Category: Banking

MIL-OSI Banking: RBI imposes monetary penalty on NKGSB Co-operative Bank Limited, Mumbai

Source: Reserve Bank of India

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has, by an order dated March 25, 2025, imposed a monetary penalty of ₹15.00 lakh (Rupees Fifteen Lakh only) on NKGSB Co-operative Bank Limited, Mumbai (the bank), for non-compliance with certain directions issued by RBI on ‘Management of Advances – UCBs’. This penalty has been imposed in exercise of powers conferred on RBI under the provisions of Section 47A(1)(c) read with Sections 46(4)(i) and 56 of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949.

The statutory inspection of the bank was conducted by RBI with reference to its financial position as on March 31, 2023. Based on supervisory findings of non-compliance with RBI directions and related correspondence in that regard, a notice was issued to the bank advising it to show cause as to why penalty should not be imposed on it for its failure to comply with the said directions. After considering the bank’s reply to the notice, oral submissions made during the personal hearing and examination of additional submissions made by it, RBI found, inter alia, that the following charge against the bank was sustained, warranting imposition of monetary penalty:

The bank had sanctioned/granted certain loans for purchase of gold.

This action is based on deficiencies in regulatory compliance and is not intended to pronounce upon the validity of any transaction or agreement entered into by the bank with its customers. Further, imposition of this monetary penalty is without prejudice to any other action that may be initiated by RBI against the bank.

(Puneet Pancholy)
Chief General Manager

Press Release: 2024-2025/2476

MIL OSI Global Banks –

March 28, 2025

MIL-OSI Global: Canadians are anxious as they ponder how to vote this election. Which leader can ease their fears?

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Lori Turnbull, Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University, Dalhousie University

This federal election is being described as the most consequential in modern Canadian history. The country is in a tariff and trade war with its closest ally, the United States, and President Donald Trump is threatening Canada’s sovereignty.

No wonder Canadians are feeling anxious and fearful. And in times of crisis, people tend to look extra hard for leaders they can trust.

Liberal Leader Mark Carney, a rookie in politics but an internationally respected economist, is enjoying a wave of momentum. Due to his stints as governor of the Bank of Canada during the 2008-09 financial crash and the Bank of England during Brexit, he’s well-qualified to manage economic roller-coasters. Can his impressive CV help calm the fears of Canadians?

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, on the other hand, has been connecting with supporters by giving voice to their worries about the economy, jobs, crime and the housing crisis. He’s made people feel heard, but he’s also been accused of building his brand appeal by stoking — rather than soothing — Canadians’ fears about the future.

Carney’s track record as a fixer could give him the edge now that the election campaign is in full swing and Canada’s fears are being amplified.

Liberals wildly unpopular

Before Justin Trudeau announced his plans to leave politics, the next federal election was shaping up to be a showdown between Trudeau and Poilievre, two career politicians with likeability problems and a palpable mutual resentment.

Each of them often used fear as a tool to warn Canadians about the dangers of electing the other. The mood in the country was sour.

In July 2024, an Abacus Data poll indicated only 23 per cent of Canadians felt the country was headed in the right direction. The affordability crisis was weighing on people, as 45 per cent of respondents reported having a hard time keeping up with daily expenses due to rising prices.

The long-standing consensus around the benefits of immigration was crumbling due to the lack of suitable housing for everyone.

Read more:
Canada at a crossroads: Understanding the shifting sands of immigration attitudes

A third of Canadians also self-identified as “political orphans” who felt that none of the political parties truly represented them.

Most of the public was blaming the Liberals for the broad mismanagement of various important complex policy files, and the Conservatives were the largest beneficiaries of voter frustration. They looked like they had the next election in the bag.

Dramatically altered landscape

It’s now March 2025 and the political playing field looks wildly different. Though the aforementioned issues remain salient, Trudeau has resigned and Carney has erased the lead in public support that Poilievre and the Conservatives held not long ago.

Most polls suggest the parties are in a dead heat while others have Carney pulling ahead. In the hope of winning enough votes to form a majority government — in Carney’s own words, he’s asked the public for a “strong, positive mandate” — he is running on a platform aimed at the political centre to offer a home to those political orphans.

Carney’s pitching tax cuts, pipeline projects, reduced trade barriers between the provinces and balanced operational spending while running deficits for investments that would grow the economy. He’s done away with the unpopular consumer carbon tax.

Given that Carney is pulling the Liberals back to the centre, and that there is actually overlap between the Conservatives and the Liberals — both spent the first full day of the campaign promising income tax cuts — it seems the real choice in this election is about leadership rather than dramatically different policy platforms.

It’s no surprise that Carney’s unique professional experience elevates his bid to be prime minister in the current political climate. So far, he’s been a calm presence amid a volatile and developing storm. Despite Conservative efforts to try to diminish him, his credentials speak for themselves.

This helps him to build trust among voters. At any other time, his snippiness with the media when asked about his financial holdings might cost him some political capital, but in the current moment, he will likely be given a pass.

Read more:
Can Mark Carney truly connect with Canadian voters? Canada will now find out

Poilievre no longer has Trudeau for a target

As British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan once explained, politics is about “events, dear boy, events.”

Much to the certain chagrin of Conservatives, the polls suggest this moment was custom-made for Carney.

Trump’s attacks and threats against Canadian sovereignty tee up Carney’s pitches for Canada’s economic independence perfectly. His campaign material basically writes itself, and his economic gravitas makes him a solid messenger.

Carney is both reassuring Canadians in this moment of anxiety as well as tapping into Canadian pride, in his own words and through celebrity proxies like comedian Mike Myers who are helping him reach audiences who tuned out Trudeau a long time ago.

Mike Myers appears with Mark Carney in this ad on Carney’s YouTube channel.

This is not to count out Poilievre. With the Conservative base firmly behind him, he could be poised to form a government or keep Carney to a minority.

But the question on the ballot is no longer about Trudeau — it’s about who Canadians trust to lead them through a disruptive and unpredictable time.

Poilievre has been working tirelessly for years to position himself as the person for the job.

But the peculiar circumstances of the moment — and the fear and anxiety that Canadians are having trouble shaking amid Trump’s continuing threats — might drive many voters towards the non-politician whose track record as a fixer gives people the reassurance they are looking for.

Lori Turnbull does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Canadians are anxious as they ponder how to vote this election. Which leader can ease their fears? – https://theconversation.com/canadians-are-anxious-as-they-ponder-how-to-vote-this-election-which-leader-can-ease-their-fears-252701

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

March 28, 2025
MIL-OSI: Currency Exchange International, Corp. Announces Referral Agreement with Agility Forex
Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)
- Exchange Bank of Canada (“EBC” or the “Bank”) is to refer selected employees and their payment customers in Canada to Agility Forex;
TORONTO, March 27, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Currency Exchange International, Corp. (“CXI” or the “Company”) (TSX: CXI) (OTC: CURN), today announced a referral agreement has been entered into with Agility Forex.

