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ABU DHABI / WAM HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and Minister of Finance and Chairman of the Federal Tax Authority (FTA), has issued FTA Decision No. (1) of 2019, setting a daily maximum of AED7,000 for cash refunds of value added tax (VAT) for tourists applying through the tax refunds for tourists scheme. In ...

Bloomberg Indonesia said it will crack down on trash imported from the world’s richest countries after closer inspections showed it’s increasingly the recipient of toxic waste materials. Authorities at ports have boosted checks after a random inspection in May led to the discovery of more than 80 containers containing illegal waste from the US, Australia and Europe. One of Australia’s ...

Bloomberg India is contemplating organising an annual global investors’ meet in the country, akin to the World Economic Forum in the alpine resort of Davos, to carve out a bigger global role for itself. The move will help create a niche for Asia’s third-biggest economy within the international financial system, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her budget speech. China ...

Bloomberg Grameenphone, the Bangladesh division of Norway’s Telenor Group, said the local telecom regulator’s move to restrict internet bandwidth for its services was “illegal”, as the company continues to pursue arbitration over an audit demand of nearly $1.5 billion. Bangladesh’s largest mobile company said at a press conference the regulator’s move to restrict internet access was “specially designed to put ...

Bloomberg India, the world’s biggest consumer of gold after China, increased the import tax on the precious metal for the first time since 2013, spurring domestic prices to a record. Shares of jewellers slumped. The import tax on gold and other precious metals will be raised to 12.5 percent from 10 percent, Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said while presenting the ...

Bloomberg Thailand’s struggling tourism industry is finding support with visitors from the population colossus to its west, just as the years of bumper arrivals from the giant to its north are beginning to wane. At a beachfront hotel on the tropical island of Phuket, the occupancy rate from Chinese clientele has stalled, while bookings from India have begun to rise. ...

Bloomberg Trade tensions and uncertainty surrounding Brexit are raising economic risks for the euro area, prompting France to urge Germany to loosen its purse strings to support growth. “It would be irresponsible not to examine the need for new investments in the euro zone,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said at an annual economic conference in Aix-en-Provence, in southern ...

Bloomberg Orange SA Chief Executive Officer Stephane Richard will have to resign if he’s convicted next week on decade-old allegations of fraud, a top finance ministry official said. A Paris court will decide on July 9 whether Richard helped businessman Bernard Tapie cheat the government out of about 403 million euros ($455 million) in 2008, when he was chief of ...

Bloomberg The blistering heatwave that struck Germany and other parts of Europe last month shows the country needs to take further action to protect the environment, Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her weekly podcast. “Extreme weather events are becoming more common,” Merkel said. “Together we must react to the situation.” The increased use of renewable energy, along with efforts to ...

Bloomberg Starbucks Corp issued an apology to Tempe, Arizona Police Chief Sylvia Moir and her department after six officers were asked to leave a store in the city following a request by a customer on July 4. The barista approached the officers as a customer didn’t feel safe in their presence, the Tempe Officers Association said in a series of ...