BEIJING: China, the world’s biggest auto market, is considering a ban on fossil fuel cars in a major boost to the production of electric vehicles as it seeks to ease pollution.
The move would follow similar plans announced by France and Britain to outlaw the sale of petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040 to clamp down on harmful emissions. Xin Guobin, vice minister of industry and information technology, told a forum in the northern city of Tianjin at the weekend that his ministry has started “relevant research” and is working on a timetable for China.
“These measures will promote profound changes in the environment and give momentum to China’s auto industry development,” Xin said in remarks broadcast by CCTV state television. “Enterprises should strive to improve the level of energy saving for traditional cars, and vigorously develop new energy vehicles according to assessment requirements,” he said.
China produced and sold more than 28 million vehicles last year, according to the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers. The sale of new energy vehicles topped 500,000 in the world’s second largest economy in 2016, over 50 percent more than the previous year, according to national industry figures.
The government introduced in June a draft regulation to compel automakers to produce more electrically-powered vehicles by 2020 through a complex quota system. As the measure looms, foreign auto makers have announced plans to boost the production of electric cars in China.
Volvo will introduce its first 100-percent electric car in China in 2019, while Ford will market its first hybrid vehicle in early 2018 and envisions 70 percent of all Ford cars available in China will have electric options by 2025. Xin said the policy would be implemented “in the near future”, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
OSLO: Norway, which already boasts the world’s highest number of electric cars per capita, said Monday that electric or hybrid cars represented half of new registrations in the country so far this year.
“This is a milestone on Norway’s road to an electric car fleet,” Climate and Environment Minister Vidar Helgesen said.
“The transport sector is the biggest challenge for climate policy in the decade ahead. We need to reduce (CO2) emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2030 and … this requires the electrification of the car fleet,” Helgesen told AFP.
Sales of electric cars accounted for 17.6pc of new vehicle registrations in January and hybrid cars accounted for 33.8pc, for a combined 51.4pc, according to figures from the Road Traffic Information Council.
“It is important to demonstrate that it is possible to achieve a technological transition and a market transformation in transport,” Helgesen said.
“In this respect, Norway is a political laboratory where we are showing that things go quickly if we have the right incentive mechanisms,” he added.
Norway, the biggest oil producer in Western Europe, has adopted a generous policy to encourage the purchase of cleaner vehicles.
Chir pine and Kachnar saplings are ready for plantation in the Haripur nursery. -Image by Asim Ali
The torrential rains and landslides during April in northern Pakistan’s resulted in the deaths of more than 140 people and left widespread destruction. It is the second spell of heavy rain this spring in the area and experts say that heavy deforestation and rapid erosion of mountainsides exacerbated the damage.
According to Leading Environmentalist Malik Amin Aslam, “While climate change is causing the enhanced intensity of rainfall, deforestation is unfortunately abetting the mass scale damage.”
Malik Amin is also advisor to the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party in north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, and the architect and chairman of the party’s “Green Growth Initiative”. Under this initiative, the party has begun a number of activities to reverse the past sixty years of deforestation.
“Along with a crackdown on the timber mafias, we have started the large scale aforestation project called “The Billion Tree Tsunami” to reverse this trend and save future generations,” he told thethirdpole.net.
Northern Pakistan is part of the Himalayan-Hindu Kush-Karakorum region and yet the country has one of the lowest forest covers in the region (less than 3pc compared to India’s 20pc and Bhutan’s 70pc).
The KP government has promised $150 million to the forest restoration effort. “The KP government has committed to not only reversing the high rate of deforestation, but also shifting the current philosophy of treating forests as ‘revenue’ machines towards preserving them as valued ‘natural capital,’” explained Malik Amin.
The project kicked off in June 2015 and so far 250 million saplings have been raised in largely private nurseries across KP. These saplings are now being planted across the province. Much of the hard work has already been done according to Malik Amin.
“As this massive nurseries infrastructure is in place, it would be much easier to replicate this next year and take this number to 300 million saplings. The remaining 450 million saplings are being naturally generated in forest enclosures, which are being protected through the participation of local communities. All this will hopefully allow KP to achieve its target of one billion plantations by the end of next year”.