Upon Agility Forex hiring a selected employee, EBC will be referring its corporate payment customers in Canada associated with the employee to Agility Forex for their acceptance. The referral of EBC’s customers and employees to Agility Forex, a B.C. based foreign payments exchange service provider, will mutually benefit all parties and stakeholders.

“We are optimistic that our referral agreement for select EBC employees and their corporate payment clients is the best outcome for our customers, employees and EBC stakeholders as well as CXI shareholders,” said Randolph Pinna, CEO of CXI and EBC.

“Agility is pleased to implement this Referral Agreement and welcomes the chance to build new relationships. We are excited to embark on this opportunity to grow and evolve our business with the new selected sales members joining our team,” said Andrew McGuire, CEO of Agility Forex.

CXI’s long-term outlook remains positive due to the Company’s focus on its growing businesses in the U.S. in conjunction with expected cost savings and anticipated additional new product growth in the U.S. market. The Company will provide further updates as the Canadian business operations are being discontinued as originally announced on February 18, 2025. During this process, EBC is committed to ensuring minimal disruption to all its stakeholders.

CXI is grateful to all of EBC’s team members for their contributions over the years and is committed to providing support and guidance to all employees during this transition to ensure a smooth and respectful process.

INFOR Financial Inc. acted as financial advisor to CXI in connection with the referral agreement with Agility Forex.

About Currency Exchange International, Corp.

Currency Exchange International is in the business of providing comprehensive foreign exchange technology and processing services for banks, credit unions, businesses, and consumers in the United States and select clients globally. Primary products and services include the exchange of foreign currencies, wire transfer payments, Global EFTs, and foreign cheque clearing. Wholesale customers are served through its proprietary FX software applications delivered on its web-based interface, www.cxifx.com (“CXIFX”), its related APIs with core banking platforms, and through personal relationship managers. Consumers are served through Company-owned retail branches, agent retail branches, and its e-commerce platform, order.ceifx.com.

The Group’s wholly-owned Canadian subsidiary, Exchange Bank of Canada, based in Toronto, Canada, is currently in the process of discontinuing its operations in Canada.

About Agility Forex

Agility Forex is a Vancouver-based fintech company that offers small-to-medium size enterprises and individuals currency pricing normally reserved for large corporations. Their proprietary technology allows them to bypass the banks to access the interbank market and offer transparent pricing with no fees or commissions, 24/7 via their easy-to-use platform. C1 Ventures, a venture capital corporation wholly owned by Central 1, a Canadian financial institution with $11.6 billion in assets, owns 28 percent of Agility Forex.

Contact Information

For further information please contact:
Bill Mitoulas
Investor Relations
(416) 479-9547
Email: bill.mitoulas@cxifx.com
Website: www.cxifx.com

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

This press release includes forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. This forward-looking information includes, or may be based upon, estimates, forecasts, and statements as to management’s expectations with respect to, among other things, the merits of a referral agreement for customers and selected employees, the management of employee and customer transitions, the voluntary cessation of operations and discontinuance of Exchange Bank of Canada (EBC), financial performance in fiscal 2025 and 2026, and the associated costs and outcomes of the cessation and discontinuance period in general. Forward-looking statements are identified by the use of terms and phrases such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “predict,” “preliminary,” “project,” “will,” “would,” and similar terms and phrases, including references to assumptions.

Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date such information is provided and on information available to management at such time. Forward-looking information involves significant risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause the Company’s actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from the results discussed or implied in such forward-looking information. Actual results may differ materially from results indicated in forward-looking information due to a number of factors including, without limitation, an inability to implement the referral agreement for customers and selected employees on a basis which is beneficial to stakeholders, the inability of the Company to complete the cessation of EBC and discontinuance in accordance with applicable regulatory and legal requirements on a basis which is cost effective and protects the goodwill of the Company, an inability to establish direct correspondent banking relationships to support its U.S. payments business on terms which are economic or at all, the impact of delays or challenges in obtaining regulatory approvals, an inability to manage one-time wind-down costs and severance obligations on cost-effective basis, potential disruptions to operations during the transition period. the risk of reduced liquidity during the transition periods and, generally, the potential for unforeseen liabilities arising during or after the cessation of operations and discontinuance of EBC.

Additional risks include the ability of the Company to comply with regulatory requirements in general, the competitive nature of the foreign exchange industry, the impact of geo political changes, and trade wars on factors relevant to the Company’s business, currency exchange risks, the need for the Company to manage its planned growth, the effects of product development and the need for continued technological change, protection of the Company’s proprietary rights, the effect of government regulation and compliance on the Company and the industry in which it operates, network security risks, the ability of the Company to maintain properly working systems, theft and risk of physical harm to personnel, reliance on key management personnel, unexpected losses or challenges associated with customer attrition during the discontinuance, global economic deterioration negatively impacting tourism, volatile securities markets impacting security pricing in a manner unrelated to operating performance and impeding access to capital or increasing the cost of capital, as well as the factors identified throughout this press release and in the section entitled “Financial Risk Factors” of the Company’s Management’s Discussion and Analysis for the twelve months ended October 31, 2024.

The forward-looking information contained in this press release represents management’s expectations as of the date hereof (or as of the date such information is otherwise stated to be presented) and is subject to change after such date. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required under applicable securities laws.

The Toronto Stock Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release. No stock exchange, securities commission, or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained in this press release.

The MIL Network –
March 28, 2025
MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Launch of the Global Compact on Nutrition Integration: Baroness Chapman’s speech

Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

Speech

Launch of the Global Compact on Nutrition Integration: Baroness Chapman’s speech

Baroness Chapman gave a speech at the launch of a new Global Compact on Nutrition Integration on the eve of the Nutrition for Growth Summit in Paris.

Welcome everyone. Thank you to our co-hosts – the Government of Nigeria, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the World Bank, and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and thank you to the Government of France for bringing us together.

It is great to see such a diverse group of people gathered here – from Gavi and the Green Climate Fund, to private sector investors, philanthropy, and civil society networks, to countries deeply affected by malnutrition, including members of the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement.

I know that for some of you this is your life’s work. And as the UK’s Minister for International Development, and for Latin America and Caribbean, it is a pleasure to welcome you all on the eve of the fourth Nutrition for Growth Summit, and to share a few reflections before we hear from you.

Thanks in no small part to many of you – the work we have done together over many decades has shown that we can make a difference. Lives changed and lives saved.

This agenda can serve as an example of how coming together, being more than the sum of our parts, can help us maximise our impact.

Now, before going into more detail about our collective work on nutrition, I want to address something head on. I know many of you will have seen our announcement about our ODA budget in recent weeks – as the UK responds to the world as it is now – less stable, more insecure.

It was a decision we neither relish, nor take lightly. But I hope my presence here, the work of our dedicated experts, and our continued efforts on this important agenda, demonstrates the UK will never turn its back on the world – or on international development. Far from it.

How we work has to change, but I promise, what we all care about is not. The task for all of us now is to make sure we secure the reforms we need to meet the challenges and opportunities of our times.

