DOHA: Qatar’s inflation, based on consumer price index (CPI), rose 3.5 percent year-on-year (y-o-y) and the index was slightly up by 0.1 percent month-on-month (m-o-m) in May 2013, figures released by the Qatar Statistics Authority (QSA) revealed.
The y-o-y inflation was mainly driven by ‘entertainment, recreation and culture’ group, 7.0 percent and ‘rent, fuel and energy’, 6.5 percent. The CPI data issued for the month of May recorded increase in all the groups except ‘miscellaneous goods & services, where prices declined by 1.3 percent. While ‘transport and communications grew 2.7 percent the ‘medical care and medical services’ became costlier by 2.5 percent than a year ago. The food, beverages and tobacco grew by 2.4 percent.
The CPI data recorded a month-on-month increase in two major groups. The ‘food, beverages and tobacco grew by 0.2 percent. ‘Garments and footwear became costlier by 0.2 percent. On the other hand, prices declined by 1.3 percent in ‘miscellaneous goods and services’, by 0.1 percent in ‘furniture, textiles and home appliances’.
A CPI exclusive of ‘rent, fuel and energy’ group calculation showed that after the elimination of the rent effect, the overall index reached 125.5 demonstrating a little decrease of 0.1 percent compared to the CPI of April 2013 and an increase of 2.6 percent when compared to CPI of May 2012.
LONDON: Britain’s state-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland said Wednesday that chief executive Stephen Hester has decided to step down after five years at the helm, during which he has overseen a vast restructuring in readiness for the group’s eventual privatisation.
The government still owns 81 percent of RBS after it was bailed out in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis with £45.5bn of taxpayer cash.
The Edinburgh-based lender was ravaged by its badly-timed consortium takeover of Dutch bank ABN Amro at the top of the market in 2007, just before the crisis struck.
Under Hester’s watch, RBS has axed close to 40,000 jobs and sold off non-core assets in an attempt to transform the bank’s fortunes.
“The board of directors of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc (RBS) today announced that Stephen Hester will be stepping down as the group’s chief executive later this year,” RBS said in a statement.
“The board believes that an orderly succession process will give a new CEO time to prepare the privatisation process and to lead the bank in the years that follow. “Stephen was unable to make that open-ended commitment following five years in the job already.”
Hester said that the group was now ready for a return to the private sector and therefore needed a new boss. “It has been nearly five years since I joined RBS after the bank was rescued by the government,” Hester said. “In that time we have reduced the bank’s balance sheet by nearly a trillion pounds, repaid hundreds of billions of taxpayer support, and removed the imminent threat that this bank’s size and complexity posed to the UK economy.”
The Peninsula/AFP
