This rare central bank news conference is following a spate of weaker readings in recent months from China—the world’s second largest economy—after a sharp drop in its yuan currency against the dollar, and a plunge in Chinese stock markets.

China’s policymakers remain focused on shifting their priorities to reducing risks to growth, as the country’s economy cools down, and the impact of the US trade tariffs begins to be felt. Smaller companies in particular, are havin a tough time securing loans and have to grapple with rising borrowing and operating costs – fueled in part by a lengthy official clampdown on riskier lending like shadow banking.

The PBOC has stated that it will “effectively ease” companies’ financing problems and improve their coordination with other agencies to ensure monetary policy measures are being transmitted into the broader economy.

Analysts are further expecting further cuts in corporate taxes and fees– and the central bank has specified that some funds that are freed up from reductions in banks’ reserve requirements should be earmarked for loans to smaller businesses.

Beijing is also accelerating infrastructure spending to cushion the economy as it braces for the blow from escalating U.S. tariffs. Still, the growing stream of new stimulus measures and easing credit policies have raised fears that debt reduction may be put on the back burner again.

China’s Vice Premier Liu He emphasies the need for the country to beef up capital markets and broaden financing channels for small and medium enterprises on Monday.

China’s economic growth rate slowed slightly to 6.7% in the second quarter year-on-year(YOY)—which is still well above the government’s full-year target of around 6.5%. But some key activity indicators have weakened more sharply and policymakers are getting anxious. Fixed-asset investment is currently growing at the slowest pace on record, while non-performing loans surged in the second quarter, defaults climbed and the jobless rate rose to 5.1%.

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That kind of effort is something to recognize. One way we’ll do it? This October, we’re raising our minimum hourly wage to $11—and we plan to increase the minimum hourly wage for all team members over the next few years to reach $15 by the end of 2020.

“Target has a long history of investing in our team members. We care about and value the more than 323,000 individuals who come together every day with an absolute commitment to serving our guest,” says Brian Cornell, CEO and chairman. “We’ve always offered market-competitive wages to our team members. With this latest commitment, we’ll be providing even more meaningful pay, as well as the tools, training and support our team needs to build their skills, develop professionally and offer the service and expertise that set Target apart.”

The big investment means pay increases for thousands of our team members across the country before the holiday season, and will also apply to the approximately 100,000 seasonal team members we’re hiring right now.

And it’s just one of the benefits we offer to reward our talented team members and help them grow in their careers, along with training and development opportunities, a variety of schedules to fit their diverse needs, merchandise discounts and life resources.

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Suparna Goswami Bhattacharya

June 28, 2016: In a move that has surprised many, Saudi Arabia has scaled back its renewable power targets as the world’s largest producer of oil plans to use more natural gas, backing away from goals set when crude prices were about triple their current level.

The Kingdom has now brought down its renewable target from 50% of the energy mix to 10%. “Our energy mix has shifted more towards gas, so the need for high targets from renewable sources isn’t there anymore,” said Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih. Generating more power from gas should help Saudi reserve more crude for exports, which otherwise gets burned to meet the Kingdom’s electricity demand.

Saudi Arabia has for years sought to develop gas resources to provide fuel for power plants and industries, and to free up more oil to sell overseas. Saudi Arabian Oil Co., the state-run producer, has also set up several ventures with international partners to explore gas.

Jeremy Leggett, founder and chairman, Solarcentury, UK’s largest and independent solar company, says, “The emphasis on gas is disappointing for various reasons. For instance, solar energy is cheaper than gas, and this has been shown in recent auctions.”  Leggett adds that it does not reflect well on the Kingdom which only recently announced a $2 trillion post-oil economy.

Also, the move will only help countries like India, China and US grow domestic solar industries that can lead the world in the emerging energy transition away from fossil fuels.

There are others who, however, do not read much into the announcement.

“This is simply a public statement that tries to reset the renewable energy targets set in 2012 under K.A.CARE. Once the details of the King Salman Renewable Energy Initiative are announced, we will know what to expect in the future from Saudi Arabia. They now have a chance to reset the Saudi renewable program and manage expectations,” says Browning Rockwell, global business executive, Horizon Tradewinds.

In 2012, K.A.CARE, the body tasked with weaning Saudi Arabia off oil for domestic power consumption, launched an ambitious plan for solar. It had proposed investing $109 billion in 41 GW of solar power to supply a third of the Kingdom’s electricity by 2032. An initial procurement round of 600 MW, split evenly between PV and concentrated solar power, was due to kick off in January 2013. However, the announcements remained only on paper and nothing concrete started.

The exact reason for the retreat on solar is not known.

“I feel until competitive solar energy storage is achieved by the Kingdom, gas will probably be prioritised,” says Rockwell adding that K.A.CARE was never really given any real authority to implement the announced projects.

Various reports suggest a lack of alignment between K.A.CARE and other potential stakeholders, such as the Saudi Aramco and King Abdullah University of Science & Technology.

Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves of gas rank third largest in the Middle East. According to figures by World Energy, proven natural gas reserves in the Kingdom are over 7 trillion cubic metres.

“Industrial expansion requires cheap and dependable energy source. Gas is a safe bet and does not have the inefficiency issues of solar. Storage of solar energy is still a problem,” says Graham Little, an independent energy and power expert.

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Tom Groenfeldt

November 4, 2014: The US is the last country with paved roads to adopt EMV, said Thad Peterson, senior analyst at the Aité Group, passing along a quip he had heard. That’s changing — almost all the new cards being issued in the U.S. today carry EMV chips and the card readers in businesses are increasingly able to read mag stripes, EMV and Near Field Communication (NFC).

