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Dubai / Emirates Business Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) received over 1.4 million telephone calls in 2015. DEWA’s call centre, the Customer Care Centre, answered 665,343 calls, while a further 754,190 calls were managed by its Interactive Voice Response system, enabling DEWA customers to make use of its services smartly and efficiently. DEWA’s Customer Care Centre also received up ...

DUBAI / WAM Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, has launched Dubai Wholesale City, the largest global wholesale hub, set to span over 550 million sq. feet, with an expected development cost of AED30 billion over ten years. The new development aims to increase the UAE’s share ...

ABU DHABI / WAM Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development (DED) has seized 10,231 counterfeit beauty and skincare products in an inspection campaign launched by its Commercial Protection Directorate (CPD) in Mussaffah, Abu Dhabi. The CPD also issued 12 fines against vehicle owners who transported products without a license in Zayed City Centre in Abu Dhabi and the Industrial Zone ...

ABU DHABI / WAM ADNOC Distribution on Tuesday launched the pilot phase of its smart self-refueling service (ADNOC SMART) in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, which will run until October 1 and cover four service stations on Abu Dhabi Island. ADNOC SMART also enables registered customers to benefit from a variety of innovative payment methods. The pilot phase of ADNOC ...

Tokyo / Bloomberg The world’s biggest pension fund posted its best quarterly gain in a year as a rebound in stocks helped add $42 billion to the value of Japanese asset manager’s investments. The 139.8 trillion yen ($1.2 trillion) Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) delivered a 3.6 percent return in the three months ended December as its holdings rose by ...

New Delhi / Bloomberg India’s biggest gold market was shuttered on Tuesday as jewellers in the country’s commercial capital began an indefinite strike to try to reverse a plan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to introduce an excise tax. Jewellers in Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar have stopped work and want the proposal for a 1 percent levy announced in Monday’s annual ...

Tokyo / Bloomberg Sharp Corp. is facing a potential cash crunch at the end of this month as talks drag on with Foxconn Technology Group for a rescue deal that would inject billions of dollars in new capital into the struggling Japanese electronics maker. Sharp has 510 billion yen ($4.5 billion) in credit lines and loans that are set to ...

Beijing / AFP Manufacturing activity in China shrank at its fastest rate in four years in February, government data showed Tuesday, a fresh sign of sustained weakness in the world’s second-largest economy. The official Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), which tracks activity in factories and workshops, fell to 49.0 last month, figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed. It ...

Bangkok / AFP A Thai tuna processing factory has agreed to pay staff $1.3 million compensation for a litany of labour abuses, an official said on Tuesday, a rare victory for migrant workers in the kingdom’s scandal-stricken seafood industry. Hundreds of Myanmar labourers at Golden Prize Tuna Canning, a processing plant in Samut Sakhon that sells fish to markets around ...

New Delhi / Bloomberg It’s not just taxpayers who will make Indian banks whole. Tax cheats are being pressed into service as well. State-run Indian lenders are gasping for breath, as the central bank forces them to recognize bad loans and make provisions. The 250 billion rupees ($3.7 billion) in fresh capital that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has pledged to ...