could create uncertainty for business, investment and export growth in developing Asia.”

 

The report did not mention Trump by name.

 

Trump accused China of unfair trade practices, such as manipulating its currency. He has threatened to impose punitive tariffs on imports from China. Trade is likely to be a big part of the agenda during meetings between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida on Thursday and Friday.

Positive forecast for India

 

The ADB forecast that China’s economic growth will slow to 6.5 percent this year and 6.2 percent in 2018 from last year’s 6.7 percent, a 30-year low.

 

China is due to release its first quarter GDP figures on April 17.

 

In India, growth will accelerate to 7.4 percent in 2017 and 7.6 percent in 2018, from 7.1 percent last year, as the country rebounds from a one-off demonetization of its highest-value currency bills that “temporarily stymied commerce,” the report said.
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With 70 percent of the world’s population expected to live in cities by 2050, getting urban planning right is crucial to ensuring future cities are safe, resilient and fair places, particularly for the poorest residents, experts said Wednesday.

As Africa urbanizes, its cities will need 700 million more homes, 310,000 more schools and 85,000 additional health centers by 2050, said Christian Benimana, a Rwandan architect.

“How we set up all this infrastructure has to be carefully thought through,” said Benimana, who works with MASS Design Group, which focuses on architecture that promotes human dignity.

“It can’t be a random thing, in the way we’ve been doing it for 100 years. We have to think seriously. If we don’t, the current situation where economic inequality is blatantly visible will worsen,” Benimana said.

What not to do

Rapidly expanding Lagos, for instance, a megacity of 23 million, would like to “sanitize” itself and look more like Singapore, said Liz Agbor-Tabi, an associate director at 100 Resilient Cities, a Rockefeller Foundation initiative.

But in its efforts to make that happen, authorities in recent months have demolished swathes of waterfront slums, leaving thousands of people homeless.

“When cities approach their desire to develop this way, it undermines … cohesion, ownership, well-being, belonging and communities,” Cameroon-born Agbor-Tabi said during a panel discussion at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship.

Make poor visible

What needs to happen instead, said Sheela Patel, the chairwoman of Slum Dwellers International, is a genuine rethink of planning efforts to ensure the poor are not seen as invisible or simply an obstacle to growth and development.

“The real fault line in cities is the difference between formal and informal,” said Patel, who directs the Mumbai-based charity. 

“The old rules make all informal [settlements and activities] criminal, illegal and unacceptable,” she said.

That makes it very hard to effectively include slums and poor people in plans to spread the use of clean energy or address climate change, for instance, she said.

When “everybody who is poor is invisible,” city data collected is often inaccurate and that means “the chances you’ll get anything right, even in the next century, seems dismal,” she said.

“Engineering, planning and architecture are very far away from looking at the kind of changes that are needed to create equitable cities that are welcoming to all,” she added.

Better urban life for all

Some cities, however, have shown how changing planning to include the poor can fundamentally improve urban life for all.

As Medellin, Colombia’s second largest city, expanded rapidly a decade ago, slums sprung up in the hills above the city, Agbor-Tabi said.

Without effective transport to reach the city center or opportunities to find work, many slum dwellers ended up working instead for cocaine cartels.

More transit, fewer homicides

When city officials tried to turn things around they not only took on the cartels but consulted with slum residents to try to find out how they could better connect them to the city and give them other opportunities.

In time, cable cars and escalators were installed, linking previously separated parts of the city, and facilities from libraries to cultural centers were built in poor areas.

Eventually the city’s once notorious homicide rate collapsed and poverty was on the decline too, Agbor-Tabi said.

Young and ambitious

Benimana, the Rwandan architect, said good design and planning can help avoid the kind of problems Medellin suffered.

“We strongly believe if we curate the design and construction process as architects we can curb hindrances to economic equality, to gender equality,” he said.

The risks are particularly large as more people gain access to the internet, smartphones and a clear view of how people live in other parts of the world.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim has called this a “convergence of aspirations” as more people demand a middle-class lifestyle.

“Many people are young, they all have smartphones and they have seriously big aspirations,” Patel said. “They are not like their migrant parents, humble and grateful to be fed two times a day, ready to suffer all injustices.”
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Three years ago, 14-year-old Julius left his family near the lakeside city of Mwanza, Tanzania, to try his luck mining gold.

Today, Julius is in no hurry to leave, despite having one of the riskiest jobs on a chaotic mine site — handling mercury each day with his bare hands.

