Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev Thursday urged government officials to take all necessary measures to prevent the rise of food prices.
“Lately, because of ruble’s depreciation as well as a number of other factors, we have seen an unreasonable rise of the food price, ” Medvedev said in a meeting with Agriculture Minister Nikolai Fyodorov.
Efforts should be made together with owners of grocery chains, farmers and intermediaries “to do everything possible to prevent unjustified rise in price,” Medvedev said, adding the “speculative margin” triggered by various economic factors should be controlled.
The two also discussed the possibility of Fyodorov joining the work of Federal Antimonopoly Service as well as related federal and regional governmental departments to monitor food prices.
At the end of 2014, the Russian government had levied an additional 15-percent duty on wheat exports to prevent companies from exporting surplus grain and capitalizing on fluctuations of ruble’s value, RIA Novosti news agency reported.
Data released from Russia’s statistic agency Rosstat at the end of 2014 showed that the inflation rate reached an estimated 11.4 percent in 2014, while food prices increased by 15.4 percent.
Russia’s Central Bank has estimated that inflation in the country is likely to continue speeding up until the second half of 2015.
Standard Chartered to close parts of equity businesses
Xinhua, London
Standard Chartered, a Britain-based banking group, Thursday announced the closure of its institutional cash equities, equity research and equity capital market activities, as the bank continues to exit non-core and under-performing businesses.
The closure of the businesses will deliver around 100 million U. S. dollars of cost savings in 2016, but will impact about 200 roles across seven of the bank’s 70 markets, said Standard Chartered in a statement.
The bank also said that in the Retail Clients segment, its strategy of focusing on key cities and accelerating the switch to digital has resulted in around 2,000 jobs cuts announced or completed in the last three months, with a reduction of a further 2,000 expected during 2015.
Peter Sands, the Group Chief Executive, said that:” We are continuing to take significant action on costs by exiting or re-configuring non-core and under-performing businesses, and by increasing the efficiency of our core businesses.”
Standard Chartered posted a 16 percent fall in pre-tax profit in the third quarter of 2014 last October due to a restructuring of its South Korea business and an increase in bad loans.