That includes making the case for development anew. And thinking afresh about the kind of genuine, respectful, modern partnerships we pursue, and the commitment, energy and expertise we bring to forums like this – not just how much public money we have to spend.

And as we work through the difficult choices before us now, my focus is on making sure this new reality gives even greater impetus to modernising the UK’s approach to international development. That is already underway. And it is how we maximise the impact of every pound of public money we are able to put in – and our collective impact.

So let me talk about our impact.

Over a decade after the world came together in the UK for the first of these important summits, the UK has helped to improve the nutrition of over 50 million women and children – from Nigeria, to Pakistan, Bangladesh, and beyond.

That spans everything from getting micronutrient supplements, specialist support, and therapeutic foods to treat malnutrition in women and children, to helping farmers grow more nutritious foods like vegetables and legumes, to improve the diets of their families and communities.

I talked a moment ago about the importance of working in partnership – we need to learn from our successes. Partnerships like the Child Nutrition Fund. Alongside UNICEF, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and the Gates Foundation, we are aiming to prevent, detect, and treat malnutrition for 70 million women and 230 million children in 23 countries, from Afghanistan, to DRC, Malawi, Madagascar, Somalia, and South Sudan.

At the end of last year, a new partnership with the World Food Programme, World Health Organisation, and UNICEF got underway – focused on preventing the most horrible and deadliest form of malnutrition, child wasting.

It’s a dreadful and shameful phrase to even say – and we must keep our minds on that, as we stand here together in these wonderful surroundings, to reaffirm all our commitments and initiatives.

Commitments like those we made at the last summit in Tokyo 4 years ago, on integrating nutrition across everything we do, from climate to health – such as developing nutritious crops that help us address a lack of key nutrients. So that the 2 billion people who don’t get the nutrition they need can have a healthier life.

It means working with Gavi, the Government of Ethiopia, and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation to reach vulnerable mothers and children with life-saving immunisation and nutrition.

And, when it comes to nutrition, we all know what is at stake in every country in the world. Combating malnutrition is vital for a healthy population and healthy economies – malnutrition translates into a loss of 10% of GDP for countries most affected. It’s a good investment – every pound, euro or dollar we invest pays for itself 23 times over.

We know how to make our work even more effective. Invest in science. Go for solutions supported by the evidence. Put nutrition at the heart of everything we do – from health, to water, hygiene, and sanitation, food systems, social protection, and our wider resilience.

So, this evening, it’s fantastic we have all come together to launch the Global Compact on Nutrition Integration.

Tomorrow, we convene a new coalition of signatories. And I am looking forward to hearing from some of you this evening, about your commitment to this vital cause.

As we learn from each other, challenge each other, push each other to do more, and keep going – not just at summits like this where we all get together. That is how we maximise the impact we can achieve.

So, thank you all once again for being here.

Updates to this page

Published 27 March 2025

MIL OSI United Kingdom –

March 28, 2025
MIL-OSI Economics: Monetary developments in the euro area: February 2025
Source: European Central Bank

27 March 2025

Components of the broad monetary aggregate M3

The annual growth rate of the broad monetary aggregate M3 increased to 4.0% in February 2025 from 3.8% in January, averaging 3.8% in the three months up to February. The components of M3 showed the following developments. The annual growth rate of the narrower aggregate M1, which comprises currency in circulation and overnight deposits, increased to 3.5% in February from 2.7% in January. The annual growth rate of short-term deposits other than overnight deposits (M2-M1) decreased to 2.0% in February from 3.3% in January. The annual growth rate of marketable instruments (M3-M2) increased to 19.8% in February from 17.3% in January.

Chart 1

Monetary aggregates

(annual growth rates)

Data for monetary aggregates

Looking at the components’ contributions to the annual growth rate of M3, the narrower aggregate M1 contributed 2.2 percentage points (up from 1.7 percentage points in January), short-term deposits other than overnight deposits (M2-M1) contributed 0.6 percentage points (down from 1.0 percentage points) and marketable instruments (M3-M2) contributed 1.3 percentage points (up from 1.1 percentage points).

Among the holding sectors of deposits in M3, the annual growth rate of deposits placed by households stood at 3.4% in February, compared with 3.3% in January, while the annual growth rate of deposits placed by non-financial corporations increased to 3.5% in February from 3.0% in January. Finally, the annual growth rate of deposits placed by investment funds other than money market funds increased to 8.5% in February from 4.6% in January.

Counterparts of the broad monetary aggregate M3

The annual growth rate of M3 in February 2025, as a reflection of changes in the items on the monetary financial institution (MFI) consolidated balance sheet other than M3 (counterparts of M3), can be broken down as follows: net external assets contributed 3.1 percentage points (up from 2.9 percentage points in January), claims on the private sector contributed 2.2 percentage points (up from 2.0 percentage points), claims on general government contributed 0.2 percentage points (up from 0.1 percentage points), longer-term liabilities contributed -1.5 percentage points (as in the previous month), and the remaining counterparts of M3 contributed 0.0 percentage points (down from 0.2 percentage points).

Chart 2

Contribution of the M3 counterparts to the annual growth rate of M3

(percentage points)

Data for contribution of the M3 counterparts to the annual growth rate of M3

Claims on euro area residents

The annual growth rate of total claims on euro area residents stood at 1.7% in February 2025, compared with 1.6% in the previous month. The annual growth rate of claims on general government stood at 0.4% in February, compared with 0.3% in January, while the annual growth rate of claims on the private sector increased to 2.3% in February from 2.1% in January.

The annual growth rate of adjusted loans to the private sector (i.e. adjusted for loan transfers and notional cash pooling) increased to 2.5% in February from 2.3% in January. Among the borrowing sectors, the annual growth rate of adjusted loans to households increased to 1.5% in February from 1.3% in January, while the annual growth rate of adjusted loans to non-financial corporations increased to 2.2% in February from 2.0% in January.

Chart 3

Adjusted loans to the private sector

(annual growth rates)

Data for adjusted loans to the private sector

Notes:
- Data in this press release are adjusted for seasonal and end-of-month calendar effects, unless stated otherwise.
- “Private sector” refers to euro area non-MFIs excluding general government.
- Hyperlinks lead to data that may change with subsequent releases as a result of revisions. Figures shown in annex tables are a snapshot of the data as at the time of the current release.
MIL OSI Economics –
March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI NGOs: South Korea/Israel/OPT: HD Hyundai machinery used in West Bank demolitions

Source: Amnesty International –

HD Hyundai machinery has been widely used in demolitions of Palestinian-owned structures in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), according to new visual and testimonial evidence documented by Amnesty International Korea and local human rights groups.

While the company denies their involvement, images and videos verified by the groups identified 59 Palestinian-owned homes, businesses and other structures that were demolished between September 2019 and February 2025 using machinery made by the South Korea conglomerate.

These demolitions resulted in the forced displacement of approximately 250 Palestinians and damaged the livelihoods of hundreds of others.

“It is imperative that HD Hyundai takes decisive action to immediately suspend distribution of its products in Israel and conduct heightened due diligence to ensure its operations, products or services do not perpetuate human rights abuses,” said Montse Ferrer, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director.

