Kyrgyzstan

VI electricity costs near region’s average

admin — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 20:00:02 +0000

VI electricity costs near region’s average

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admin Wed, 02/23/2022 - 20:00

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

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Business – The BVI Beacon

Original Article

VI electricity costs near region’s average

Recent studies of global broadband and mobile data pricing from United Kingdom-based telecommunications provider Cable.co.uk haven’t turned out well for the Virgin Islands, which has consistently shown to have some of the highest prices in the world for those services.

However, when it comes to electricity, the VI ranks near the middle of the pack regionally.

Just 11 out of 28 Caribbean countries have cheaper electricity than the VI, according to a study released last month from the company.

But the region as a whole is far behind most of the world, and the VI ultimately ranked 175 out of the 230 countries analysed in the study.

“The Caribbean consists of island nations where electricity generation tends to be more difficult,” the study noted.

The study found that the average cost of electricity in the VI is $0.225 per kilowatt-hour, with the territory’s lowest cost at $0.1675 per kWh and its highest at $0.24.

The average price in the Caribbean is $0.237.

Most Caribbean nations are in the more expensive half of the study results. Curaçao ranked as most expensive in the Caribbean with an average of $0.419 per kWh, while electricity per kWH in Puerto Rico averages $0.049.

The next-cheapest countries and territories are Trinidad and Tobago, Guadeloupe, Cayman Islands, St. Martin, St Barthélemy, the Caribbean Netherlands, Martinique, Aruba and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Global high, low

However, the VI still pays 32 times more than Libya, where consumers pay just $0.007 per kWh. But it doesn’t come close to the high prices in the Solomon Islands, a chain in the Pacific Ocean, which is the costliest in the world with an average price of $0.692 per kWh.

“The Caribbean consists of island nations where electricity generation tends to be more difficult,” the study’s authors wrote. “Clusters of more expensive countries in which to buy electricity tended to be in small island nations where electricity is harder to generate and/or there are no large-scale power stations.”

Researchers at Cable.co.uk worked for six months to complete an analysis of 3,883 energy tariffs around the world in order to measure the price of electricity in 230 countries.

The study noted that the most expensive countries on the list were all far-flung island nations. After the Solomon Islands, the five most expensive countries in terms of the average cost of one kWh were St. Helena ($0.612), Vanuatu ($0.591), the Cook Islands ($0.523) and Micronesia ($0.484).

‘Striking and obvious’

The study called the similarities between these five archipelagoes “both striking and obvious.” Four of five are in Oceania, and all five are island nations.

“Oceania is one of the most expensive regions in the world for electricity, while island nations also tend to be among the most expensive,” the study’s authors wrote.

After Libya, the five cheapest countries in terms of the average cost of one kWh were Angola ($0.013), Sudan ($0.014), Kyrgyzstan ($0.017), and Zimbabwe ($0.021).

“Conversely to the most expensive, none of these countries is an island, and three of the five are located in sub-Saharan Africa,” the study authors wrote. “The cheapest, Libya, is in Northern Africa, with the only non-African country being Kyrgyzstan.”

According to the study, the cheapest places in the world to buy electricity tend to be countries where either oil and gas prices are very cheap (i.e. countries which produce fossil fuels on a large scale), or where household electricity usage is very small and therefore tends not to require a lot of expensive infrastructure.

Around the world

The United States proved to be the cheapest country in North America, at $0.109 per kWh, followed by Canada ($0.124) and Greenland ($0.250). Oceania is the most expensive region in the world, averaging $0.303.

Meanwhile sub-Saharan Africa has four of the ten cheapest countries in the world and three of the ten most expensive.

Former Soviet countries are the cheapest on average regionally, with all 10 countries in the region in the top 70 cheapest in the world, three of them in the top 10.

The study pointed out that the UK, at $0.251 per kWh, pays the most for electricity in Western Europe and comes 190th in the world for cheap electricity.

“Almost every European nation is cheaper. Most African nations? Cheaper. There are even island nations where energy production is especially difficult that charge less than we are charged in the UK,” research analyst Dan Howdle said in a press release announcing the study results.

The post VI electricity costs near region’s average appeared first on The BVI Beacon.

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US-Based Zim Female Student Forms Black Girls, Women Rugby Team

admin — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 01:00:01 +0000

US-Based Zim Female Student Forms Black Girls, Women Rugby Team

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admin Sat, 12/11/2021 - 01:00

Saturday, October 16, 2021

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Diaspora | NewZimbabwe.com

Original Article

US-Based Zim Female Student Forms Black Girls, Women Rugby Team

The Washington Post

TAKUNDA Rusike has long been familiar with rugby. She learned about the sport through her cousins and uncles who played in Zimbabwe, including one uncle who represented the national team.

It wasn’t until she was a junior in high school, though, that Rusike began to play herself, joining a club team after her field hockey coach suggested her physicality would be less proscribed in rugby.

Three years later, Rusike, 19, has created a club team at Howard — just the second women’s squad at a historically Black university — that has ambitions of obtaining varsity status. Her efforts coincide with a broader push to make the sport more accessible to African Americans in the Washington region and more popular around the country.

“It’s growing, and there are definitely more Black women getting into the sport, but when I was playing in Maryland in high school, there was not many Black girls,” said Rusike, who attended Towson High. “I would really love to create a program where years down the line there are little Black girls who know, ‘I love rugby, and I can play it at Howard.’

The idea of starting a Howard rugby team would have been foreign to Carille Guthrie when she was in school two decades ago. Guthrie enrolled at Howard in 2000 after transferring from Tufts University, where she played for the school’s team. Without a program in place at Howard, Guthrie never considered starting one, so she joined a local club team called the Maryland Stingers instead.

