The Weekly Lift - March 7, 2024

This week's selection of articles and headlines*:

International Finance: I.M.F. Agrees to Much Larger Rescue Package for Egypt

The New York Times (US) reports, "the International Monetary Fund has agreed to more than double a bailout package for Egypt, which is going through its worst economic crisis in decades, exacerbated by war in the neighboring Gaza Strip and in Ukraine.

The fund now plans to provide Egypt $8 billion, up from an initial $3 billion announced in October 2022.

The I.M.F.’s mission chief to Egypt, Ivanna Vladkova Hollar, noted at a news conference that the already-struggling Egyptian economy had been further hurt by the conflict between Israel and Hamas, which has cut into the country’s vital tourism trade.

At the same time, revenue from the Suez Canal dropped by half after Houthi militants, who say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, began attacking cargo ships using Red Sea shipping routes.

Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly of Egypt said that the deal would enable the government to secure an additional $1.2 billion, above the $8 billion, from the I.M.F.’s environmental suitability fund and would encourage development partners like the World Bank and the European Union to also give Egypt more loans to help it reach financial stability.

Last week, Egypt secured a deal worth $35 billion with the United Arab Emirates to develop parts of its Mediterranean coast. Egyptian officials celebrated it as the largest foreign direct investment in Egypt’s history.

Hours before the I.M.F. deal was announced, in an attempt to rein in soaring inflation, Egypt’s Central Bank devalued the currency by more than 35 percent — it was the fourth devaluation in two years — and raised interest rates by 600 basis points.

Mr. Madbouly said his government and the I.M.F. had reached consensus on the targets of Egypt’s structural reform plan.

“The aim is to raise foreign currency reserves, lower the debt burden, guarantee the flow of foreign direct investments and work towards high growth rates for the Egyptian economy,” he said.

The government and the monetary fund are committed to social protection measures for vulnerable people who will be affected by the reform plans, Mr. Madbouly said.

Over the past 18 months, a severe foreign currency shortage in Egypt, which overwhelmingly relies on imports, has sent prices — and anxiety about the future — off the charts. The cost of some basic food items quadrupled, debt burden reached an all-time high, and the currency lost a huge portion of its value, decimating the purchasing power of people’s incomes and the value of their life savings.

The Central Bank Governor, Hassan Abdalla, said the government’s medium-term plan aimed to bring down inflation, which hit a record-high of nearly 40 percent last summer, to a single digit.

Before the I.M.F. deal, growing economic pressure had forced the government to shift tactics, including freezing some costly megaprojects ordered up by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, including a lavish new capital in the desert.

Additional pressure came from the I.M.F., which refused to hand over much of the initial loan until Egypt made good on some economic policy conditions. Among them was encouraging private-sector growth by eliminating the competitive advantages enjoyed by Egypt’s military-owned businesses.

Over the past decade, Egypt’s economy has been struggling for stability. Many observers say mismanagement, including overspending on megaprojects and the longstanding overreliance on imports, left Egypt vulnerable to successive external shocks. Apart from the war in Gaza, there was the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which affected both tourism and essential wheat imports.

Mr. el-Sisi has repeatedly defended his government’s policies, saying that the 2011 uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak set off lasting economic precarity.

In daily interactions on the streets of Cairo, however, and on social media, many blame the president, whom they accuse of spending on vanity projects and weakening the economy to the point of undermining Egypt’s influence in the region.

Some experts say the I.M.F., which has lent Egypt billions of dollars since 2016, is part of the problem. “They don’t go deep enough into what’s happening in the machine,” said Mohamed Fouad, a financial consultant and former Egyptian lawmaker.

Mr. Fouad expects that the international lender will now be making more calculated decisions. “Their biggest mistake,” he said, “came between 2016 and 2020, when everyone was cheering along, only focusing on the macroeconomic aspect. But the foundation was shaky.”

Gender Rights: France Enshrines Abortion Rights In Its Constitution

The Telegraph (UK) reports, "the French parliament voted on Monday to anchor the right to abortion in the constitution, making France the first country in the world to offer explicit protection for terminating a pregnancy in its basic law.

A congress of both houses of parliament, gathered in a special chamber at the Palace of Versailles, easily found the three-fifths supermajority needed for the change, with 780 lawmakers in favour and 72 voting against. Deputies applauded the change with cheers and a standing ovation.

Emmanuel Macron, the president, described the move as “French pride” that had sent a “universal message”, and a special public ceremony is planned to celebrate the move in Paris on International Women’s Day on March 8.

The Eiffel Tower was lit up in celebration after the change was passed, with slogans including “My Body My Choice” projected upon it. “This is a fundamental step... A step that will go down in history,” Gabriel Attal, France’s prime minister, told the politicians as he urged them to pass the legislation.

He said they owed “a moral debt” toward all women who had suffered before the legalisation of abortion. But Mr Attal said the freedom to abort remained “in danger” worldwide, with our “freedoms in essence threatened... at the mercy of decision makers”. “In one generation, one year, one week, you can go from one thing to the opposite,” he said, referring to rights reversals in the United States, Hungary and Poland.