For its investigation, Amnesty International Korea in collaboration with the Evidence Lab, Amnesty International’s digital investigations team, verified a total of 347 images and videos of demolitions obtained through partnerships with local organizations.

Amnesty International Korea, in collaboration with the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, also gathered testimonies from victims whose homes and businesses were destroyed by HD Hyundai bulldozers in eight instances across the West Bank.

One resident, a plumber named Yaaqoub Barqan, described how the Israeli military turned his home into rubble in July 2024.

“About 30 armed soldiers arrived in military jeeps, along with three pieces of heavy equipment, including a Hyundai excavator. The excavator destroyed the house in less than 20 minutes. My wife fainted watching our home being destroyed and is still receiving psychiatric treatment,” he said.

These findings follow research from March 2023 in which Amnesty International and Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) documented five instances where Israeli forces used excavators manufactured by Hyundai Construction Equipment (Hyundai CE) to raze Palestinian property that displaced at least 15 Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, an area south of the occupied West Bank where Palestinians live under imminent threat of mass expulsion.

In March 2024, in a response to media inquiries, HD Hyundai claimed it had reviewed its dealer’s records and asserted that there were no sales records to government agencies, such as for demolition work in Israel, and that compliance regulations were followed.

However, Amnesty International Korea’s latest research revealed at least 32 shipments of HD Hyundai heavy machinery to Israeli distributor EFCO were made between October 2021 and October 2023 along with 12 shipments of Hyundai Infracore equipment to Emcol Ltd, Hyundai Infracore’s major distributor in Israel.

Amnesty International Korea first contacted HD Hyundai in March 2023, and then again in October 2024 and March 2025, to inform the company about the use of its machinery in unlawful demolitions in the OPT. On 17 March 2025, Hyundai Infracore, Emcol and EFCO were contacted.

HD Hyundai XiteSolution, the parent company of HD Hyundai CE and HD Hyundai Infracore, responded on 25 March 2025 saying that it “has no involvement with activities in said conflict regions”. The company did not respond directly to questions posed by Amnesty International Korea. Emcol and EFCO did not respond.

“HD Hyundai Group, like any corporate actor, must respect human rights throughout its operations. It must do more to guarantee that its machinery is not being used in the destruction of homes and livelihoods in the OPT, especially as demolitions are a key tool in upholding Israel’s system of apartheid,” Montse Ferrer said.

MIL OSI NGO –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Banking: Working together to ensure financial integrity
Source: Bank for International Settlements

Good morning. It is a great pleasure to be here today and to welcome you to the BIS Innovation Hub’s Analytics Showcase.¹

This event marks the conclusion of the 2025 Analytics Challenge, in which we invited innovators to submit proposals for collaborative technology solutions to a specific problem.

Over the next two days, we will come together to tackle a pressing challenge for regulators, businesses and consumers – financial crime. And since financial crime does not respect borders, we believe there is a clear need for deeper global collaboration. In the next few minutes, I will reflect on why this is essential and how we can work together in an increasingly digitalised world.

The BIS Innovation Hub already helps central banks around the world collaborate on financial technology. We track key trends, connect innovation experts to each other and develop public goods in the technology space that are geared towards improving the functioning of the financial system.

We experiment through projects that aim to show how technology can help and inspire meaningful action. These projects are possible thanks to collaboration with the global community of policymakers and innovators. And to our delight, part of this community is also here today.

In my remarks, I will share with you the Innovation Hub’s projects that use technological innovation to safeguard financial integrity. And then I will set out our plan for the next two days to explore new technology and further expand global collaboration in the fight against financial crime.

But let me now turn to why action is called for in the first place.

Financial crime today

Financial services are needed for a society to work well. Indeed, they are crucial for the economy to function properly. But widespread financial crime, such as fraud, money laundering and cyber attacks, undermines the integrity of our financial system and harms society. Central banks and financial supervisors therefore have a strong interest in supporting the fight against this type of criminal activity.

The scale of financial crime is staggering. By some estimates, over $3 trillion² in illicit funds move through the financial system each year, draining up to 5% of global GDP.³ Fraud alone costs hundreds of billions of dollars, hitting both consumers and businesses that have to shoulder a considerable share of the losses.

We have good reasons to believe that most cases of fraud are never reported, which leaves the true scale hidden.⁴ And the real cost isn’t just money – financial crime often goes hand-in-hand with other crimes, such drug and human trafficking, often damaging society’s most vulnerable people.

Meanwhile, criminals move faster than law enforcement, exploiting technology and global networks to stay ahead. Look no further than Europe for evidence. Most fraud here appears to be cyber-enabled, online scams that very often cross borders,[5] with more consumers being targeted than ever before.

In turn, financial firms face soaring compliance costs to detect illicit activity, spending hundreds of billions each year just to keep up.⁶

And despite these efforts, estimates indicate that less than 1% of dirty money is intercepted and recovered,⁷a remarkable statistic that highlights a difficult reality: despite growing investment in fighting financial crime, the overall results are falling short.

To turn the tide, we need to explore new ways to fight financial crime, and we know that new technology holds great potential.

But we also know that only through the collaboration, support and contributions of many can we fully harness technological innovation to protect our financial system and society. In other words, it takes a village.

That brings us to today. We’ve laid the foundation already – the next two days of the Analytics Showcase will build on it.

Let me share how the BIS Innovation Hub has been driving this effort.

The role of the BIS Innovation Hub

The Bank for International Settlements supports central banks in their pursuit of monetary and financial stability by fostering international cooperation.

About five years ago, the BIS launched the Innovation Hub – a partnership with central banks that now spans seven centres across the globe, with one located here in London and hosted by the Bank of England.

The Innovation Hub experiments with new technologies to see how they can solve shared challenges and help central banks deliver on their mandates more effectively.

It does so because technology is changing finance fast, and the Innovation Hub aspires to facilitate collaboration and be a partner to central banks, while demonstrating the potential that novel technology brings.

And the financial system needs to be secure, resilient and trusted, no matter how fast things change.

Financial integrity is key to central banks for three reasons.

First, threats to financial integrity are also threats to safety and stability – their core job.

Second, central banks operate and supervise financial market infrastructures such as payment and settlement systems, where the threat of financial crime exists.

Third, central banks often oversee banks’ compliance with anti-money laundering rules that enable the detection of illicit transactions.

Some of the Innovation Hub’s projects have developed technological solutions or components that could be combined in a potential “technology stack”, elevating global collaboration in the fight against financial crime.

Let me unpack that.

A technology stack to maintain financial system integrity

Consider a typical cross-border payment – it involves multiple banks and payment systems across jurisdictions. From the moment the sender makes a payment until the final recipient receives the money, multiple steps are taken to keep the payment safe and secure.

I will walk you through the five key components that make these steps more effective.

To start, each bank involved in the transaction must conduct compliance checks. This involves screening customers against sanctions lists or ensuring compliance with foreign exchange rules. These checks are often repeated and require manual work, due to varying regulations and data standards along the payments chain.