Since she graduated, she has played at the club level and coached at the youth level, using the sport to connect with people as her career — she works as a contractor for the State Department — took her from Houston to Kyrgyzstan and now Sri Lanka.

When the coronavirus pandemic took hold last year, it led her to a Facebook group for rugby players who are Black, Indigenous or people of color in which some members began floating the idea of starting more rugby programs at HBCUs.

Those intentions materialized into the James G. Robertson and Clive Sullivan Rugby Foundation (RSRF), which aims to develop men’s and women’s teams in the D.C. area.

The group draws its name from two pioneering Black players: Robertson is believed to be the first Black rugby player and Sullivan was the first Black captain of a major British sports team.

The RSRF is focusing on Howard, Morgan State, Bowie State and the University of the District of Columbia and could expand to other regions.

“I travel a lot, internationally and domestically, and whenever I move to a new city I find the local rugby team, and that’s automatically my new group of friends, my new family,” said Guthrie, who is president of the foundation.

“I had a smidge of that experience in college, but because I was with the senior women [on her unaffiliated club team], we weren’t really as bonded as it would have been with a college team. I just want the college kids to get that experience from the jump. … They’ve got the athletes. The talent is there on campus. They just need to be provided with the opportunity to play.”

That opportunity could not have come at a better time for Rusike, who had been struggling with her mental health after the pandemic shuttered activities and in-person classes at Howard.

Rusike also played basketball and soccer in high school, but after she fouled out enough times and collected yellow cards often enough, she was persuaded to try rugby.
She joined her Baltimore-area club team and took an instant liking to it. She eventually attracted the attention of college coaches but chose to attend Howard, seeking to avoid the microaggressions she had experienced in high school.

Washington’s pro rugby team, Old Glory DC, invited Rusike to participate in its newly established academy, and she planned to join a D.C.-area club as Guthrie had done.

But her friends persuaded her to try to start a team at Howard, and after generating interest through group chats and social media, she started developing a plan as a freshman last year.

By April, Guthrie’s foundation was up and running. She reached out to Tim Brown, Old Glory DC’s director of player pathway and youth development, who connected her with Rusike and Daniel Davillier, a junior at Howard who had been organizing a men’s team around the same time.

“It just kind of exploded from there,” Guthrie said.

Brown readily contributed to both efforts, having previously reached out to the school to inquire about its rugby offerings to no avail.

As part of his role with Old Glory DC, he supports the grass-roots growth and development of rugby in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, and he saw local HBCUs as important contributors to that endeavor. He helped Howard’s teams procure coaches, and he has provided jerseys and balls.

Guthrie and her group began fundraising on behalf of both teams. She serves as a de facto adviser and helps lobby Howard’s administration on their behalf, most notably supporting the effort to classify the women’s team as an officially sanctioned NCAA program.

The widespread support energized Rusike and Davillier, who said the burgeoning programs gave them renewed passion and purpose during the pandemic. It also freed them to handle other issues, such as recruiting, scheduling and securing space to play and practice.

“There’s been so much community support for the rugby team. This honestly could not have happened without so much support,” Davillier said.

The NCAA classifies women’s rugby as an “emerging sport” and sanctions teams to play across three classifications: Division I, Division II and Division III. Club teams can compete against varsity programs, but being elevated to varsity status offers benefits that include greater access to facilities and equipment.

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Professor Persaud pushes disaster clause

admin — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 12:10:01 +0000

Professor Persaud pushes disaster clause

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admin Mon, 07/26/2021 - 12:10

Thursday, July 15, 2021

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Business – Barbados Today

Original Article

Professor Persaud pushes disaster clause

A key advisor to Prime Minister Mia Mottley is touting greater use of disaster clauses in debt financing, particularly for developing countries in the Caribbean.

Professor Avinash Persaud, who recently shared his thoughts on the subject in a letter published in the Financial Times, said the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) which was incorporated into the Mottley administration’s 2018-2019 debt restructuring, was an important move.

“Today, over 75 per cent of the world’s poor live in countries with a per capita GDP above US$1,185, so aren’t eligible for concessionary finance.

“Yet these states don’t have the fiscal or monetary space to address a pandemic or natural disaster and protect their poor.

The threat a catastrophe poses to their solvency narrows that space further. Of the 20 countries with the most significant GDP contraction during 2020, only Kyrgyzstan was eligible for the DSSI,” Persaud contended.

The financial expert who is also chair of the CARICOM Commission on the Economy added: “The initiative offered liquidity of up to US$12 billion to the poorest countries but developing countries that were not eligible had to meet over US$1 trillion in debt service payments by the end of 2021, almost two-thirds of which was to private creditors.

“The difference between the assistance offered and the liquidity needed in these countries must be addressed to make the world more resilient when the next disaster hits.

“During its debt restructuring in 2018-2019, Barbados exchanged old debt for approximately US$5 billion of sovereign bonds with natural disaster clauses and is now the largest issuer of such bonds.”

He explained that under this style of clause, when the World Health Organisation (WHO) or meteorological agency declared a disaster, debt service is immediately suspended for two years, with the payments added back at the end of the term of the loan or bond.

According to Persaud: “Barbadian-style clauses only cover events outside of the control of the country that can be declared within hours of — or even before — they hit.

“If G20 countries committed to adopting Barbadianstyle natural disaster clauses, there would automatically be one hundred times more liquidity to deal with the next global crisis, giving developing countries the ability to breathe.” (IMC1)

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