Latest news with #shortages
CTV News
a day ago
- Business
- CTV News
Pickle of a problem: tariff impact felt at Winnipeg grocery stores
Grocery stores are now seeing item shortages and price hikes due to tariffs. Jeff Keele reports.
CTV News
a day ago
- Business
- CTV News
Tariffs causing item shortages, price hikes in Winnipeg
Winnipeg Watch Grocery stores are now seeing item shortages and price hikes due to tariffs. Jeff Keele reports.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Cuban economy continues five-year decline, economy minister says
By Marc Frank and Nelson Acosta HAVANA (Reuters) -Cash-strapped Cuba's grueling crisis shows no signs of improvement, Cuban Economy Minister Joaquin Alonso said on Monday, announcing growth fell 1.1% last year on top of a 10% decline since 2019, official media reported. Alonso was speaking to the Cuban parliament's economic commission where he also indicated there was little hope for improvement this year, given toughening U.S. sanctions and a complicated international situation. The import-dependent Caribbean island nation has seen foreign currency revenues fall by around 30% in recent years, causing shortages of food, fuel, medicine and inputs for agriculture and manufacturing. A lack of fuel and equipment has crippled the energy grid, leading to daily blackouts in the Communist-run country of as much as 16 hours or more. Agriculture, livestock farming, and mining have fallen 53.4% over the last five years, and manufacturing 23%, Alonso reported. The minister was quoted as saying that this year and last had been marked "by the intensified impact of the blockade, the fierce persecution of financial flows, and barriers to international transactions that have hindered payments to suppliers." Alonso said hard currency earnings this year were 9% below the same period last year while imports were running 7% above last year's rate. "Cuba is importing more than it exports, which increases the debt," he was quoted as stating. The country last reported its foreign debt as $19.7 billion in 2020. Sign in to access your portfolio
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
A warmer climate requires adaptation
Britain, as Aneurin Bevan once complained, is an island 'made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish'; 'only an organising genius' could somehow manage to produce a shortage of both at once. Things have moved on from Mr Bevan's day, but it remains the case that our Government is wonderfully adept at contriving to produce shortages of those things that ought to be abundant, and then attempting to manage the consequences through rationing rather than any attempt to expand supply. The latest examples of this technocratic desire to apportion what currently exists can be found in the reaction to our sweltering summer. Water supplies are low; the priority for the Government, accordingly, is to seek to use smart meters to introduce 'surge pricing ' for those households that have installed them. Houses are hot, but the heat pumps installed under government grant schemes are unable to run as air conditioning units, and in London Sadiq Khan's planning rules prioritise 'passive ventilation' over air conditioning in part owing to fears over energy use. As shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho correctly notes, this is a 'poverty mindset'; Britain's energy and water policies 'should fit what people want to do, not the other way around'. In a country that last finished building a reservoir in 1992, and where the focus of energy policy on decarbonisation appears to be threatening further deindustrialisation – Britain's industrial electricity users pay the highest prices in the world – the overwhelming effort of the Government should be on loosening the straitjacket on Britain's economic growth and consumer comforts, not attempting to tighten the straps. As the pro-growth campaign group Britain Remade has noted, too, our current trajectory is one more suited to 'a world where summer was 25C and our electricity was coal-powered'. A warmer climate requires adaptation; a cleaner grid removes an old objection to higher energy use. With heatwaves marked by spikes in excess deaths, it is surely time to change course and embrace an approach rooted in meeting the needs of the population, expanding water storage capacity, removing constraints on air conditioning, and providing the energy generation necessary to do so.
Khaleej Times
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Khaleej Times
Israel-Iran conflict: Iranians buying supplies in Iraq tell of fear, shortages back home
Near the once-bustling Iraqi border crossing of Bashmakh, Iranian driver Fatah stocked up on rice, sugar and tea, staples that have become increasingly hard to get back home. Fatah — who like others in this story is being identified by a pseudonym — was among dozens of truck drivers waiting impatiently to cross back into Iran from Iraq's northern Kurdistan region, hauling not only their commercial cargo, but also essential goods for their families after days of Israeli attacks. AFP spoke with at least 30 Iranians near the Bashmakh crossing. They all refused to be interviewed on camera, and the few who agreed to describe life back home asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals back in Iran. "There are shortages of rice, bread, sugar and tea," Fatah said on Tuesday. Finding fuel has also become a major problem, with long queues of cars waiting hours in front of gas stations hoping the fuel did not run out, the 40-year-old driver added. A long journey awaits Fatah, who must deliver his load of asphalt to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas about 1,700 kilometres away, before turning around and driving almost the same distance back to the western city of Marivan, where his family lives and which has so far been spared bombardment. But "my route passes near the Natanz nuclear facility", Fatah said, referring to one of Iran's underground uranium enrichment sites that Israel has struck several times since the start of its campaign last week. Panic buying Israel launched a devastating surprise attack on Friday targeting Iran's military and nuclear sites and killing top commanders and scientists. Israel says its attacks are aimed at preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, an ambition Tehran denies. At least 224 people, including women and children, have been killed in the Israeli strikes, according to official figures. The assault has prompted retaliatory barrages of missiles from Iran that have killed at least 24 people in Israel, according to the prime minister's office. Aram, 28, keeps calling his wife, fearing for his family's safety after they had to flee their home when a strike hit a military site nearby in the city of Sanandaj. "My family is safe, but they had to move in with relatives in a village," Aram said. His wife told him that many families who lived near military sites in the area had been similarly displaced. The father of two said the shortages back home were mostly due to panic-stricken Iranians who rushed to markets to stockpile basic supplies. 'Shocked and distraught' Back in Iran, car dealer Shwan recalled how Israeli jets struck several military sites near his city of Bukan in the west. "People are shocked and distraught, they don't know what they should do," the 35-year-old told AFP via a messaging app from inside Iran. "We have a major problem with bread shortages," he said. People were queuing at bakeries for hours to get loaves of bread, sometimes to no avail, Shwan said. "Sometimes four members of one family go around bakeries looking for bread," he added. "It is also difficult to find rice or oil," and many civil servants have not received their salaries yet, he said. Avin, a 38-year-old seamstress, told AFP via a messaging app that the war "has spread fear among residents", even though the bombs have not touched her town of Saqqez in northwest Iran. "Some families with children left to villages outside the city," she said. Like others, she fears more shortages to come. "Most of the provisions come from Tehran," which has seen a massive exodus and is also grappling with scarcity. "Because of this, the market in our city came to a standstill."