Our first component of the technology stack provides a solution for programmable compliance and transaction pre-validation.

Through Project Mandala, we have demonstrated better options for financial institutions to automate compliance checks and generate cryptographic proofs to show they have conducted all the necessary checks before initiating a transaction.

The solution enhances the efficiency, transparency and speed of cross-border transactions without compromising the quality and soundness of regulatory checks.

Mandala also improves transparency on country-specific policies, while facilitating real-time reporting and monitoring for regulators and supervisors.

Now, after compliance checks, transactions are submitted to electronic payment systems for processing. These systems have a bird’s eye view of payers and payees allowing them to analyse transaction networks.

Our next component is about embedding enhanced transaction analytics into payment systems. This could improve detection of seemingly legitimate transactions tied to complex money laundering schemes.

Ongoing work in Project Hertha aims to show that advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and network analytics methods at a payment system level can help identify financial crime patterns that warrant a second look, while protecting privacy by using only a limited set of data points.

To achieve this, the project created synthetic transaction data mimicking real payments using state-of-the-art AI methods. These data were also shared with Analytics Challenge participants to help test their solutions.

The third component is about collaborative analytics. Advanced technologies, such as federated learning and multi-party computation, allow public and private stakeholders to share intelligence without revealing private customer data. Such public-private collaboration can help stakeholders join forces to identify criminal activity.

Project Aurora demonstrated how shifting to this more holistic approach, including the application of AI and machine learning techniques, helps identify money laundering and financial crime networks both nationally and internationally.

Another component of our tech stack is user privacy, which is crucial in all our projects. Privacy rights must be upheld in any collaborative analytics and information sharing initiatives.

Projects Aurora and Mandala tested privacy-enhancing technologies for secure data sharing. Project Hertha is testing methods to identify suspicious network patterns using a minimal set of data points.

The final component is protection against cyber threats, vital in today’s digital landscape. Fraudsters and cyber criminals often use similar methods, like phishing. And those same technologies can also be used to fight back against the criminals.

Two of our projects addressed this.

Project Raven can help the financial sector and authorities assess cyber security and resilience in their jurisdiction, by using AI to lower the reporting and analytical costs.

Project Polaris focuses on the cyber security and resilience of potential future forms of money and payment systems, including offline digital payments.

Strengthening these five components can help future-proof the financial system against evolving threats.

Let me now explain how the Analytics Challenge and Showcase play a role here.

Looking ahead: the Challenge and the Showcase

Late last year, we invited public and private sector experts to join the BIS Innovation Hub 2025 Analytics Challenge and build on the work we started.

We asked innovators to propose collaborative tech solutions that combat financial crime and simplify compliance through two challenges.

In the open challenge, participants had to tackle three key questions:
- How can AI be used to improve the detection of illicit financial activity?
- How can privacy-preserving technology be used in sharing data and intelligence?
- Finally, how can we collaborate on innovative tech solutions to enable compliance with diverse regulations across jurisdictions?
In the prediction challenge, participants were asked to build algorithms to detect illicit transactions.

Participants could test and demonstrate their solutions using a rich and realistic synthetic payments data set developed in Project Hertha.

I am impressed with the high quality of the responses and I hope the demonstrations and discussions at the Analytics Showcase inspire new possibilities and partnerships.

But the Showcase has even more to offer in the next two days.

And with that, I trust the Analytics Showcase will strengthen our fight against financial crime and look forward to the insights ahead.

Thank you very much for listening.

¹ My thanks go to the BIS Innovation Hub’s Andrei Pustelnikov and Simina Puscasu who helped me write this speech.

² Nasdaq and Verafin, Global Financial Crime Report, 2024.

³ United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “Money laundering”.

⁴ UK National Crime Agency (NCA), “Fraud”.

⁵ The Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS), “Cyber-enabled fraud and illicit money flows”, infographic, 2024.

⁶ LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Report: The true cost of financial crime compliance, 2023.

⁷ United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “Factsheet: money laundering”, 2014.
MIL OSI Global Banks –
March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Banking: Asian Development Blog: Internal Audit’s Unsung Role in Development

Source: Asia Development Bank

Strengthening internal audit through independence, adherence to international standards, and a risk-based approach can drive better governance, service delivery, and accountability.

In many government agencies across Asia and the Pacific, internal audit – an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization’s operations – remains an underutilized tool.

When organizations lack a strong internal audit function, they don’t just risk poor performance—they also lack the independent assurance and actionable insights provided by such audits. This leads to inefficiency and confusion, ultimately limiting an organization’s ability to operate effectively and evolve.

This can have a profound effect on social and economic development goals being pursued by developing countries in Asia and the Pacific.

Despite its crucial role in public financial management, internal audit remains an area of weakness across the region, ranking among the lowest-scoring indicators in both East Asia and the Pacific, and South Asia, according to a recent report.

Internal audits can be conducted by a dedicated unit, a shared service, or be outsourced to a private accounting firm. To be effective the auditors should have unrestricted access to records, assets, and personnel, as well as the autonomy to set audit priorities in consultation with management.

To safeguard its independence and maintain its impact, the internal audit function must communicate directly with the board or its audit committee and provide an annual confirmation of its independence.

Internal audit should follow best practices, including using international standards, operating under a formal charter, being led by a certified audit executive, and using a risk-based audit plan. It should issue an annual report with an audit opinion, disclose compliance with standards, and undergo an external quality assessment at least every five years.

It’s essential to differentiate between internal audit and internal controls. While internal audit serves as the third line of defense in the internal control system, it is not a part of the controls themselves. In many public organizations, internal audit is often tasked with conducting pre-audits of transactions, which is a control activity.

However, to preserve its independence and objectivity, internal audit must refrain from performing control activities, including pre-audits. Doing so would compromise its core function: evaluating the effectiveness of internal controls and recommending improvements. Instead, pre-audits should be handled by the finance department, while internal audit periodically reviews transactions or assesses the effectiveness of the pre-audit function. This approach allows internal audit to focus on strengthening organizational processes.

Enhancing internal audit is not just about compliance—it’s a strategic investment in development.

Internal and external audits are both critical to ensuring accountability, but they differ in their scope, purpose, and approach. External audits focus on delivering an output in the form of an audit opinion on the fairness, accuracy, and reliability of financial statements in accordance with applicable financial reporting frameworks, while internal audits are more input-driven and often constrained by limited resources.

To maximize their effectiveness, internal audits must adopt a risk-based approach that directs available resources toward the highest-risk areas.

While external audits primarily evaluate key controls related to financial reporting, internal audits have a much broader remit, encompassing financial, operational, and procurement controls. Furthermore, internal audit can play a positive role in affirming the robustness and effectiveness of the internal control system – something external auditors typically do not do – and in issuing detailed, actionable recommendations to address control weaknesses.

Importantly, external auditors may rely on internal audit work if the function meets quality standards, such as objectivity, staff competence, systematic practices, and quality control. Each internal audit work must also demonstrate thorough planning, effective execution, and robust evidence, with conclusions that are appropriate and consistent with the audit findings.

