Irish Investment bank needed to fund small business firms
Fianna Fáil finance spokesman says bank needed to finance small businesses
Fianna Fáil’s finance spokesman Michael McGrath said yesterday he believed there was a need for a bank which
Under the coalition deal, agreed by Government in 2011,Labour proposed a strategic investment bank to be set up, borrowing money from the European Investment Bank and other sources, to fund businesses being turned away from high-street banks.
Fianna Fáil’s finance spokesman Michael McGrath said yesterday he believed there was a need for a bank which could focus on investing in capital projects and small and medium enterprises.
‘Dysfunctional’
Mr MrGrath, speaking yesterday, said Ireland’s banking system remained “dysfunctional a full five years after the banking crisis”.
He said consolidation and closures of banks needed to be addressed and the Government needed to publish a comprehensive banking strategy to address all the issues. “There have been very dramatic changes and a shrinking banking sector is bad news for consumers, SMEs and for the economy,” he said.
Mr McGrath said the Goverment needed to provide a full explanation as to why it had not moved to establish the strategic investment bank, which was a key policy of Labour’s manifesto. He said such a bank could be funded by equity capital from the State, from markets and from the taking of deposits. It could focus, he said, on lending to small and medium sized businesses.
Ulster Bank
Mr McGrath said there was a need for more than two large banks – Bank of Ireland and AIB – in the Irish market.
The Government has not proceeded with an investment bank but rather with a strategic invesment fund along with the establishment of New Era.
While welcoming the news that Ulster Bank is to remain in the Irish market, he said the language which had been used suggested the Ulster Bank which would emerge in a year or two might be a very different kind of bank.
He agreed there were possibilities in relation to KBC andPermanent TSB but said the restructuring plan for the latter, submitted to the European Commission in June 2012, has still to be implemented.
Business groups Isme and the Small Firms Association have also previously called on the Government to develop an investment bank to open sources of finance to small and medium-sized businesses.
Irish Revenue face a grilling from Oireachtas Committee on property tax
Move comes amid growing controversy over early payment requests
The Revenue Commissioners have been requested by a powerful Oireachtas Committee to defend their methods for collecting the residential property tax for 2014.
The move comes amid a growing controversy over early payment requests that has led to widespread public criticism and divided both Coalition parties.
The chairman of the all-party Finance Committee Ciarán Lynch has written to the head of Revenue Josephine Fehilyrequesting her to appear before the committee to discuss the structure, timing and operation of the scheme.
“The purpose of the meeting is to deal with any ambiguities or concerns in regard to the payment of the local property tax, and in some circumstances to establish how the issue of premature payments is dealt with,” he said.
At issue are two of the seven options for a single payment of the tax.
Those who are paying by debit or credit card, and some paying by cheque, are obliged to pay during November 2013 and not in 2014.
Almost one million households paid using one of those methods this year.
The criticism has been backed by Tánaiste Eamon Gilmorewho this weekend asked Revenue to reconsider the deadline. He has argued that nobody should pay a 2014 tax in 2013.
However, Taoiseach Enda Kenny declined to follow Mr Gilmore’s line this weekend, saying Revenue were entitled to operate the property tax legislation in any way that it saw fit.
There were variances in responses from Government ministers yesterday.
Fine Gael Minister, Leo Varadkar said Revenue had “been explicit in saying you do not have to pay until 2014 and need to keep going out there explaining it”. However he accepted the matter was confusing.
Labour Minister Joan Burton suggested the need for better communication. She said the language used in the letter from Revenue was quite technical and may have confused people.
For its part, Revenue accepted households who pay by credit or debit card must pay by the filing deadline date this month. It cited data protection considerations which prevented it retaining card information.
However, it said if they availed of an alternative method, the tax could be paid in 2014.“There is no need to pay by card.
We designed the administration of this tax to provide as many ways to pay as we could, including lumps sums and phased payments,” said a spokeswoman.
She confirmed that some 30,000 people had already filed successfully and added that that while the Revenue had not yet received a formal request to attend the Oireachtas committee hearing, “we have always accepted those invitations in the past”.
