RIYADH: The Red Sea Development Co. is pushing the envelope on sustainability by adopting biofuels to operate all its tourist facilities.
TRSDC will be procuring 25 biofuel-optimized gensets with a total generating capacity of 112 MW from the German firm MAN Energy Solutions. These generators will power the project at six tourist locations.
“Biofuels are considered a carbon-neutral fuel. They can reduce carbon emissions by 20-30 percent compared to heavy fuel oil,” Ghassan Saab, head of power plants in the Middle East and Africa region at MAN Energy Solutions, told Arab News.
All 25 MAN engines are optimized to use climate-neutral B100 biofuel with a small efficiency loss compared to conventional fuel operation. The installation will be the first of its kind in the Middle East though they have footprints of biofuel engines in other regions.
As Saudi Arabia’s iconic tourist destination will rely on renewable energy supplies rather than the national electricity grid, the infrastructure of The Red Sea Project will be powered by solar plants that will include storage batteries powered by MAN gensets.
“The Red Sea Project will primarily be powered by solar power plants combined with battery storage. Our MAN gensets will serve as a valuable back-up to step-in if solar energy is not available,” added Saab.
As biofuel is derived mainly from organic waste, the fuel mix from solar power and biofuel production will make TRSDC’s energy system truly sustainable and independent.
The development of the comprehensive infrastructure for renewable energy supplies was implemented by a consortium led by ACWA Power, a leading Saudi company in developing, investing, and operating projects in the fields of generating power and water desalination.
JEDDAH: Saudi Ministry of Tourism has announced the launch of one of the largest training programs in the sector that will invest $100 million to groom 100,000 Saudi trainees worldwide.
Called Tourism Trailblazers, the program will offer courses across all career levels and involve the top 10 international schools, revealed Deputy Minister for the Tourism Human Capital at Ministry of Tourism Mohammed Bushnag.
“We selected the top 10 schools worldwide, and the program will start in the coming few weeks,” Bushnag told Arab News on the sidelines of the 116th Executive Council of the UN World Tourism Organization in Jeddah.
“We have collaborated with international schools such as Lausanne and BHMS in Lucerne. The first set of students will fly out of the Kingdom on July 4,” added Bushnag.
Countries include France, UK, Switzerland, Spain and Australia with international top hospitality schools like La Roches, Gilon and César Ritz.
The program will include courses from four to six weeks, targeting 50,000 trainees in the Kingdom, 25,000 abroad and 25,000 across both geographies.
Bushnaq said that the program curriculum targets the need gaps in the tourism sector and focuses on 12 sub-sectors defined by the UNWTO.
“For those who want to start working in tourism, we have programs for them. For those who are in their mid-careers, we have programs for them. We also have courses for the senior managers,” he explained.
Planning to create 1 million jobs in the tourism sector by 2030, Bushnag predicts that women will exceed half of the participants in the program.
“From my experience with programs like these, we have never had less than 50 percent females. Actually at one stage, females constituted around 54 percent,” said Bushnag.
He was also confident of the employment targets stated in the Vision 2030 statement.
“Currently, there are like 800,000 employees. And by 2030, we’re going to reach almost 1.6 million,” he said.
“The target is to have at least 70 percent Saudis by 2030, if not 100 percent. We are training and developing because building capabilities for Saudis will make our life easier and improve the private sector,” Bushnag added.
JEDDAH: Travel technology company Amadeus has signed a deal with the Saudi Tourism Authority to provide a destination management system that would enhance tourism and mobility in the Kingdom.
Speaking on the sidelines of the 116th Executive Council of the UN World Tourism Organization, Nashat Bukhari, managing director of Amadeus, Saudi Arabia & Bahrain, told Arab News that the technology would help the Kingdom attract tourists and new businesses into the region.
“We provide an application to show the traffic situation, where the travelers are, and how to attract and convert travelers. Hopefully, this will attract many travelers and tourists to Saudi Arabia,” he said.
The ecosystem starts with inspiring the traveler about the destination, showing what they should expect to see, which enables travel agencies to book airline tickets, accommodation, and transportation accordingly.
“Amadeus is the world’s largest travel technology company, with regional offices in more than 114 countries,” he said.
The company holds a 77 percent market share in the Kingdom, providing technology services in tourism, airlines and hospitality.
The company uses sophisticated software associated with Microsoft Cloud to preserve the maximum amount of data.
The Madrid-based company works with many regional companies, including Saudi Arabian Airlines, The Red Sea Development Co., and Hilton Hotels & Resorts, in addition to public entities such as the Saudi Ministry of Tourism and the Saudi Ministry of Investment.
“We have hospitality systems to provide hotels, which can be used for reservations and property management,” said Bukhari.
Amadeus’ client segment also includes travel agencies, providing them with traveling systems to manage their workflow.
“We provide the travel agencies with technology to fulfill the needs of the travelers,” he said.
Amadeus recently developed a platform for Riyadh-based travel company Seera Group to speed up customer post-booking experience.
The company’s advanced post-booking technology solutions provide numerous optimization benefits, drastically reducing the time needed to reissue tickets across all Seera’s omnichannel touch points by automating the process.
According to a press statement, requests for ticket changes, whether made via Seera’s travel verticals on booking platforms, call centers, in-branch, or WhatsApp channels, can now be processed in less than five minutes.
Seera Group is also the first to use these technologies to issue and reissue tickets for Saudi government entities, the statement said.
NEW YORK: US stock futures turned negative and European shares fell further on Friday after higher-than-expected US consumer price data for May fueled inflation concerns and likely kept the Federal Reserve on track to aggressively hike interest rates, according to Reuters.
