The Gulf Time Newspaper One of the finest business newspapers in the UAE brought to you by our professional writers and editors.

Bandar Seri Begawan / DPA The Bruneian government will continue to ensure job security of locals in the oil and gas sector amid the gloomy global economic situation, said Minister of Energy and Industry at the Prime Minister’s Office Col. (Rtd) Mohammad Yasmin Umar. In his closing remarks at the 12th Legislative Council (LegCo) session yesterday (March 23), Mohammad Yasmin ...

Hanoi / AFP Vietnam’s inflation rate rose sharply in the first quarter of 2016 according to official figures released Thursday, a turnaround for the communist country which saw inflation dwindle to zero last year. Year-on-year consumer price inflation was 1.25 percent in the first quarter, the General Statistics Office (GSO) said in a statement posted on its website, a sharp ...

New Delhi / Bloomberg India is proposing stringent new rules to crack down on waste from discarded electronics that will require those who make and sell the units to be responsible for collecting old devices that otherwise would end up in landfills. The rules are aimed at preventing toxic chemicals included in electronics from leaching into the environment. For the ...

China and the United States are almost finished with negotiations over a key investment treaty, former Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming said on Wednesday. If successfully concluded, the bilateral investment treaty (BIT) could substantially increase Chinese and U.S. investments in each other’s markets. A BIT between China and the United States has been in the works for eight years. In ...

One of the biggest stories in science right now is the fight over the Crispr patents. Crispr is a gene editing technique that promises to allow previously unthinkable feats of bio-engineering. It was discovered in stages, like most scientific breakthroughs, by multiple teams working at various universities and research institutes around the world. The final, key advancements were made more-or-less ...

BLOOMBERG Stocks dropped around the world as the dollar extended gains into a fifth day, with the potential for higher U.S. interest rates again roiling financial markets as the Easter vacation looms. European shares have fallen every day this week, with raw-materials producers sliding as the Bloomberg Commodity Index declined. U.S. stock-index futures also dropped. Oil was poised for the ...

ABU DHABI / EMIRATES BUSINESS The Emirates Securities Market Index has decreased by -1.18% to close at 4450.65 points. Accordingly the Market Capitalization has lost AED 8.59 billion attaining AED 721.95 billion. A total of 0.52 Billion Shares were traded with a total value of AED 0.61 billion during the trading session of 24-03-2016 through 7186 transactions. The number of companies which ...

TOKYO / Reuters Bank of Japan (BOJ) policymakers engaged in heated debate during their policy review in March on the pros and cons of their decision in January to adopt negative interest rates, with one even saying it was preferable to roll it back. A summary of the March 14-15 meeting of the nine-member board that was released on Thursday showed ...

Sydney / AFP ANZ Bank on Thursday warned sour loans will cost it at least A$900 million in the first-half, and analysts warned of more trouble ahead as slumping commodity prices squeeze Australia’s resources companies. The bank said weakness in the mining and energy sectors means it now expects bad debts to cost A$100 million ($75 million) more in the ...

Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank (SNB) spent 86.1 billion francs ($88 billion) on interventions last year, a measure of its efforts to shield the economy from deflation. SNB President Thomas Jordan and his colleagues have repeatedly pledged to step in to prevent the franc from strengthening. They’ve done so even since they gave up a minimum exchange rate of 1.20 ...