Labour Minister Joan Burton suggested the need for better communication. She said the language used in the letter from Revenue was quite technical and may have confused people.
Recession affecting our eating habits
Struggling households are turning to cheaper, fattier food to help keep bills down in the wake of the recession but the quality of produce is plummeting , according to economists.
Rocketing prices and falling incomes have led to a substantial reduction in the proportion of fresh fruit and vegetables in customers’ shopping trolleys while more food with saturated fat and sugar per 100g is being piled in, research published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies found.
Families with young children and pensioners are among the worst hit by rising costs, the Food Expenditure and Nutritional Quality over the Great Recession report said.
Between 2005-07 the average household spent £102 a month per adult but this fell by £4 (3.9%) on average as the recession struck and by 2010-12 was down by £8.70 (8.5%).
Over the same period, the nutritional quality – based on a number of factors including how much saturated fat, salt and sugar a product contains – of food being bought has declined, according to the study of 15,850 households’ purchases between 2005 to 2012.
Kate Smith, a research economist at the IFS, said: “Over the recession households have responded to higher food prices and the squeezes on their incomes by switching to cheaper calories.
“This has coincided with a fall in the nutritional quality of foods purchased, with moves away from fresh fruit and vegetables and towards processed foods.
“As a result, the average saturated fat and sugar content of food purchases has increased over this period.”
A separate report published by the IFS, Gluttony in England? Long-term change in diet, found the average weight of an adult man has increased by 8.6 kilograms and the weight of an adult woman by 7.9 kilograms but said the cause was a “puzzle”.
Although there has been a rise in consumption of takeaways, restaurant food, soft drinks, sweets and snacks the study found that was not enough to counteract the substantial reduction in the number of calories being bought by households since 1980 – between 15% and 30%.
Calories from alcohol purchases were also down 6.4%, it said.
Melanie Luhrmann, an IFS research associate, said: “We were surprised to find that there has been a substantial decline in total calories purchased at a time when obesity has increased.
“Purchases of snack foods, soft drinks and food out have increased, and now account for a greater share of calories for most households.
“However, calories purchased for consumption at home have declined strongly and account for the bulk of households’ food purchases.
“This does not mean that poor diet plays no part in rising obesity. But understanding the interaction between diet and physical activity is clearly crucial.”
Both reports were funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the European Research Council.
Supermarket shake-up coming a price war is just the start of it
Competition is set to increase as Tesco responds to a slip in its market share. And, if an Oireachtas committee has its way, the sector could be facing real reforms
Tesco’s “price promise” is the latest in a long line of aggressive strategies rolled out by the company as it seeks to retain its number one slot in the Irish supermarket sweep in the face of an onslaught by Dunnes Stores and German discounters Aldi and Lidl.
This wheeze will see Tesco compare the price of the products you bring to the checkout with “comparable” ones selling in Aldi or Lidl (but not Dunnes Stores or Supervalu– the second and third most popular retailers in the State). If Tesco is dearer, you will get a voucher for the difference.
The price promise will apply to about 1,400 items. Because only Lidl and Aldi are in the mix, the comparisons will be made largely between own-brand items, which form the vast bulk of the German companies’ offering. Tesco reckons it will hand out about 13 million vouchers worth about €1 each over the course of the next 12 months.
It will compare about half a million shopping baskets each week, with up to 60 per cent likely to get a voucher, which will have to be used within 28 days. The maximum amount of vouchers a person can get is €10, while price comparisons at the Tesco Express stores won’t count – because Tesco charges more in those outlets than in its regular stores.
Will the promise work? Tesco is predicting it will have to give vouchers to most of its shoppers, which means that a majority of receipts it hands out over the next year will contain an admission that it is dearer than two key rivals.
This point was leapt on by Aldi, which issued a statement welcoming the “admission by Tesco that it is more expensive”.