This is a big jump from previous years when only about 20 million saplings used to be planted every year.
We recently visited Haripur district in KP to see how this ambitious project was progressing on the ground. Raees Khan, the district forest officer for Haripur, showed us around the “central model” government nursery in Nikkahpah near the main road.
The nursery, which has grown around 600,000 plants since it was set up last year, was full of Chir pine saplings that would soon be ready for plantation. The nursery also had Kachnar saplings (a local variety) and Eucalyptus, which are thirsty trees that could dry out the sub-soil water. Eucalyptus are being grown on popular demand of local communities as the fast growing species can bring economic returns within five years, explained Raees Khan.
The Billion Tree Project’s government nursery in Haripur -Image by Asim Ali
Some ecologists have warned that the campaign will be a futile because the wrong species of trees are being identified for the wrong places.
Lal Badshah, an ecologist and assistant professor at Botany department in University of Peshawar, is one such critic. He told News Lens Pakistan that conocarpus–a tropical mangrove species found along rivers in limited coastal areas–are being planted in the mountainous Peshawar region.
Malik Amin rejects such criticisms, “A high preference is given to indigenous varieties for the local areas. In the south, where there is marginal and water logged lands, the Eucalyptus plantations aid in lowering the water table,” he said.
These nurseries have now sprung up in almost every district of KP, from Chitral in the mountainous north to Dera Ismail Khan in the southern plains. Most are privately owned and the demand is increasing.
Under the ‘youth nurseries’ package, the provincial government provides a secure buyback agreement for unemployed youth or rural women to set up kitchen nurseries – with about 25,000 saplings – as well as a 25pc of costs in advance. The nursery can then earn around Rs12000 to 15000 per month, which is a sizeable income in the area. In fact, most of the small scale or household nurseries are currently being run by rural women who have managed to enhance their income.
Local grumbles
We later met with the local community in the nearby picturesque village of Karwala in Haripur district. The mountains where newly planted saplings could be seen from the roadside, but the villagers were unhappy. They had only been paid after a delay of several months, which had caused considerable consternation.
“We missed the spring plantation season as we were not paid in time,” said one disgruntled villager. They also wanted fruit and flower trees instead of Chir pine saplings as this could provide them with some income in this underdeveloped.
In another area of Haripur where a “model plantation” had been established, people were critical about the kind of trees that were being planted.
“They need to see which area needs what kinds of plantation that would be beneficial to the local community–for example they should be promoting olive trees here in this plantation,” said Maqbool Malik from the village of Mang.
The project is clearly not perfect, but as the villagers were told, ultimately the trees planted in this remote mountainous area would prevent soil erosion and land sliding and was for the benefit of their future generations.
The entire project is also being monitored by the forest department, the KP government and WWF. WWF published a report after its one of its audits, although the report itself is not yet publicly available, thethirdpole.net was shown its executive summary.
The report stated that, “In the light of the findings it is concluded that an excellent effort has been made in achieving the ambitious targets of the BTTAP project.” But it also noted that, “In general it was noticed that the social mobilization process had been given least importance, which needs to be put on the forefront.”
Dr Ejaz Ahmed, senior director at WWF-Pakistan, added, “At this stage of the monitoring, the success ratio (for the tree saplings) was encouraging and we feel that this project is going to contribute positively in the forest cover improvement.”
International recognition
At the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, the project was recognised by the Bonn Challenge, which is a global partnership aiming to restore 150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded lands by 2020. At the Paris conference, the KP government pledged to restore 384,000 hectares of degraded land (by reforestation) under its ‘Billion Tree Tsunami’ project.
Plantation has taken place on the barren slopes of Karwala village in Haripur. -Image by Asim Ali
Imran Khan recently also inaugurated the One Tree, One Life initiative, under which children are being motivated to plant a tree and become a part of the “Billion Tree Tsunami”.
During the launch day on the International Day of Forests on 21 March, over 10,000 school children planted more than 100,000 trees in Peshawar alone.
According to Imran Khan, the chairman of the PTI, “The project is aimed at not only planting a billion trees by 2018 but also shifting mindsets in the province and in Pakistan from environmental destruction towards valuing, conserving and preserving our precious natural resources.”