“It’s good work. I’m paid well,” Julius, who wanted to use only his first name, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, wearing an orange T-shirt and skinny jeans coated with red dirt.

Julius, now 17, said he has been working with mercury for three years, but no one had ever told him it was dangerous.

There are more than 4 million child laborers in Tanzania aged between 5 and 17, according to a government survey released last year in conjunction with the International Labor Organization. That’s roughly a third of the country’s children.

More than 3 million are doing hazardous jobs, including at illegal mines like the one near Nyaligongo in northern Tanzania, where they are exposed to mercury, heavy dust and work long shifts without safety gear.

Many unaware of laws

The Tanzanian government is aware of the problem but has struggled to keep children out of small, unlicensed mines. Its laws do not allow children under 14 to work, and hazardous work is not permitted for children over 14. Tanzania has signed all major international conventions on child labor and introduced its own laws to prevent the worst child labor.

But not everyone knows of the child labor laws, including families and local officials.

Government workers tasked with enforcing the laws lack the staff and funds for inspections, let alone prosecutions.

“In Tanzania we have a good law and strategy to eliminate all kinds of child labor, but the problem here is who is going to implement this at the local level,” said Gerald Ng’ong’a, executive director of Rafiki Social Development Organization (SDO), an NGO that works on child labor in northern Tanzania.

“Local officials don’t have enough information about the law and how to protect children.”

Lure of gold

The problem is especially hard to tackle in the informal sector, said Emma Gordon, senior Africa analyst at global risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, which ranks Tanzania as the 55th-most “at risk” country in its 2017 Child Labor Index, due to be published Wednesday.

“The government’s focus is very much centered around large industrial projects, particularly foreign-owned businesses that would be able to pay fines if violations were discovered,” Gordon wrote in an email to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

 

In Lake Victoria’s gold belt, where gold has been extracted since the 1890s, licensed and unlicensed small mines operate with major mining firms close by. The scrappy “artisanal” mines provide a crucial source of income to people outside Tanzania’s cities, but like the mining site at Nyaligongo, many operate without government licences.

The majority of children working in gold mines are employed by individuals running these unlicensed mines, observers say. They are among the worst exploited of the mines’ workers, typically earning the equivalent of about 1 euro ($1) a day.

“Pit owners employ children because they’re cheap labor,” said Ng’ong’a.

Legal or not, the lure of the mines — and the harsh poverty of the farming communities around them — keep children coming.

Brothers Petromos and Mayalamos, 12 and 16, left their village outside Mwanza because they heard there was good money to be made at this mine.

“The work is difficult,” said Mayalamos. “But I can only leave this place once I’ve earned enough.”

Nyaligongo village relies on gold to survive.

On the village’s main street, cramped shops sell vegetables, SIM cards and lunch to off-duty miners. Middlemen purchase gold from miners to sell in the closest town, Kahama, where it is resold in bigger cities like Mwanza and Dar es Salaam.

Students leave to work

More than 8,000 people live in Nyaligongo, says Faustine Masasila, the village’s secretary and a mine site owner, and more are still arriving.

“There are people here who used to have very miserable lives,” Masasila said, walking through the buzzing market. “If you work hard, you are guaranteed prosperity.”

At the primary school down the road, teachers are less impressed with mining’s promise of a good future.

A poster on the school office wall is a testament to the number of children who leave to work when they are old enough.

This year, in Class 1, there are 236 students aged 6 and 7, while in Class 7 there are only 40 students aged 13 and 14.

“I feel very frustrated when children leave and go to the mines instead of going on to secondary school,” said Mabula Kafuku, the education officer for the ward. “They don’t even have enough knowledge to mine safely.”

Children dropping out of school is a nationwide problem in Tanzania and a major impediment to the government’s aspiration to become a middle-income nation by 2025. A recent Human Rights Watch report found that in 2016, more than 5 million children aged between 7 and 17 were out of school across the country.

For government workers tasked with inspecting mines for health, safety and labor violations, enforcing the law at the far-flung informal mines sprinkled around the Lake Victoria region is an onerous task.

Masasila, the village secretary, cannot recall ever seeing inspectors at the mining site near Nyaligongo.

“If you have children working in remote areas, you need a budget to visit. We don’t have such things,” said Hadija Hersi, a regional labor officer in Mwanza. “That’s why you have NGOs stepping in to intervene.”