The consumer price index increased 1.0 percent last month after gaining 0.3 percent in April, the Labor Department said. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the monthly CPI picking up 0.7 percent.
Some economists and market participants had expected the data to show inflation had peaked in May, but the report indicated otherwise.
“It was pretty hot. This report suggests that underlying inflation pressures remain quite strong,” said Aichi Amemiya, senior US economist at Nomura.
Two-year US Treasury yields rose to their highest level in three-and-a-half years and a part of the yield curve reinverted after the data showing acceleration in consumer prices.
US stock futures fell more than 1 percent and the major European bourses extended declines after the data’s release, with France’s CAC 40 down 2.0 percent, Germany’s DAX off 1.88 percent, and the FTSE 100 in Londow 1.73 percent lower.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 2.04 percent and MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe fell 0.78 percent.
Investors expect the Fed to raise rates by 50 basis points next week as major central banks tighten policy to tame soaring inflation that has been sparked by surging crude oil and food prices, along with supply chain issues.
“We don’t see any possibility of a 75 basis point hike next week,” Amemiya said, but the likelihood of more 50 basis point hikes has increased.
The Band of England and Sweden’s Riksbank are expected to hike rates again next week, while the European Central Bank on Thursday said it would deliver its first rate rise since 2011 next month, followed by a potentially larger move in September.
WASHINGTON: The costs of gas, food and other necessities jumped in May, raising inflation to a new four-decade high and giving American households no respite from rising costs.
Consumer prices surged 8.6 percent last month from 12 months earlier, faster than April’s year-over-year surge of 8.3 percent, the Labor Department said Friday.
On a month-to-month basis, prices jumped 1 percent from April to May, a steep rise from the 0.3 percent increase from March to April. Much higher gas prices were to blame for most of that increase.
The US’s rampant inflation is imposing severe pressures on families, forcing them to pay much more for food, gas and rent and reducing their ability to afford discretionary items, from haircuts to electronics.
Lower-income and Black and Hispanic Americans, in particular, are struggling because, on average, a larger proportion of their income is consumed by necessities.
Economists do expect inflation to ease this year, though not by very much. Some analysts have forecast that the inflation gauge the government reported Friday — the consumer price index — may drop below 7 percent by year’s end.
In March, the year-over-year CPI reached 8.5 percent, the highest such rate since 1982.
High inflation has also forced the Federal Reserve into what will likely be the fastest series of interest rate hikes in three decades. By raising borrowing costs aggressively, the Fed hopes to cool spending and growth enough to curb inflation without tipping the economy into a recession. For the central bank, it will be a difficult balancing act.
Surveys show that Americans see high inflation as the nation’s top problem, and most disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy. Congressional Republicans are hammering Democrats on the issue in the run-up to midterm elections this fall.
Inflation has remained high even as the sources of rising prices have shifted. Initially, robust demand for goods from Americans who were stuck at home for months after COVID hit caused shortages and supply chain snarls and drove up prices for cars, furniture and appliances.
Now, as Americans resume spending on services, including travel, entertainment and dining out, the costs of airline tickets, hotel rooms and restaurant meals have soared. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has further accelerated the prices of oil and natural gas.
And with China easing strict COVID lockdowns in Shanghai and elsewhere, more of its citizens are driving, thereby sending oil prices up even further.
Goods prices are expected to fall in the coming months. Many large retailers, including Target, Walmart and Macy’s, have reported that they’re now stuck with too much of the patio furniture, electronics and other goods that they ordered when those items were in heavier demand and will have to discount them.
Even so, rising gas prices are eroding the finances of millions of Americans. Prices at the pump are averaging nearly $5 a gallon nationally and edging closer to the inflation-adjusted record of about $5.40 reached in 2008.
Research by the Bank of America Institute, which uses anonymous data from millions of their customers’ credit and debit card accounts, shows spending on gas eating up a larger share of consumers’ budgets and crowding out their ability to buy other items.
For lower-income households — defined as those with incomes below $50,000 — spending on gas reached nearly 10 percent of all spending on credit and debit cards in the last week of May, the institute said in a report this week. That’s up from about 7.5 percent in February, a steep increase in such a short period.
Spending by all the bank’s customers on long-lasting goods, like furniture, electronics and home improvement, has plunged from a year ago, the institute found. But their spending on plane tickets, hotels and entertainment has continued to rise.
Economists have pointed to that shift in spending from goods to services as a trend that should help lower inflation by year’s end. But with wages rising steadily for many workers, prices are rising in services as well.
RIYADH: Banque Saudi Fransi’s $4 billion guaranteed Medium-Term Note program has been assigned a provisional senior unsecured foreign-currency rating of (P)A2 by Moody’s Investors Service.
The MTN program is a special-purpose vehicle established by BSF and the rating is aligned with BSF's A2 long-term deposit ratings, a statement showed.
Securities issued under the programme will constitute direct, unconditional, unsubordinated and unsecured obligations of BSF, according to Moody’s, and rank equally with all other unsecured and unsubordinated from time to time outstanding obligations of BSF.
Under the programme, BSF may issue notes, through BSF Finance, up to a maximum aggregate principal amount of $4 billion.
Based on Moody's view of a very high likelihood of Saudi government support in case of need, the BSF's A2 long-term deposit ratings capture the bank’s Baseline Credit Assessment of baa1 and a two notch uplift.
BSF's well-established corporate banking franchise, strong asset quality, sound capital adequacy and deposit-funded profile secured the sound profitability of the bank thus the baa1 BCA rating.
Both ratings come from BSF's high credit and funding concentrations and continued downside risks on asset risk while some borrowers remain impacted by the pandemic induced disruption, Moody’s said.