Winning over the opposition
Pakistan’s federal government, led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s PML(N) party which had attacked the ‘Billion Tree Tsunami’ when it was first launched, has now approved its own “Green Pakistan Programme”.
The aim of the programme is to plant 100 million trees all over the country in the next five years and will be led by the Prime Minister himself.
In December 2015, the chief spokesperson for the federal PML(N) government, Pervez Rashid, while addressing a press conference in Lahore, questioned the feasibility of the project. “When did this gigantic task take place?” he demanded.
The PTI’s response at the time was to invite the minister to the plantations to see for himself.
“It is heartening to see that the federal government has gone from criticising to emulating this forestry initiative,” said Imran Khan. “I hope that they will implement what they are advertising and become partners in saving our country’s environmental future and combating climate change.”
— This piece was first published on The Third Pole and reproduced in DAWN NEWS.
KUWAIT CITY: Middle Eastern and North African nations can make a “net benefit” of $750 billion if they achieve their set targets on the use of renewable energy, a senior official said on Monday.
“Almost every country in the (MENA) region has a target for renewable energy from 5-15 per cent,” by 2030, Adnan Amin, director general of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) told reporters.
“If we are able to meet these targets, we will have a net benefit of about $750bn for the power sector in the MENA region,” Amin said on the sidelines of the sixth MENA (Middle East and North Africa) renewable energy conference.
Amin said the world is looking to double the current share of renewable energy of 16-17pc in the global mix to 36pc by 2030.
He said doubling the renewable energy share will help achieve the reduction by half of carbon emissions which would a pre-requisite for limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) as decided by the Paris climate change summit.
Amin told the conference that global investments in renewable energy rose by 22pc last year to a record $330bn.
The cost of production of renewable energy has dropped significantly in the past few years, he said. In the past five years, the cost of solar photovoltaic power generation dropped by 80pc, Amin said.
“It is already competitive with natural gas. There can be further reduction in cost,” he said.
But Bassam Fattouh, director of Oxford Energy Institute Studies, said the targets set by MENA countries are “very ambitious.”
He said several challenges hamper renewable energy production in the region, like state monopoly of the power system, a lack of institutional capacity and conventional energy subsidies.
Nearly half of all new installed power generation capacity in 2014 was in renewables — 37pc wind, a third solar and a quarter hydro, according to the International Energy Agency.
Renewables only account for about 20pc of global electricity generation, and three-quarters of that is hydro.
ISLAMABAD: The government is considering setting up the Pakistan Microfinance Company, in line with the business model of renowned Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, in an effort to provide small loans to farmers and businesses.
Grameen Bank, founded by Muhammad Yunus, is a nobel peace prize-winning microfinance and community development bank that lends small amounts of money to people without seeking any collateral.
In a meeting of the federal cabinet held on September 15, a participant told Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that in a bid to reduce the cost of loans, a credit guarantee scheme for small and marginalised farmers was already in place and its scope was being extended to benefit 300,000 households with small landholdings.
“An amount of Rs100,000 will be provided without collateral under this scheme,” the official said.
This would lead to total disbursement of Rs30 billion whereas the government had set aside Rs5 billion in the budget to provide risk cover to the financial institutions extending loans without demanding any guarantees, he said.
The cabinet was also told that the federal government was mulling over setting up Pakistan Microfinance Company by following the business pattern of Grameen Bank.
This year, the government is pushing up the size of overall agricultural credit to Rs616 billion compared to Rs516 billion last year, an addition of Rs100 billion, which will primarily be meant for small farmers with landholdings of up to 12.5 acres.
Despite historically low interest rates in the country, consumers are not enjoying the benefits as they are forced to borrow at a rate as high as 18% per annum.
In order to ease the pain felt by the small farmers, the government has decided to reduce the cost of production loans by 2%.
The State Bank of Pakistan and provincial governments will also join hands and start one-window operations to facilitate and promote credit flow to borrowers in the agriculture sector.
Apart from this, the collective value of Production Index Unit will be increased from Rs2,000 to Rs4,000, which will enable farmers to acquire more credit for the same landholdings.