While external auditors remain responsible for their conclusions, leveraging quality internal audit work helps focus on high-risk areas and reduce duplication. Clear communication between internal and external audits is essential to maximize synergies and minimize overlap.

The full value of internal audit is realized when it maintains independence, objectivity, and adheres to professional standards and best practices. When empowered to assess internal controls and complement external audits, internal audit drives critical improvements in governance and performance.

This includes conducting essential audits, such as contract audits to improve tendering and contract management practices as well as performance audits to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.

Internal audit plays a key role in helping organizations assess and advance sustainability initiatives. Collectively, these efforts help build resilience, sharpen the ability to achieve goals, and elevate service delivery quality across Asia and the Pacific. Enhancing internal audit is not just about compliance—it’s a strategic investment in development.

MIL OSI Global Banks –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Africa: Congo Energy & Investment Forum (CEIF) 2025: Heirs Energies eyes Regional Opportunities amid Strong Congolese Energy Outlook

Source: Africa Press Organisation – English (2) – Report:

BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of the Congo, March 27, 2025/APO Group/ —

Nigerian independent oil and gas company Heirs Energies is seeking growth opportunities in West and Central Africa. The company’s CEO Osayande Igiehon announced during the Congo Energy & Investment Forum (CEIF) 2025 that the company is interested in entering Congo, given the country’s oil and gas potential and growth-oriented development strategy.

Heirs Energies is the operator of OML 17 in Nigeria, where it has managed to double oil production from 25,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 50,000 bpd since it acquired the asset from Shell in 2021. In Congo, the company aims to replicate this success, strengthening its upstream portfolio and contributing to Congo’s production goals.

“Our mission is to build an integrated energy business across Africa that uniquely addresses Africa’s energy problems. We want to grow our business across the value chain, expanding across Africa by replicating the success we have seen in Nigeria. We are keen to come to Congo. What makes [the country] so attractive to us is that Congo wants to grow. We are a growth-oriented company and that is why we are here,” Igiehon stated.

As one of sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest oil producers, the Republic of Congo has a goal to increase crude output to 500,000 bpd. Concurrently, the country targets three million tons per annum LNG capacity following the start of LNG production in 2024. Achieving these goals will require substantial levels of investment and efforts are already underway to strengthen the business environment for foreign investment.

“When we look at the Republic of Congo, it is clear that there are vast, untapped resources. There is a huge potential of untapped oil reserves but there is also hydroelectric potential. By tapping into that potential, the Republic of Congo can be a main contributor to the energy transition,” stated Olajide Ayeronwi, CEO, FirstBank DRC.

To achieve production goals, the Republic of Congo is preparing to launch an international licensing round while incentivizing new investment across mature assets, aiming to maximize output at producing blocks. These efforts are expected to facilitate greater investment upstream.

“The Republic of Congo is undertaking big reforms to attract investors. These include regulatory reforms, with a Hydrocarbon Code introduced. Companies have access to tax benefits and there is systematic advertising of various types of contracts. There is clarity regarding the authorization of participation interests and greater transparency, with the existence of an oil and gas cadaster since 2018,” stated Daoudou Mohammad, Director of Tax and Legal at CLG – Legal Partner of CEIF 2025.

These reforms are a critical step towards encouraging spending across the oil and gas value chain. Olivier Dubois, Group President, OLEA Group, explained that “Exploration and production are capital-heavy with big risks that require strong technical expertise. It is important to put in place mechanisms to address the risk associated with the oil sector.”

Hicham Fadili, Director General, Crédit du Congo, echoed these remarks, stating that the country has been highly successful in putting the mechanisms in place to attract upstream investment. However, he added that the country needs to go beyond the upstream in terms of investment.

“The emphasis should be put on establishing ecosystems in the energy sector. We need to attract various types of investors. Countries across the region are mostly oil and gas producers but there is a need for joint operations to create a real energy platform in Central Africa. Logistics is also important,” he said.

As the Republic of Congo strives for increased production, strengthening the logistics industry becomes increasingly important. Mohamed Diop, Deputy Managing Director for Africa, AGL, said that, “Logistics is an important pillar. We need to invest but also to train the local Congolese youth, ensuring we have a win-win partnership that benefits the youth. We need to diversify our investments in equipment but also strengthen partnerships with future African champions.”

MIL OSI Africa –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Africa: Congo to Double Power Generation to 1,500 MW by 2030

Source: Africa Press Organisation – English (2) – Report:

BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of the Congo, March 27, 2025/APO Group/ —

The Republic of Congo has unveiled plans to double its power generation capacity to 1,500 MW by 2030, with a strong focus on renewable energy projects.

“This initiative aims to enhance electricity access for the nation’s six million citizens and support industrial growth,” said Congolese Minister of Energy and Water, Émile Ouosso, at the Congo Energy & Investment Forum in Brazzaville on Wednesday.

A key part of this strategy involves collaboration with the World Bank and the Rockefeller Foundation through the “Mission 300” initiative. Launched in April 2024, Mission 300 targets providing electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030. The World Bank and the African Development Bank have committed significant resources to the initiative, aiming to reduce the number of people without electricity access across the continent.

Minister Ouosso highlighted the importance of these partnerships, stating, “With the support of international initiatives like Mission 300, we are poised to make significant strides in electrifying our nation and improving the quality of life for our citizens.”

To achieve this, Congo is focusing on harnessing its domestic renewable energy resources. The country holds an estimated hydropower potential of 27,000 MW, though only 1% of this resource has been developed. The government has identified several key projects, including water diversion and storage techniques, to maximize hydropower output.

“Our most valuable energy resource is water. With proper investments, we can unlock this potential to generate more electricity, foster industrialization and electrify rural communities,” said the Minister, adding, “We have identified 4,000 MW of hydropower potential in the Brazzaville region. These projects will provide clean, reliable energy for our people and industries.”

Solar energy is also a key part of the strategy, with a project led by AMEA Power exploring the potential for a 50 MW solar farm in the Brazzaville region. Additionally, the government is working to diversify its energy mix. Chinese firm Wing Wah’s gas monetization project, currently under development, aims to deliver 400 MW of gas-fired power, with 200 MW to be integrated into the national grid.

“If we modernize our power transmission infrastructure, we can transition away from fuel entirely,” said Minister Ouosso.

The inaugural Congo Energy & Investment Forum, taking place March 24-26, 2025, in Brazzaville, under the highest patronage of President Denis Sassou Nguesso and supported by the Ministry of Hydrocarbons and Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo, brings together international investors and local stakeholders to explore national and regional energy and infrastructure opportunities.

MIL OSI Africa –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Africa: Secretary-General’s video message to the Opening of the Nutrition for Growth Summit (N4G) [scroll down for English version]

Source: United Nations – English

ownload the video:
(French),
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/downloads2.unmultimedia.org/public/video/evergreen/MSG+SG+/SG+07+March+25/3347691_MSG+SG+NUTRITION+FOR+GROWTH+07+MAR+25.mp4

English sub-title,
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/downloads2.unmultimedia.org/public/video/evergreen/MSG+SG+/SG+07+March+25/MSG+SG+NUTRITION+FOR+GROWTH+07+MAR+25+EN.mp4

En 2015, les dirigeants du monde ont fait une promesse à l’humanité :

Éliminer la faim d’ici à 2030.