Such joint parliamentary sessions are extremely rare in France and are called only for momentous occasions such as constitutional changes, the last of which was made in 2008.

Mr Macron pledged last year to enshrine abortion in the constitution after the US Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that guaranteed the right to abortion, allowing individual American states to ban or curtail it.

The vote “is of huge significance given the rollback of this essential right around the world”, said Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, adding that it had sent a message of “hope and solidarity”.

In January, France’s lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, overwhelmingly approved the move with the upper house, the Senate, following suit on Wednesday.

A majority of the public supports the move to give the right to abortion extra protection, according to polls. A November 2022 survey by polling group IFOP found that 86 per cent of people supported inscribing it in the constitution.

Left-wing and centrist politicians have welcomed the change, while some Right-wing senators have said in private they felt under pressure to give it the green light. Several hundred abortion opponents, largely marginalised in the move for the constitutional change, protested in Versailles.

Meanwhile, Catholic bishops called for a day of “fasting and prayer” so the French could “rediscover the taste for life”. Weighing in from Rome, the Vatican said there could be “no ‘right’ to take a human life”.

But hundreds of jubilant backers of the move were overjoyed at the Place du Trocadero in western Paris as they witnessed the passing of the law on a large screen set up for the occasion.

“I’m happy because our rights are constantly under threat everywhere... and it’s only getting worse,” said Cecile Carimalo, 46, who watched with her 12-year-old daughter at the Trocadero esplanade. “This they won’t be able to take from us.”

“If men got pregnant, it would have been inscribed in the text in 1792” during the French Revolution, she added.

Abortion was legalised in France in 1975 in a law championed by then health minister Simone Veil, a women’s rights icon granted the rare honour of burial at the Pantheon after her death in 2017.

When political campaigning began in earnest in 1971, “we could never have imagined that the right to abortion would one day be written into the constitution”, Claudine Monteil, head of the Femmes Monde (Women in the World) association, told AFP.

At the time, an estimated 700,000 to 800,000 women had an abortion each year. Leah Hoctor, of the Centre for Reproductive Rights, said France could offer “the first explicit broad constitutional provision of its kind, not just in Europe, but also globally”.

Climate Change: On Wall Street, Listed Companies Will Have To Disclose Their Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Le Monde (France) reports, "companies listed on Wall Street will be forced to report data on their greenhouse gas emissions and their exposure to climate risks, under a new regulation adopted on Wednesday, March 6 by the U.S. financial market regulator, the SEC.

Companies will have to include in their annual report data on emissions from their direct activities (so-called "scope 1") as well as on their energy consumption ("scope 2"). The SEC, on the other hand, has waived the publication of information on so-called "scope 3" emissions, i.e. those about the company's suppliers and consumers of the goods or services it produces (upstream and downstream).

This last part was included in the initial proposal, submitted for comment in March 2022. As a sign that the issue is major, the SEC has received some 24,000 contributions relating to this new regulation, the president of the institution, Gary Gensler, revealed on Wednesday.

Companies listed in New York will also have to report climate-related risks and their effects, proven or potential, on their strategy, economic model and forecasts. They will also have to communicate on any measures put in place to identify, assess and understand the risks inherent in climate change.

Other necessary information: the costs caused by climate events, as well as expenses related to possible purchases of carbon credits, which amounts to investing in projects that reduce the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions.

Ben Jealous, president of the Sierra Club, an influential American environmental protection organization, welcomed "a positive step forward", but considered that the new regulation was "significantly below what would be necessary". "The "scope 3" emissions [which are not included in the regulation] represent the vast majority of the emissions of most companies," he stressed on social network X.

Three of the five SEC Commissioners voted in favor of the adoption of this regulation after a public sitting. Among the opponents, Commissioner Hester Peirce stressed that, according to estimates, these measures would increase the inherent costs of a listed company by 21% on average, insisting on the negative impact for smaller companies.

She also noted that climate data within a company remained "imprecise" and could not be compared to conventional financial and accounting data. But for Gary Gensler, "this regulation offers investors consistent information, subject to comparison and useful for decision-making," explained the president, quoted in a statement.

Justice: Church Of England Aims To Raise More Than $1 Billion To Address It Links To Slavery

The Los Angeles Times (US) reports, "the Church of England should create a fund of 1 billion pounds, or $1.27 billion, to address its historical links to slavery, according to an advisory panel. That’s 10 times the amount the church previously set aside.

An independent oversight group established by the church said this week that a fund of 100 million pounds announced last year was insufficient compared to the wealth of the church and “the moral sin and crime of African chattel enslavement.”

The Church Commissioners, the church’s financial arm, said it accepted the group’s recommendations, including a target of 1 billion pounds “and above” for a pool of money known as the Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice.

The church said it won’t immediately add to its 100-million-pound commitment. But it will spend the initial money over five years, rather than nine as originally scheduled, and hopes to start distributing it by the end of the year, said Church Commissioners Chief Executive Gareth Mostyn.

He said other institutions or individuals wishing to address their own slavery links could add to the fund and “join us on this journey.”