In the cabinet meeting, government officials said total impact of the agricultural support package, announced by the prime minister few days ago, would be Rs341 billion, including Rs147 billion as direct financial support and Rs194 billion as credit flow to the farmers.
The government will also take long-term measures such as passage of different legislations through parliament like the Seed Act and Plants Breeders Rights Act, which will place the agriculture sector on a growth path in the long run.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 25th, 2015.
Land grabbing in Africa and Asia for export and biofuel crops is keeping populations malnourished and hungry
The land grabbed in some of the world’s hungriest countries by foreign goverments and corporations could feed up to 550m people, according to new research. The crops grown on grabbed land are frequently exported, or used to produce biofuel, but the new work shows it could end malnourishment in those countries if used to feed local people.
Since 2000, at least 31m hectares (77m acres) of land has been acquired by overseas investors seeking to secure food supplies or increase production, a process dubbed land grabbing. Almost half has been in Africa, particularly Sudan. But Indonesia and Papua New Guinea have been targets too. Proponents argue the foreign investment can increase yields and provide development and employment, but critics say the grabs often occur without the consent of those on the land and lead to food being exported.
“Crucial to this debate is the knowledge of the magnitude of the phenomenon: how many people could be fed,” said Prof Maria Cristina Rulli from Politecnico di Milano in Italy, one of the research team. It found that, even accounting for the crops diverted to biofuels, the grabbed land could support 300m-550m people if yields were raised to the levels of industrialised western farming. Even without those yield increases, the land could support 190m-370m people, the researchers calculated.
“Policymakers need to be aware that if this food were used to feed the local populations it would be sufficient to abate malnourishment in each of these countries, even without investments aiming [increase] yields,” said Rulli.
“The world already produces enough food for everyone, yet one in eight people go to bed hungry every night, many of whom are the very people who rely for food on land that big agribusinesses are targeting,” said Hannah Stoddart, head of policy for food and climate change at Oxfam. “Stronger land rights are crucial to ensure that affected communities do not lose out.” She said investment in small-scale farming and more sustainable agricultural practices could reduce hunger for the poorest people.
The new analysis, published on Friday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, calculated the potential maximum crop yield from every known land grab deal over 200 hectares from 2000-2013 and then used the crop’s food calories to determine the amount of people it could feed. The analysis also revealed that while 43% of grabbed land is in Africa, it is the more productive land and more nutritious crops in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea that could provide the most food.
The researchers found many large scale land grabs are taking place in regions facing hunger problems and in great need of food aid. For example, land grabs in Sierra Leone from 2007-2012, were used to grow food crops for export, resulting in local people finding it harder to get enough food and work. In Cambodia, land grabs are leading to the conversion of rice fields to sugar cane plantations and the relocation of peasants to less fertile land.
“Our numbers raise some concern because the target countries have high levels of malnourishment,” said Rulli. “The problem is that there is often no policy in place to prevent investors from exporting the cropsproduced in the acquired land. If the land was previously used for subsistence farming, the situation likely becomes worse.”
Following the change of government, there has been a renewed interest in tapping alternative sources of finance for energy and infrastructure projects that the present government plans to undertake.
LONDON: Sukuk has emerged as a competent alternative to conventional debt financing for large infrastructure and energy projects, globally. In developing countries like Pakistan, such projects are typically undertaken by the government due to the tying up of capital over a longer period and low and intermittent returns.
According to S&P, “the asset-backed nature of Islamic financing provides a better funding match for infrastructure projects than traditional lenders.” Furthermore, sukuk investors typically have an appetite for longer periods and prefer stable and predictable cash flow, traits associated with infrastructure or energy projects.
Following the change of government, there has been a renewed interest in tapping alternative sources of finance for energy and infrastructure projects that the present government plans to undertake.
Consequently, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) is developing policy guidelines for project/infrastructure specific sukuk as part of its Strategic Plan (2014-18), which are expected to be released in 2015.
It is important to note that:
1) All sovereign sukuk issued thus far are for infrastructural assets but are not necessarily used for infrastructure projects. This is important for any new financier/investor to understand that the funds raised over infrastructure assets may in fact not be used for infrastructure projects.
