Latest news with #economic performance
BBC News
3 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
National Development Plan: Can Ireland deliver on €112bn schemes?
It is a mark of the Republic of Ireland's recent economic performance that listeners to a popular politics podcast had to be reassured this week they will not face a "hair shirt" budget in the an economic context "hair shirt" tends to mean punitive austerity policies which make citizens uncomfortable and was in the wake of Ireland's pre-budget report which pointed to a 6.5% increase in core public spending, a tax cut for hospitality businesses and a €112bn (£98bn) package of infrastructure most European finance ministers those numbers would be closer to a silk shirt than a hair podcasters perhaps felt they had to give a reassurance as the budget will not deliver quite as much to household finances as it has in recent years. Big cash injection for housing For example a €250 universal energy credit introduced during the worst of the cost of living crisis will not be the run up to October's budget is expected to be dominated by a drip feed of announcements on the specific projects which will flow from that huge infrastructure fund, known as the National Development government is able to spend this money because Ireland's long-held policy of low corporation tax has come good in spectacular fashion, delivering a huge windfall from US firms who pay their global taxes in the is money which desperately needs to be spent because Ireland's basic infrastructure is example, a chronic failure to build enough housing is contributing to economic and social problems, such as tensions around infrastructure backlog has built up because public and private investment collapsed during Ireland's years of financial crisis and firms across construction and development failed during that period and the workforce shrank as the economy recovered rapidly and the population grew there wasn't the capacity to provide the investment which was National Development Plan (NDP) is an attempt to remedy this as quickly as the biggest allocation is for housing which will get €36bn between 2026 and 2030. The next biggest chunk is for transport, which gets €22bn. Of that, €2bn is supposed to be used to start work on a long-planned underground Metro rail line from Dublin city centre to the airport and northern experience of the Dublin Metro can help explain some of the scepticism around the Metro has been planned since 2000 but not a centimetre of track has been current planning application has been under consideration for more than 1,000 days and the man leading the project has conceded it is likely to face more legal is also the continuing saga of the new National Children's Hospital in Dublin which has missed 15 completion dates and is almost €1bn over government has attempted to show people that the state does have the capacity to section of the NDP is a list of recent projects across education, health, roads and broadband which have been built without much section lists the reforms to procurement and planning which should reduce delays, such as changes to judicial review there is a more fundamental issue: who will do the actual construction work required to turn the €112bn into houses, roads and sewers?The most recent figures suggest there are around 177,000 active construction workers in Ireland, the highest number in a an analysis by the Department for Further and Higher Education estimates that another 80,000 workers will have to be found to meet the government's targets on housing, let alone other those additional workers at a time when the Irish economy is at close to full employment will be a challenge in itself.
Telegraph
4 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Britain cannot afford to keep Rachel Reeves any longer
How bad does Britain's economic performance have to be before Sir Keir Starmer fires Rachel Reeves from the Treasury? Ever since she sat crying on the Treasury Bench three weeks ago the data have become worse. She ought to be crying a lot more. The Government's Labour Force Survey shows that the number of payrolled employees has fallen by 178,000 in the last year, and by 41,000 in the last month alone, since the Chancellor's higher National Insurance contributions for employers took effect. How many more unemployed must be created before the Government admits that higher taxes drive formerly productive people out of the workforce, creating more claimants on an already tottering welfare state? Vacancies in the last quarter also fell, by 56,000, with openings decreasing in 14 of the 18 industrial sectors denominated by the Government. The UK economy contracted in May for the second consecutive month, by 0.1 per cent after falling 0.3 per cent in April. The fall was mainly caused by lower industrial output and less work in the construction sector. Inflation rose to 3.6 per cent. The Chancellor seems to have no conception of the link between the supply of money and the rise in inflation; the Government's failure to keep its promise to cut the welfare bill – which the Prime Minister himself described as a 'moral' question – will further increase borrowing, the cost of debt and prices. Labour governments always do this, and appear unable to snap out of it. And if the effect of taxing people more heavily to create jobs is proving disastrous, the effect of taxing the very rich, who can with ease leave and pay their taxes elsewhere, is to drive down the tax take and force yet higher borrowing. On what appears to be a point of principle, Labour will not reduce the tax burden on those who create jobs and wealth. As a result, there are fewer jobs, and fewer people to tax. As a result the choice of whom to tax will narrow, until Labour's 'working people' – who usually cannot afford to flee abroad – end up paying more and more, as the Government avoids the obvious course of cutting its extravagant public spending programmes on what the Victorians called 'the undeserving poor'. The word is that Sir Keir will hold a reshuffle after the summer recess, which starts this week. He has implied that Ms Reeves's job is safe; but if she cannot, or will not, implement policies that help create wealth rather than destroy it, she simply becomes a dead weight dragging down an already deeply unpopular administration. Also, the more articles such as this, suggesting she is not up to her exceptionally demanding job, appear in the media, the more Sir Keir will dig in his heels and seek to avoid sacking her, uttering the old mantra that he will not allow his administration to be chosen by political commentators. Even someone with so few natural political instincts as he possesses must realise that he, and the country, cannot go on like this. You cannot on the one hand pontificate about growth and then take every possible measure to eliminate it, by driving people out work, companies out of business and the rich out of the country. Ms Reeves seems to find all of those things entirely acceptable. Eventually reality will force Sir Keir to conclude that there will have to be changes, both of personnel and of policy, or the money will run out. What he must try to decide is what constitutes the point of no return for his inept Chancellor.