The fund was established as part of efforts by the Anglican Church to reckon with its historic complicity in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Church Commissioners, which administers the church’s 10 billion-pound ($12.7-billion) wealth fund, hired forensic accountants in 2019 to dig through the church’s archives for evidence of slave trade links.

They found that the church’s huge assets had their roots in Queen Anne’s Bounty, a fund established in 1704 to help support impoverished clergy. It invested heavily in the South Sea Co., which held a monopoly on transporting enslaved people from Africa to Spanish-controlled ports in the Americas. Between 1714 and 1739, the company transported 34,000 people on at least 96 voyages.

Queen Anne’s Bounty also received donations from individuals enriched by the slave trade, including Edward Colston, a British slave trader whose statue in his home city of Bristol was toppled by anti-racism protesters in 2020.

Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807 but did not legislate to emancipate slaves in its territories until 1833.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who heads the Church of England, has promised to address its “shameful past.” He said the recommendations were “the beginning of a multigenerational response to the appalling evil of trans-Atlantic chattel enslavement.”

Money from the new fund will be invested in disadvantaged Black communities, aiming to “back their most brilliant social entrepreneurs, educators, healthcare givers, asset managers and historians,” the oversight committee’s report said.

The commitment falls short of demands from some campaigners for institutions that benefited from slavery to pay compensation to descendants of the enslaved.

The oversight group also called on the church to apologize “for denying that black Africans are made in the image of God and for seeking to destroy diverse African traditional religious belief systems.”

Bishop of Croydon Rosemarie Mallett, who chaired the oversight group, said no amount of money can “fully atone for or fully redress the centuries-long impact of African chattel enslavement, the effects of which are still felt around the world today” in blighted life chances for many Black people.

But she said the church was “stepping forth quite boldly, quite audaciously, and saying: ‘We can do this, others should join in.’”

Gender Emporwement: The Mexican Paradox: A Very Sexist Country That Says It’s Ready For A Woman President

El Pais (Spain) reports, "Mexicans know themselves. In a survey about sexism in the country, 75% believe that Mexico is somewhat or very sexist. Moving on to the next question: Do you prefer a man or a woman to be the next president?

Only 53% of the men prefer a woman, while women show more support at 69%, a difference of 16 points. Mexico is set to elect its first female president, since the two major coalitions have nominated female candidates. And that’s OK for an overwhelming 87% of those surveyed by Enkoll for EL PAíS and W Radio. The survey data was gathered from 814 home visits carried out from February 24 to 28.

There are few past experiences to draw upon in Mexico or elsewhere, so people based their opinions on gender perceptions. Mexicans are generally optimistic about having a female leader, and think she’ll do a better job in addressing economic issues (71%), along with public security and anti-corruption efforts.

However, there’s a notable gender gap on these issues. Women perceive themselves as more capable in public security by 15 points and in fighting corruption by eight points. Two-thirds of the women trust female leaders to be more honest. Enkoll Director Heidi Osuna believes that these responses are shaped more by traditional gender expectations than by past experiences with women in power.

In 2012, López Obrador ran against Pe?a Nieto and lost. The conservative National Action Party (PAN) nominated Josefina Vázquez Mota, but the country wasn’t ready then for a female leader. Osuna remembers surveys from that time, indicating that gender might have influenced brand perceptions of Vázquez more than her political views.

“Nowadays, women are seen as just as competitive as men, if not more so.” Things have changed in Mexico. Today, 63% believe the country is ready for a female leader, with a few slight variations in responses. Self-perceptions and views about others play a big role, with 87% of survey respondents predicting a female president will be elected on June 2. Some believe the country is not ready for that, mostly because they think other Mexicans are sexist.

The major political parties have nominated their candidates, leaving the public with the task of choosing one to support. The impact of female voters in this election is uncertain. Osuna says if one of the major coalitions had nominated a man, the story would be different.

Citizen Movement candidate Jorge Alvarez Máynez is an alternative for those opposed to female leaders, while others find him lacking in traditional masculinity. Osuna faults the Citizen Movement party for not nominating a more stereotypically masculine candidate. In a deeply sexist society, having a strong, male candidate could have boosted the party’s chances significantly.

“Samuel García had that more macho, conservative profile, with a wife, children, church...” said Osuna. Maybe the video of álvarez watching a soccer game and hoisting beers with his buddies was intended to sway those conservative, male voters. But maybe not, since overtly sexist gestures like that don’t fly any more.

Regardless of sexism, it’s likely that a woman will lead Mexico after these elections. What’s next? An 87% majority of Mexican women expect positive changes or at least to maintain the status quo. And 89% of men believe women will benefit. If asked who gained from a century of male-led governments, Mexicans would likely say: men.

Claudia Sheinbaum is the ruling party candidate and Xóchitl Gálvez is the main opposition candidate. In three months, Mexicans will go to the polls to choose one based on their policies, not their gender. Regardless of who is saying, “It’s a woman’s turn,” the nation’s focus should be on challenging ideologies and programs.

* Please note that certain headlines and articles may have been modified or summarized to fit the format of the newsletter.

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