2) In terms of Shariah structures, Pakistan sukuk appears to be more innovative compared to other countries where the use of Murabaha system has been prominent. Pakistan sukuk structures favour diminishing Musharaka and Musharaka Shirkatul Aqd. An important innovative structure that claimed to have changed the landscape of the Pakistani sukuk market is short-term sukuk based on Shirkatul Aqd for power-producing companies.
3) For any investor who wants to ensure that the funds raised for infrastructure projects are actually used for such projects, it is important that an appropriate structure is used for the chosen sukuk. Musharaka-based sukuk and those based on the principle of Istisna may in fact ensure that the investors have real exposure to the underlying infrastructure project.
Projects in the pipeline
These include small ones valuing around $20 million (Foundation Wind Energy plans to finance $20.5 million renewable energy projects through sukuk) to $1 billion.
The government must raise funds domestically and internationally. It has shown interest in using Islamic finance as a tool for raising capital and the role of SBP is being beefed up.
There is a representative list of projects that may be financed through a sukuk programme.
Among them is the construction of a power park with installed capacity of 6,600 megawatts that the Ministry of Water and Power is planning. The park with 10 units of 660MW each will be established in Gadani near Karachi. The 4,500MW Diamer Bhasha Dam is another project and requires billions of dollars.
Other projects in the pipeline which have been approved recently include Dasu hydropower project (2,160MW), Faisalabad-Khanewal Motorway, a new rail link from Islamabad to Muzaffarabad, new rail link from Havelian to Pakistan-China border, connection between Gwadar and Karachi through rail, approach roads to the new Islamabad International Airport, new Gwadar International Airport, jetty and infrastructure development at Gadani, Gwadar Port Free Economic Zone, Pakistan-China Technical and Vocational Institute at Gwadar and Quaid-i-Azam Solar Park at Lal Sohnra Park Phase-II (600MW).
With the aggressive stance of the government on important projects and its interest in Islamic finance, sukuk can be an important avenue to fund these projects. The government also plans to issue a euro-denominated sukuk after recent success of a sovereign dollar-denominated bond.
$5b programme
In light of the above, a $5-billion sukuk programme may be initiated to raise funds. The government must commit some money in the budget while other components can be raised from international capital markets.
In this respect, Malaysian Islamic financial institutions may be more helpful than their counterparts in the Middle East. The proposed sukuk programme should start with a $1 billion issue for the first project with regular tranches over a period of three to five years.
In Islamic capital markets, larger issuances of sukuk have attracted more publicity and fund-raising than smaller amounts. A $5 billion issue for infrastructure and energy projects is a story that must sell.
Possible structures for the sukuk programme may include Istisna and Musharaka-based arrangements. This will ensure that the funds raised remain tightly tied with the underlying projects and are not used for general public sector borrowing requirements.
The writer is a PhD in economics from Cambridge University and is the chairman of Edbiz Corporation, a London-based Islamic financial advisory group
Published in The Express Tribune, June 23rd, 2014.
“Good afternoon, how may I help you?” you hear the calm and confident voice after dialling the helpline regarding a problem with your credit card. The voice guides you in what’s to be done and you thank the person before hanging up, without realising that he or she may be visually-impaired.
“I work through the talking computer software Job Access With Speech [JAWS],” explains Shahnaz Deedar, tele-consultant at Standard Chartered Bank. “I have earphones in both ears, the caller in one ear and my computer reading out to me in the other,” she laughs. “None of this would have been possible without all this technology,” she points out.
In Cambridge, Massuchusetts, Aqil Sajjad, walks around the corner to use the ATM. He plugs in his headphones into the port provided on the machine and listens intently as it informs him about his balance and the rest of the transaction he is carrying out. “The headphone option is there to prevent others from listening in,” explains Aqil who has been visually-impaired for the last 16 years and is working on his doctoral thesis at Harvard these days.
Back in Karachi, while surfing the internet, Shazia Hasan comes across an article she finds interesting. She prints it out in Braille with her Braille embosser.