Hélas, à moins de cinq ans de l’échéance, nous sommes loin du compte.

Aujourd’hui, une personne sur 11 souffre de la faim.

En Afrique, c’est une personne sur cinq.

Chez les enfants, la malnutrition représente une tragédie – et une faillite morale.

Dans le même temps, des millions de personnes sont en surpoids, à cause d’une alimentation transformées – riche en sucre et graisses saturées, mais pauvre en nutriments essentiels.

Cette double menace fragilise nos systèmes de santé, creuse les inégalités et freine le développement durable.

La lutte contre la faim est un défi mondial qui demande l’engagement de chacun, à tous les niveaux – et une mobilisation politique et financière sans précédent pour transformer durablement nos systèmes alimentaires.

C’est l’objectif de l’Alliance mondiale contre la faim, qui vise à mobiliser des fonds et des solutions concrètes pour aider les pays dans cette transformation.

En juillet, le deuxième bilan du sommet des Nations unies sur les systèmes alimentaires à Addis-Abeba, devra aboutir à des engagements concrets – en particulier financiers.

Ainsi, seul un tiers des pays à faible revenu et à revenu intermédiaire dispose de financements adéquats pour la nutrition.

Et trop souvent, les pays vulnérables sont laissés pour compte face aux crises économiques, conflits prolongés, et catastrophes climatiques.

Le Pacte pour l’avenir appelle à une réforme de l’architecture financière internationale…

Il comprend un engagement à mettre en place un plan de relance des Objectifs de développement durable…

Augmenter la capacité de prêt des banques multilatérales de développement…

À alléger le fardeau des pays croulant sous les dettes…

Et mobiliser davantage de ressources internationales et nationales, publiques et privées, pour des investissements vitaux – notamment en matière de sécurité alimentaire.

Excellences,

Un monde sans faim n’est pas une utopie.

C’est un choix.

Nous avons les ressources, les connaissances et les outils nécessaires.

Et votre Sommet représente une opportunité importante de mobiliser des actions concrètes en faveur d’une nutrition saine pour tous.

Alors agissons ensemble pour tenir notre promesse et faire malnutrition une histoire du passé.

Je vous remercie.

***
In 2015, world leaders made a pledge to humanity:

To eradicate hunger by 2030.

Sadly, with less than five years to go, we are far off track.

Today, one in eleven people suffers from hunger.

In Africa, it is one in five.

Among children, malnutrition is a tragedy – and a moral failure.

Meanwhile, millions of people struggle with obesity due to a processed diet – high in sugar and saturated fats, but low in essential nutrients.

This dual threat strains our healthcare systems, widens inequalities and hinders sustainable development.

Combating hunger demands a global effort at every level – and unprecedented political and financial engagement to sustainably transform our food systems.

The Global Alliance against Hunger aims to mobilize funds and concrete solutions to support countries in this transformation.

In July, the second United Nations Food Systems Summit Stocktake in Addis Ababa must result in tangible commitments – notably financial ones.

Only a third of low- and middle-income countries have adequate funding for nutrition.

Too often, vulnerable countries are left on their own – facing economic crises, protracted conflicts and climate disasters.

The Pact for the Future calls for reforming the international financial architecture.

It includes a commitment to advance an SDG Stimulus.

To increase the lending capacity of Multilateral Development Banks;

To alleviate the burden of countries drowning in debt;

And to mobilize more international and domestic resources, public and private, for vital investments – particularly in food security.

Excellencies,

A world without hunger is not a utopia.

It is a choice.

We have the necessary resources, knowledge and tools.

And your Summit represents a key opportunity to drive concrete action for a healthy nutrition for all.

So let us work together to keep our promise and make malnutrition a thing of the past.

Thank you.

MIL OSI Africa –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI United Nations: Secretary-General’s video message to the Opening of the Nutrition for Growth Summit (N4G) [scroll down for English version]

Source: United Nations

Download the video:
(French),
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/downloads2.unmultimedia.org/public/video/evergreen/MSG+SG+/SG+07+March+25/3347691_MSG+SG+NUTRITION+FOR+GROWTH+07+MAR+25.mp4

English sub-title,
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/downloads2.unmultimedia.org/public/video/evergreen/MSG+SG+/SG+07+March+25/MSG+SG+NUTRITION+FOR+GROWTH+07+MAR+25+EN.mp4

En 2015, les dirigeants du monde ont fait une promesse à l’humanité :

Éliminer la faim d’ici à 2030.

Hélas, à moins de cinq ans de l’échéance, nous sommes loin du compte.

Aujourd’hui, une personne sur 11 souffre de la faim.

En Afrique, c’est une personne sur cinq.

Chez les enfants, la malnutrition représente une tragédie – et une faillite morale.

Dans le même temps, des millions de personnes sont en surpoids, à cause d’une alimentation transformées – riche en sucre et graisses saturées, mais pauvre en nutriments essentiels.

Cette double menace fragilise nos systèmes de santé, creuse les inégalités et freine le développement durable.

La lutte contre la faim est un défi mondial qui demande l’engagement de chacun, à tous les niveaux – et une mobilisation politique et financière sans précédent pour transformer durablement nos systèmes alimentaires.

C’est l’objectif de l’Alliance mondiale contre la faim, qui vise à mobiliser des fonds et des solutions concrètes pour aider les pays dans cette transformation.

En juillet, le deuxième bilan du sommet des Nations unies sur les systèmes alimentaires à Addis-Abeba, devra aboutir à des engagements concrets – en particulier financiers.

Ainsi, seul un tiers des pays à faible revenu et à revenu intermédiaire dispose de financements adéquats pour la nutrition.

Et trop souvent, les pays vulnérables sont laissés pour compte face aux crises économiques, conflits prolongés, et catastrophes climatiques.

Le Pacte pour l’avenir appelle à une réforme de l’architecture financière internationale…

Il comprend un engagement à mettre en place un plan de relance des Objectifs de développement durable…

Augmenter la capacité de prêt des banques multilatérales de développement…

À alléger le fardeau des pays croulant sous les dettes…

Et mobiliser davantage de ressources internationales et nationales, publiques et privées, pour des investissements vitaux – notamment en matière de sécurité alimentaire.

Excellences,

Un monde sans faim n’est pas une utopie.

C’est un choix.

Nous avons les ressources, les connaissances et les outils nécessaires.

Et votre Sommet représente une opportunité importante de mobiliser des actions concrètes en faveur d’une nutrition saine pour tous.

Alors agissons ensemble pour tenir notre promesse et faire malnutrition une histoire du passé.

Je vous remercie.

***
In 2015, world leaders made a pledge to humanity:

To eradicate hunger by 2030.

Sadly, with less than five years to go, we are far off track.

Today, one in eleven people suffers from hunger.