Some success

Several nongovernmental organizations, including Terre des Hommes Netherlands, have been trying to get child workers back in school and help families develop alternate income sources to wean them off their wages.

Since 2014, Terre des Hommes Netherlands, working with Rafiki SDO, has managed to help more than 725 children leave the mines. In Geita, another nearby gold-mining area, U.K.-based Plan International has helped 12,000 children withdraw from small-scale mining work and is trying to reach another 11,600.

But as long as people are struggling to find work outside Tanzania’s cities, there is only so much NGOs can do.

At the mine, Nyanjige Mwendesha looks on as her three children, ages 10, 12, and 15, sit on the red, dusty ground, smashing up rocks with small metal hammers in the midday sun.

Mwendesha brought her family to work here after there wasn’t enough rain on her farm this year. The family needed the money.

“When it starts to rain, I’ll go back to the farm,” she said.
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Some big American coal companies have advised President Donald Trump’s administration to break his promise to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement — arguing that the accord could provide their best forum for protecting their global interests.

Remaining in the global deal to combat climate change will give U.S. negotiators a chance to advocate for coal in the future of the global energy mix, coal companies like Cloud Peak Energy and Peabody Energy told White House officials over the past few weeks, according to executives and a U.S. official familiar with the discussions.

“The future is foreign markets, so the last thing you want to do if you are a coal company is to give up a U.S. seat in the international climate discussions and let the Europeans control the agenda,” said the official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

“They can’t afford for the most powerful advocate for fossil fuels to be away from the table,” the official said.

Cloud Peak and Peabody officials confirmed the discussions.

‘Path forward’

In Cloud Peak’s view, staying in the agreement and trying to encourage “a more balanced, reasonable and appropriate path forward” on fossil fuel technologies among signatories to the accord seems like a reasonable stance, said Richard Reavey, Cloud Peak’s vice president of government affairs.

The coal industry was interested in ensuring that the Paris deal provides a role for low-emission coal-fired power plants and financial support for carbon capture and storage technology, the officials said. They also want the pact to protect multilateral funding for international coal projects through bodies like the World Bank.

The Paris accord, agreed by nearly 200 countries in 2015, would seek to limit global warming by slashing carbon dioxide and other emissions from burning fossil fuels. As part of the deal, the United States committed to reducing its emissions by between 26 percent and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump vowed to pull the United States out of the pact, tapping into a well of concern among his fellow Republicans that the United States’ energy habits would be policed by the United Nations.

Seeking companies’ advice

But since being elected, he has been mostly quiet on the issue, and administration officials have recently been asking energy companies for advice.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said last week that the administration expected to make a decision on whether to remain a party to the deal by the time leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy nations meet in late May.

The prospect of the United States remaining in the Paris deal has irritated some smaller miners, including Murray Energy Corp, whose chief executive, Robert Murray helped fund Trump’s presidential bid.

Staying in the Paris accord could also face resistance from within Trump’s party. Republican Congressman Kevin Cramer of North Dakota has been circulating a letter among Republican lawmakers calling on the president to stay in the deal but has gathered only seven signatures so far.
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Michael Evangelista-Ysasaga wants to build a humane wall on the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

That is one reason the Mexican-American answered a call from U.S. Customs and Border Protection for proposals on sections of the wall to be built on the Southwestern border.

Evangelista-Ysasaga said his company, the Penna Group, has experience managing large projects for the government like runways and prisons.

He told VOA that his Texas company has worked for years in the difficult desert environment where mountains, sand, rivers, steep slopes and unusual rock formations complicate the job.  

Evangelista-Ysasaga said if his proposal is one of those accepted, the next step would be to build brief portions of the wall to demonstrate its quality and costs. He said winning a large part of this project could mean work for 150 people for several years.

The Penna Group chief said, however, the job is about more than money. He said he has been concerned about reports that rival companies are offering electric fences or razor wire that he calls “inhumane.”

Evangelista-Ysasaga also said he hoped the controversy over the wall eventually leads to a reformed immigration system that allows people to come to the U.S. who obey the law, pay taxes, and perhaps serve in the military to eventually earn the right to stay here.

High-security

Another company offering proposals is a small manufacturing firm near Boston that is partnering with companies that design and build projects, as well as other firms with experience managing major government contracts.

Riverdale Mills would supply a high-security fence product that CEO Jim Knott said is nearly impossible to climb or cut. He says it also allows border security officers to see through it, so they will not surprised by activity on the other side of the border.