EMV, which stands for Europay, MasterCard, Visa, is the standard for a security chip embedded in credit cards to protect consumer transactions. The tiny chip, visible on the front of the card, has approximately the processing power of an old 286 computer and interacts with a card reader when it is inserted at a store or restaurant, as Europeans know. They are accustomed to handing over their card and entering a PIN on the reader to authenticate it.

In the US, almost all credit cards have relied on a swipe to catch the details from the magnetic stripe on the back of the card. The mag stripe carries encoded information about the user which is relatively easy to copy and can be stolen in data breaches like Target, Neiman Marcus and Home Depot.

To some extent, the US has been a victim of its early mover role in combining cheap telecommunications with cards — almost all card transactions are processed in real-time by clearing them over telephone lines where they are subjected to some very sophisticated algorithms that look for fraud. Only the occasional tow-truck operator or crafts person at an art fair still uses the manual card copier, known affectionately as a knuckle buster, and even those users are moving to smartphone card readers like Square.

By October 2015, merchants will be liable for any fraud occurring from mag stripe cards, so the migration to EMV is underway.

“The migration won’t be complete, but virtually all the major retailers will be EMV-capable in time,” said Peterson. Stores still using mag stripe cards will continue to have the protection of real-time authorisation and existing fraud detection software, said Carolyn Balfany group head, US product delivery for MasterCard.

She said the industry is beginning to see consumer pull for EMV, interesting because the card companies have all but hidden the existence of chip cards from US consumers until last year.

BOM, the Canadian bank with a large presence south of the border, offered a chip and PIN Diners Club card, although you couldn’t find it on the bank web site. A couple of credit unions with well-traveled members, such as the UN and the US State Department, offered chip and PIN cards. But only recently have big banks and Amex provided them. Online travel sites have tales of frustrated American cardholders who couldn’t get a train ticket at an unmanned kiosk in Europe because their cards didn’t have chip and PIN.  That apparently is changing at last, although why American card companies were so slow to offer chip and PIN, at least to their high-end, well-travelled customers remains a mystery.

During the introductory period, EMV cards will be used with signatures, less secure than a PIN, but more familiar to users. Visa is an ardent advocate that signature is just fine; MasterCard prefers PIN but for now is settling for the new buzz phrase — chip and choice. Peterson expects that the cards will move users to chip and PIN eventually, but no card wants to be stuck in the bottom of a consumer’s wallet because it is too difficult to use.

Nobody wants consumers, who have 3 or 4 other credit cards in their wallet, to have a bad experience with one card and then send it to the back of their wallet, explained Aité’s Julie Conroy, research director for retail banking at the group.

Small merchants will be slower to adopt EMV. Peterson said that a lot of them aren’t aware that the change is coming, although he thinks in the next three to five years virtually every merchant will migrate to EMV.

In the meantime, the US with the least secure card system, has become a target for fraud which doubled from 5 basis points to 10 basis points, according to Conroy.

“It speaks to the fact that criminals are targeting the U.S. because we are the weakest link in the chain.”

Perhaps even EMV isn’t as safe as banks would like.

Brian Krebs whose website KrebsOnSecurity broke the Target story, reported earlier this month that three U.S. banks have been hit with fraudulent transactions for tens of thousands of dollars from Brazil, apparently growing out of card data from the Home Depot breach.

“They were all submitted through Visa and MasterCard‘s networks as chip-enabled transactions, even though the banks that issued the cards in question haven’t even yet begun sending customers chip-enabled cards,” he reported.

Neither Visa nor MasterCard has posted any response to the story.

The move to EMV is putting a strain on manufacturing. Credit and debit cards are typically replaced every few years, but EMV is pushing a faster replacement cycle. The migration, which has been talked about for years, really got underway just this year, said Steve Montross, president and CEO at CPI Card Group, one of the leading producers of the plastic cards with nine plants in the U.S. Canada and Europe.

“Banks are working hard on these migration plans,” he said. “They are not only worried about card production but consumer education, internal education and their own systems. Everyone is focused on payment security and the customer experience; they want to make sure the customer is not held up at the point of sale (POS) and discouraged from making the purchase.”

He is all in favour of starting with chip and signature and then perhaps moving to tokenisation or PINs.

“It’s important to get the smart card out there and have the whole infrastructure to do chip transactions. Whatever speeds that up the most, the path of least resistance, that is what I am in favour of because that provides the greatest improvement in security.”

CPI is running 24 hours a day seven days a week to meet demand.

“It’s harder to make EMV cards because they require additional steps. You need precise milling and a precise spot for the chip, which itself needs to be prepared for the information you will put on it.”

Even running 24 hours can be insufficient to meet demand, said Ray Wizbowski, vice-president for financial marketing at Datacard, which makes the machines used to produce cards. Its big machines used in central operations bureaus, can produce 3,000 per hour.

Fortunately, the company also makes machines that can be used to produce cards on demand in bank branches because many banks are maxing out their centralised card production.

When Target suffered a breach of its card security, a Tier One bank turned to its branch card issuance machines to meet demand, Wizbowski said.

“They had already deployed instant card issuance in 2,000 branches. They sent a letter to customers saying they were going to reissue cards within weeks, but customers who wanted one sooner could go to a specific branch to get one issued instantly. The bank went from issuing 10,000 cards a day through its branches to 25,000 a day, topping out at 50,000 one day.” Branches stayed open late and on Sundays to meet demand.

Also Read:

Should you trust mobile banking?

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