March 4, 2021
Spotify is expanding to 40 more African countries. The audio streaming service is trying to tap into the growth opportunity presented by the continent, following its initial entry into South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisia in 2018. In total, Spotify is entering 86 new markets in different parts of the world, to help “ensure that sounds and stories that once remained local can reach a global audience,” the company says.
Spotify joins a growing list of foreign audio streaming services in Africa, including Apple Music, which also expanded to more countries last year. The continent has opportunities in the availability of cheaper smartphones, expanding internet connectivity, faster internet speeds, an increasing array of connected devices, and an expected population boom. Revenue in music streaming in Africa is expected to grow to $493 million by 2025.
March 3, 2021
Calling it “the biggest business tax cut in modern history” in his budget speech, Rishi Sunak, the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer, announced a “super-deduction” for companies, inviting them to spend the mountains of cash they’re sitting on.
The super-deduction will allow businesses to deduct up to 130% of new capital investment from their overall taxable income. An auto-parts manufacturer buying new plant machinery for £1 million, for example, will be able to deduct £1.3 million from taxable income. The super-deduction regime, which will run until March 2023, will let companies cut their tax bill by up to 25p for every £1 they invest. In total over the next two years, companies are expected to benefit to the tune of £25 billion ($35 billion).
March 2, 2021
For all the talk of Covid-19 vaccine supply issues in the European Union, official data show that close to 13 million doses distributed to member states have not even been administered. Most of those are from AstraZeneca, with many Europeans apparently unwilling to accept that particular jab.
According to the European Centre on Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC), 43.4 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been distributed to countries of the EU or European Economic Area, but only 30.6 million doses have been administered. (The EU medical authority has approved vaccines manufactured by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Oxford/AstraZeneca, but Hungary has also started rolling out jabs made by Chinese firm Sinovac and a Russian research institute, and other countries are negotiating to buy doses from those manufacturers too.)
February 24, 2021
The Philippines is using two coveted resources of the Covid-19 pandemic as bargaining chips: healthcare workers and vaccines.
The Philippine Department of Labor and Employment says it’s willing to exempt the Germany and the UK from the 5,000
–person annual limit on the number of Filipino healthcare professionals allowed to work abroad. In exchange, they want to secure 600,000 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, and also review bilateral labor agreements.
Germany and the UK face a dire shortage of trained caregivers for their aging populations, so they need the nurses. A recent study suggests that the UK may require 50,000 more nurses over the next four years to survive the pandemic. Germany has been actively recruiting foreign nurses to fill thousands of open positions across the country, and is ready to hire 15,000 new Filipino medical workers.
London’s Heathrow,
one of the busiest airports in the world, lost £2 billion ($2.83 billion) in 2020 as the aviation industry collapsed under the strain of the pandemic. Now, it’s calling for more support from the UK government in order to survive.
John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow’s CEO, said passenger numbers have dropped to levels not seen since the 1970s. Only 677,356 people flew through Heathrow in January of this year, compared to almost 6.1 million in January of last year. In 2020 as a whole, only 22.1 million passengers flew through Heathrow and more than half of those traveled in the first two months of the year, before borders closed across Europe as a result of Covid-19.