Riverdale already protects nearly 50 kilometers of the border with this product.

It was developed with technology first used to make tough, inexpensive lobster traps, and refined over many years in projects around the world that protect airports, borders, utilities, embassies and industrial facilities.

In a VOA interview, Knott said if the proposal is accepted, its impact on his company will depend on the size of the order for fencing. His company has the capacity to make fencing now, but a really large order might prompt him to hire and train more people or even invest in additional equipment.

The unusual high-security fencing is built inside a factory the size of a small house on a complex manufacturing system that preforms hundreds of welds at a time.
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With legislation overhauling taxes and health care on an uncertain path, President Donald Trump returned to the familiar. Trump brought 52 business leaders from New York City to the White House Tuesday to talk about another favorite campaign issue — infrastructure and economic growth.

 

The U.S. economy has so far proven to be a point of pride for a presidency that has otherwise gotten off to a rocky start. Trump inherited a stable economy from former President Barack Obama, an economic recovery that’s heading toward its eighth year. But Trump believes he can do more for business.

 

Trump and several of his top aides emphasized plans to cut red tape and jumpstart infrastructure projects at Tuesday’s meeting, while also previewing for the CEOs other priorities that include shortening flight times for airplanes, increasing the power grid’s efficiency and targeting programs to improve job training.

 

At one point the president had an aide come on stage to hold up a long scroll of the government’s approval process for building a highway. The president then pledged to eliminate more than 90 percent of the regulations involved and “still have safety.” He provided no details.

 

The administration has committed to directing as much as $1 trillion for infrastructure over the next decade, although it has yet to release policy specifics. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao recently said she expects a plan will be unveiled later this year.

 

But getting a measure through Congress could be difficult given the Republican majority in both chambers and their desire to reduce tax rates as much as possible. An infrastructure plan that relies on direct funding could possibly raise the budget deficit more than one that uses tax credits.

 

Trump touted the plan he says is in the works, telling the room, “We’re talking about a very major infrastructure bill of a trillion dollars, perhaps even more.”

 

Administration officials stressed that it can take more than 8 years between funding and the start of project construction, a timeline White House officials say is too slow given the commitment of hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

 

Trump wanted the CEOs gathered at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building — many of them involved in real estate — to start building roadways, airports, railways, bridges and other infrastructure as quickly as possible.

 

“If you have a job that you can’t start within 90 days, we’re not going to give you money for it,” Trump said.

 

The president followed up his remarks at the town hall by giving an afternoon speech to the Building Trades Union, pledging to “rebuild our nation.”

 

At the CEO town hall, Gary Cohn, director of the White House National Economic Council, noted that infrastructure upgrades could help growth.

 

A new air traffic control system that relied on GPS instead of radar would shorten flights and save on jet fuel, helping consumers, he said. Cohn also suggested updates to the power grid to avoid the loss of 20 percent of electricity in transmission. Trump’s daughter Ivanka spoke to the CEOs about the value of job training.

 

The sales pitch with its technocratic angle seemed perfectly targeted for the assembled business leaders.

 

“It’s terrific in terms of the stuff you’re trying to do to modernize the government, educate and so forth,” said Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group, an investment firm, and chairman of the president’s policy forum.

 

“The outside world doesn’t always get the message that that’s really what is going on,” he said.
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Turkish gold imports rose 17-fold to 28.2 tons in March, as Turks looking to hedge currency risk ahead of a referendum in two weeks time followed President Tayyip Erdogan’s calls to buy gold instead of dollars.

After the sharpest falls in the Turkish lira since the 2008 financial crisis last November, Erdogan called on Turks to sell dollars and buy lira or gold to prop up the local currency. Gold imports have been rising year-on-year ever since.

“People have started opting for gold rather than foreign currencies,” said Mehmet Ali Yildirimturk, a gold specialist in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, adding that a moderate recovery in the lira had also made gold more affordable again.

Gold imports to Turkey rose almost eightfold to 36.7 tons in December after Erdogan’s calls, their highest monthly level in just over two years, according to data from the Precious Mines and Metals Markets of the Istanbul bourse.

Prices in Turkey surged from 132 lira ($36) for 24-carat gold in January to 153 lira in February. On Tuesday, gold prices were around 148 liras.

Gold is seen as a safe place to park assets during times of uncertainty. Turkey holds a referendum on April 16 on constitutional changes which would significantly boost Erdogan’s powers, with polls suggesting a tight race.

($1 = 3.6664 liras)
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