Groping in the dark
“Disability doesn’t exist in the person. It is out there in the environment,” points out Zahid Abdullah, a right to information and disability rights activist based in Islamabad. “You remove the barrier and you have a way,” adds the gentleman who, being visually impaired himself, knows the challenges faced by those in the same situation while also having a good idea about the technology out there that can make life so easier for them.“Technology is changing and with it comes the need for regular upgrading,” he says. “When I first started using JAWS, I was using a demo version of the software that would work for up to 40 minutes only. Thereafter I needed to reboot my computer to get it working again,” he remembers.
“In 1999, thanks to this screen-reading software I was meeting many other visually impaired people. We all helped each other out in whatever challenges we were facing. One day while chatting on MSN a friend got to know about my using a demo version of the software and helped me in cracking the programme in order to use it non-stop,” Zahid laughs.
Popular software tends to get pirated easily thanks to the demand, but this wasn’t the case here. “But since JAWS is used by the visually impaired it doesn’t have a big market so there are no pirated versions available. Most users have to buy it, and the software doesn’t come cheap,” Zahid says.
“Expecting a visually impaired person to pay so much is like discrimination. Normal people can pay for computer programmes but still can acquire pirated versions, while we who depend on such screen-reading programmes have to pay though our nose to get it,” he says.
“Besides English, JAWS is available in French, Arabic, German, Brazilian but not in Urdu. The Punjab Information Technology Board is trying to come up with a similar software that reads Urdu, but it is at so early a stage that we don’t know when and if it’ll be available,” he says.
Vision to see
Aqil Sajjad lost his sight soon after completing his Matriculation. “I was studying Science hoping to become an engineer but after losing my vision I had to switch to Arts due to some policies preventing visually impaired students from taking science subjects. Later, I went for a Bachelor in Business Administration. “Meanwhile, I kept track of all the technology available for the visually impaired abroad and learnt about a visually impaired professor at Oregon State University who was developing software to help blind people study maths and physics. I wrote to the university and got admission.
“Now I’m working towards a PhD in physics at Harvard. JAWS provided me a window to the world. I first learnt about it while going through a technology catalogue. Now I also download freeware for the visually impaired. I also work with other software such as Win Triangle which is designed for Maths and Lean Maths,” he says.
“Due to the society’s attitude in Pakistan, people who are faced with a disability themselves look for exemptions. I was lucky as my mother is a mathematician and taught me at home in the beginning as she knew how to explain the graphs and diagrams to me,” he shares.
Aqil says that many things that have made life easier for him in the USA are recent developments even there. “People here as well didn’t have access to ATMs, etc., until some 10 to 15 years ago. Then there is also a copyright exemption for books for the visually impaired here. If someone likes a book they can scan and upload it on http://www.bookshare.org . Then all we need is a medical certificate to get a membership of the website. For reading there is a variety of software like JAWS, though errors in scanning software for uploading maths and physics books do occur as these things are still in the developing stages and haven’t been mastered as yet.
Moving ahead
Sitting in her living room, Shazia Hasan gives a demonstration of how her phone, computer and tablet work through the screen-reading software. “I have a talkback application in my cell phone (which reads out messages) and, of course, there is JAWS in my computer and tablet.”
The reader, which speaks with a heavy American accent, tells her about everything on her desktop, along with the size and colour of the fonts as Shazia listens before going to her next action.
“I can choose from various voices but they all are foreign. That’s why some of my students’ parents complain to me that their child is pronouncing ‘milk’ as ‘melk’ or ‘chocolate’ ‘shocklet’,” she laughs.
“Still, it is a great achievement for me to help empower others. I wouldn’t call us ‘visually-impaired’. We are all ‘differently-impaired’ as you work though picking up details though your eyes and we do it through our ears,” Shazia points out.
Nineteen of her students now have acquired good jobs in the computer departments of organisations such as Standard Chartered Bank, United Bank Limited, Pizza Hut, K-Electric and some call centres, after mastering JAWS.
“I first learnt about this software on a trip to the UK, where I mastered it. Then I came to teach it to others at the Ida Rieu School here. Today we can connect to the world through JAWS and learn about all the great inventions and improvements in tools for the blind,” she says.
“The creator of JAWS was visually impaired himself. Therefore he understood our need for such software. We have several associations and institutes for the blind in Pakistan but none of them take you beyond the basics,” Shazia points out.