Telegraph
22-07-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Angela Rayner has got one thing right. Britain needs a tourism tax
I never imagined saying this but I agree with Angela. The Deputy Prime Minister wants cities to have more autonomy to run themselves as they do on the continent, where they thrive largely free of national government diktat. When their economic performance is rated against their European counterparts, English cities fall well short. In a league table measured by GDP per head and headed by Munich, only London and Manchester (just) make the top 40 from England. German cities have by some distance out-performed British cities since 2007. Key factors in their success have been supportive state governments and high levels of autonomy. In France, the 14 'communautés urbaines'' mainly perform better, with Lyons, Toulouse, Nice and Marseille all in the top 40. They exercise substantial delegated powers over waste, water, public transport, roads, economic development and the environment. Spanish and Italian cities do the same. Ours, by contrast, have undergone political reform, with elected mayors, but have not got much in the way of economic autonomy. England is the most centralised country in Europe and its great cities are prey to Treasury cheeseparing and ineptitude. They should be able to run their own affairs and be accountable to local voters for their actions. But the Treasury has never liked relinquishing its all-encompassing power and Ms Rayner's muscle-flexing has predictably been fought off by a Chancellor who can see someone after her job. This latest spat between the Cabinet duo was ostensibly over whether mayors should be able to impose tourist taxes, a suggestion that has roused howls of fury from predictable quarters. Usually I might have joined them; but actually a tourist tax is not a bad idea, albeit not for the reasons Big Ange gives. She sees the revenues as a way of topping up town hall coffers where they would no doubt be diverted into employing diversity officers and staging pride events. But there is a very good use to which the proceeds can be put, which is to support the continued free entry to museums and galleries. One of the few great achievements of the New Labour government was to remove charges in 2001. It has since been possible to visit the British Museum or the National Gallery for nothing. In New York you will pay $30 to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and in Paris a ticket to enter the Louvre will set you back 22 euros. It is 25 euros for the Uffizi in Florence and 15 euros for the Prado in Madrid. If you have been to any of these recently you will not have noticed a dearth of visitors. In some of them you can hardly move. One of the arguments against reimposing museum charges is that it will put people off going yet this has not been seen elsewhere. Moreover, the heads of the great national institutions say they are getting increasingly into financial difficulties and cannot rely on a Government struggling with massive debt to bail them out. Nor is this just about London. The English Civic Museums Network says institutions across the country are in financial difficulties because of budget cuts and at risk of closure. The recent spending review allocated another £270m to the country's galleries but this is seen as inadequate to the task. Sir Mark Jones, a former director of the British Museum and the V&A, has proposed a £20 entrance fee to enter publicly funded museums across the UK, though they would remain free to British taxpayers (though how that would work without ID cards I am not sure). 'It would make sense for us to charge overseas visitors for admission to museums as they charge us when we visit their museums,' said Jones. Indeed, this country has everything back to front. You can get into the Tate for free but it costs £26 for an adult ticket to St Paul's Cathedral, and £10 for children, setting back a family of four more than £70 to visit a church. In Paris you can go to Notre Dame for nothing. The point is we should not want to charge for museums and galleries but the economic exigencies may prove overwhelming for a Chancellor looking to cut costs anywhere she can. Since most taxpayers don't visit a museum from one year to the next, why would they mind? The hospitality industry is said to be against a tourist tax; but if it was a hypothecated levy designed to support the museums and galleries would there be objections? If enough is raised it could be used to pay for more police, not detectives but dedicated beat officers. It is a bit odd calling for cuts in benefits because they are unaffordable while expecting taxpayers who never go near an art gallery to subsidise free entry for tourists. Is it seriously being suggested that a room tax of £5 a night, or one per cent on the total bill, would put off visitors to London where a West End show can set a family of four back at least £500? Does anyone say they are not going to Barcelona because it has a tourist tax? The reality for those working themselves into a fury about tourist charges is that their own taxes are paying for things they hardly use but which visitors, almost by definition, use all the time. That's why they come to cities like London or Bath or Oxford. The pressure for admission fees to meet high operations costs like maintaining buildings and conserving collections will only grow. The money comes from the taxpayer or generous philanthropists, but for how much longer? It could cost as much as £500m to restore the British Museum's buildings and create new facilities so that more of its eight million objects could go on permanent display. To raise funds, the galleries run regular 'blockbuster' exhibitions for which they charge exorbitant sums, often using works they already possess as the centrepieces. They also ask for voluntary donations at the door. Is it really such a bad idea to seek a contribution from tourists by way of a hotel room levy specifically earmarked for museum and gallery upkeep, especially if the alternative is to pay £20 to go in? For now Rayner seems to have lost the argument with the Chancellor but no doubt will be back.
South China Morning Post
11-07-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Will China's first-half GDP data reveal need for more fiscal stimulus?
Analysts awaiting details of China's economic performance in the first half of the year, which are due to be released on Tuesday, will be looking to see whether more fiscal stimulus is needed to weather the tariff storms emanating from Washington. While the market largely expects second-quarter economic growth to reach 5 per cent, in line with the full-year target, concerns linger that the rosy headline figure could mask persistent weakness in domestic demand and employment. On top of these structural challenges at home, rising external uncertainty – particularly amid shifting US trade policy – has emerged as a pressing concern, prompting many economists to call for stronger fiscal support. 'In the second half of the year … the economy will remain under intense external challenges and shocks,' economists led by Lian Ping, chairman of the China Chief Economists Forum, said in a note issued on Wednesday. 'Achieving the full-year growth target will not be easy, and will require more forceful, innovative, wide-ranging and targeted policy measures,' they wrote, citing the pressures on the domestic economy stemming from the trade war with the United States. Similarly, central bank adviser Huang Yiping said during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin last month that he 'would be very much in favour of a proactive fiscal policy' if external uncertainties were to trigger a downturn in the domestic economy.