Tesco will have anticipated such a move. While it knows that 60 per cent of the receipts it issues over the next 12 months will show that shoppers could have made savings by shopping elsewhere, it will hope that people will look at the savings – a euro here or there – and decide that travelling to an Aldi or Lidl, where there is significantly less stock and few branded products, is not worth the hassle. It has also not pinpointed where the savings were made, so the system is lacking in transparency. And consumers might question the wisdom of getting a voucher for a shop because it is dearer than another shop when they have no choice but to use that voucher in the dearer shop.
CHECKOUT CONFUSION
As promotions go, it is confusing. But Tesco has to do something to recover after a bad few years in the Irish market. While it still has the biggest slice of the supermarket pie, it has seen its market share fall steadily over the past three years, as Aldi and Lidl have grown strongly.
The latest supermarket share figures from retail analystsKantar Worldpanel were published last week. They showed Tesco’s market share declining again. It now has 26.6 per cent of the market, down from 28.6 per cent a year earlier. Even more troubling for the retailer is that it recorded a decline in sales of 6.5 per cent.
Dunnes Stores saw sales grow by 5 per cent, and boosted its market share by 1 point to 23 per cent. Aldi and Lidl both posted impressive growth rates of 23 per cent and 10.3 per cent respectively, although their combined market share of 14.5 per cent has dipped below the record level of 15.1 per cent they achieved in August. SuperValu’s sales remain in line with last year’s performance, with a slight dip in share to 19.5 per cent of the market, while Superquinn’s sales are down 1.8 per cent and its market share down slightly, from 5.3 per cent to 5.2 per cent.
Pre-tax profits at Dunnes Stores UK arm up 29% after cost-cutting exercise
Cost cutting exercises at the UK arm of Dunnes Stores meant that profits jumped last year, despite falling sales.
Pre-tax profits at the British division of the Irish-owned retail giant soared by 29pc to £15.9m (€18.5m) in the year ending to February – even though sales fell by 5pc to £157m.
The newly filed accounts offer a rare insight into the finances of the family-owned business as Dunnes Stores has unlimited status in Ireland and is not required to file annual accounts to the Companies Office.
The Newry-registered firm’s revenues are generated by 34 stores operating in the UK and Northern Ireland – 23 in the North, six in England and five in Scotland.
Most of its increase in profit last year can be attributed to cost-cutting; the firm’s cost of sales decreased by 9.5pc from £107.5m to £97.25m while operating expenses were slashed by about £2m to £45.6m. Staff costs of £18.89m were down by 6pc, or more than £1m.
The entire Dunnes Stores group employs about 15,000 people in Ireland and the UK.
Now the second largest player in the Irish grocery market, just behind Tesco, the firm operates 116 stores in the Republic.
Figures from Kantar Worldpanel show that it managed to grow its market share by one percentage point in the past three months, in the face of fierce competition from Lidl and Aldi, to 23pc of the market.
Eclipse witnessed across Africa & Middle East
Kenya has the clearest view of the eclipse, Woman in Gabon looks at eclipse
School children joined adults in awe in countries across Africa and the Middle East as a partial solar eclipse took place today.
The rare event began to be visible in the US, before moving east in visibility across the Atlantic ocean towards Africa
Locals in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast watched through closed fingers and sunglasses, while Senegalese residents in Dakar did not seem bothered by the rare event.
In Nigeria school children were shown the scene through a specially set up telescope that projected the image onto a box that made it safe to look at, while others used special sunglasses for watching.
The Nigerian Space Research and Development Director General, Saidu Onalo Mohammed, said he wanted to appeal to citizens that might mistake the happening for a mystical event.
The important aspect of it is the fact that this too will demystify the mysteries attached to this in the past, he said.
The important aspect of it is the fact that this too will demystify the mysteries attached to this in the past, he said.
“The world is not coming to an end; don’t sell your properties because there is going to be an eclipse, or start anything, or borrow money to do any sacrifice, that is not the issue,” he added.
In Damascus, Syria citizens gathered in Jalaa stadium to watch the event, after the Syrian Astronomy Association invited people to monitor the eclipse that hide 20% of the sun in Damascus and 25% in the south of the country.
The American space agency NASA said the best total eclipse would have been visible somewhere in the Atlantic.
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