“The reason for this,” she explains, “is that all these institutions are charity-based. Hence they stop at where the visually impaired person is able to use the computer or read in Braille or use the white cane, for instance. They aren’t really interested in taking one forward from there,” she concludes.
File picture of a solar farm in Pajam. US private equity fund DuSable and 1MDB are working together to invest in a solar energy project in Malaysia
PETALING JAYA: US private equity firm DuSable Capital Management LLC and1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) will work together on the country’s largest 50MW solar farm in Kedah.
“DuSable will be the investment adviser to a private equity fund in which 1MDB will be a limited partner. The private equity fund and 1MDB are working together jointly to invest in a solar energy project in Malaysia,” according to documents filed with theUS Department of Justice.
Further to that, 1MDB would reimburse costs incurred by DuSable arising from the development of the project and associated activities, the filing said.
“While the bulk of DuSable’s activities will relate to the development of the project, one aspect of DuSable’s activities will be to communicate with US Government officials to encourage the US Government to provide non-financial support for a Malaysian solar energy project.
“There is no formal agreement specifying such communications or activities,” DuSable said in the document.
Last week, 1MDB announced that it had won yet another power project following the signing of a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB).
TNB said it had signed a PPA to buy power to be generated by 1MDB Solar Sdn Bhd’s solar photovoltaic (solar PV) plant in Kedah. TNB said the PPA provided that 1MDB would design, construct, own, operate and maintain a solar PV plant generating facility with a capacity of 50MW alternate current (MWac).
StarBiz had earlier reported that 1MDB‘s proposed 50 MW solar farm was the result of a “direct negotiation” with the Government. It will also become by far the largest in the country.
It is also understood that 1MDB’s power plant agreement with the Government came about as a result of direct negotiations between 1MDB and the Energy, Green Technology and Water Ministry, with both the Energy Commission and the Sustainable Energy Development Authority Malaysia playing a smaller role.
On its website, DuSable said the company focused on energy and infrastructure opportunities around the world. Its strategy will see it target equity and debt investments in companies involved in the “production, storage, and transportation” of alternative energy in the United States and in emerging markets, including Malaysia, Mexico, Indonesia, Burma, Brazil, Russia and India.
It will also seek to invest in infrastructure opportunities in the energy, transportation and telecommunications spaces.
“Access is not the only crisis — poor quality is holding back learning even for those who make it to school,” said Irina Bokova in the report. — Photo by AFP
PARIS: A quarter of a billion children worldwide are failing to learn basic reading and maths skills in an education crisis that costs governments $129 billion annually, the UN’s cultural agency warned in a report Wednesday.
Inadequate teaching across the world has left a legacy of illiteracy more widespread than previously thought, UNESCO said in its annual monitoring report.
It said one in four young people in poor countries was unable to read a sentence, with the figure rising to 40 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa.
The United Nations defines “youth” as people aged between 15 and 24, although UNESCO’s definition varies across regions.
“What’s the point in an education if children emerge after years in school without the skills they need?” said Pauline Rose, the director of the nearly 500-page Education for All Global Monitoring Report.
In a third of countries analysed, fewer than three-quarters of existing primary school teachers were trained to national standards, while 120 million primary age children across the world had little or no experience of school, the UNESCO report found.
“The cost of 250 million children not learning the basics is equivalent to $129 billion, or 10 per cent of global spending on primary education,” the report said.
Thirty-seven countries monitored by the report are losing at least half the amount they spend on primary education because children are not learning, UNESCO said.
In developed countries including France, Germany and the United Kingdom, immigrant children lag behind their peers, performing far worse on minimum learning targets.
Indigenous groups in Australia and New Zealand face similar problems, it said.
The report called for global education policies to focus not only on enrolment rates but also on equal access and better teaching.
“Access is not the only crisis — poor quality is holding back learning even for those who make it to school,” UNESCO director general Irina Bokova wrote in the report’s foreword.
She said it was clear that the educational targets set in 2000 by the UN’s Millennium Developments Goals would not be reached.
Rose said “new goals after 2015 must make sure every child is not only in school, but learning what they need to learn”.
Dr GHULAM SARWAR ASHRAF 