In Africa, it is one in five.

Among children, malnutrition is a tragedy – and a moral failure.

Meanwhile, millions of people struggle with obesity due to a processed diet – high in sugar and saturated fats, but low in essential nutrients.

This dual threat strains our healthcare systems, widens inequalities and hinders sustainable development.

Combating hunger demands a global effort at every level – and unprecedented political and financial engagement to sustainably transform our food systems.

The Global Alliance against Hunger aims to mobilize funds and concrete solutions to support countries in this transformation.

In July, the second United Nations Food Systems Summit Stocktake in Addis Ababa must result in tangible commitments – notably financial ones.

Only a third of low- and middle-income countries have adequate funding for nutrition.

Too often, vulnerable countries are left on their own – facing economic crises, protracted conflicts and climate disasters.

The Pact for the Future calls for reforming the international financial architecture.

It includes a commitment to advance an SDG Stimulus.

To increase the lending capacity of Multilateral Development Banks;

To alleviate the burden of countries drowning in debt;

And to mobilize more international and domestic resources, public and private, for vital investments – particularly in food security.

Excellencies,

A world without hunger is not a utopia.

It is a choice.

We have the necessary resources, knowledge and tools.

And your Summit represents a key opportunity to drive concrete action for a healthy nutrition for all.

So let us work together to keep our promise and make malnutrition a thing of the past.

Thank you.

MIL OSI United Nations News –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Economics: From Farm to Table: Horticulture Development and Food Security in Uzbekistan

Source: Asia Development Bank

Transcript

Makhtob Odilova, Horticulture entrepreneur

For many this is just a field, but for me it is the story of my life.

Bukhara region, Uzbekistan.

Makhtob Odilova, Horticulture entrepreneur

I started business in agriculture, because the population is growing, and demand for tomatoes and cucumbers is also increasing. Before there were no tomatoes and cucumbers in our district.

Entrepreneurship motivates people to do new things. I studied the opportunities in Bukhara and decided to start a greenhouse business.

Makhtob was able to grow her business with the help of ADB. The project extended $154 million to horticulture entrepreneurs, channeled through local banks.

It helped to finance and train entrepreneurs like Makhtob in areas like climate-smart agriculture, business planning, and market expansion.

ADB-financed Horticulture Value Chain Development Project (2017-2023) provided 359 subloans: 220 subloans for production of modern greenhouse complexes (195) and intensive gardens (25); and 139 subloans for storage improvement (83), processing (45), taro-packaging of fruit and vegetable products (4), and agricultural machinery purchase (7).

Makhtob Odilova, Horticulture entrepreneur

In 2020, during the pandemic, we took another $1 million loan so that our work would not stop. Using this loan we built a new greenhouse in Kagan district.

Geographical distribution of subloans: Andijan (3.1%), Bukhara (17.0%), Djizzak (4.2%), Fergana (7.8%), Kashkadarya (6.6%), Republic of Karakalpakstan (1.2%), Khorezm (5.8%), Namangan (4.4%), Navoi (4.1%), Samarkand (10.7%), Sirdarya (13.5%), Surkhandarya (6.6%), Tashkent (15.0%). Participating banks: Asaka Bank, Davr Bank, Hamkorbank, Ipoteka Bank, Ipak Yuli Bank, NBU, SQB, Turon Bank.

Makhtob Odilova, Horticulture entrepreneur

When we planted in the soil, the yield was very low. After we switched to hydroponics, the yield significantly increased. In 2020-2023, we delivered to our population and exported about 600 tons of tomato.

Horticultural exports increased from $6oo million in 2015 to $1.15 billion in 2022. Export volume in 2022: 648,483 tons of vegetables, 318,900 tons of grapes, 305,479 tons of fruits, 136,600 tons of melons.

To help bring food from farm to table, ADB also supported the country’s largest modern grocery retail company, Korzinka. $12 million loan helped the company build its inventory buffers for food and pay suppliers at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kanokpan Lao-Araya, ADB Country Director for Uzbekistan

ADB is happy to help boost food production and strengthen supply chains in Uzbekistan. This will not only help ensure food security, but will also create and preserve jobs, particularly for women and those in rural areas who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.

Makhtob Odilova, Horticulture entrepreneur

My advice to women is to never be afraid of hard work. A woman should be a risk taker. Any woman can handle large business. Just believe.

MIL OSI Economics –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Europe: Monetary developments in the euro area: February 2025
Source: European Central Bank

27 March 2025

Components of the broad monetary aggregate M3

The annual growth rate of the broad monetary aggregate M3 increased to 4.0% in February 2025 from 3.8% in January, averaging 3.8% in the three months up to February. The components of M3 showed the following developments. The annual growth rate of the narrower aggregate M1, which comprises currency in circulation and overnight deposits, increased to 3.5% in February from 2.7% in January. The annual growth rate of short-term deposits other than overnight deposits (M2-M1) decreased to 2.0% in February from 3.3% in January. The annual growth rate of marketable instruments (M3-M2) increased to 19.8% in February from 17.3% in January.

Chart 1

Monetary aggregates

(annual growth rates)

Data for monetary aggregates

Looking at the components’ contributions to the annual growth rate of M3, the narrower aggregate M1 contributed 2.2 percentage points (up from 1.7 percentage points in January), short-term deposits other than overnight deposits (M2-M1) contributed 0.6 percentage points (down from 1.0 percentage points) and marketable instruments (M3-M2) contributed 1.3 percentage points (up from 1.1 percentage points).

Among the holding sectors of deposits in M3, the annual growth rate of deposits placed by households stood at 3.4% in February, compared with 3.3% in January, while the annual growth rate of deposits placed by non-financial corporations increased to 3.5% in February from 3.0% in January. Finally, the annual growth rate of deposits placed by investment funds other than money market funds increased to 8.5% in February from 4.6% in January.

Counterparts of the broad monetary aggregate M3

The annual growth rate of M3 in February 2025, as a reflection of changes in the items on the monetary financial institution (MFI) consolidated balance sheet other than M3 (counterparts of M3), can be broken down as follows: net external assets contributed 3.1 percentage points (up from 2.9 percentage points in January), claims on the private sector contributed 2.2 percentage points (up from 2.0 percentage points), claims on general government contributed 0.2 percentage points (up from 0.1 percentage points), longer-term liabilities contributed -1.5 percentage points (as in the previous month), and the remaining counterparts of M3 contributed 0.0 percentage points (down from 0.2 percentage points).

Chart 2

Contribution of the M3 counterparts to the annual growth rate of M3

(percentage points)

Data for contribution of the M3 counterparts to the annual growth rate of M3

Claims on euro area residents

The annual growth rate of total claims on euro area residents stood at 1.7% in February 2025, compared with 1.6% in the previous month. The annual growth rate of claims on general government stood at 0.4% in February, compared with 0.3% in January, while the annual growth rate of claims on the private sector increased to 2.3% in February from 2.1% in January.

The annual growth rate of adjusted loans to the private sector (i.e. adjusted for loan transfers and notional cash pooling) increased to 2.5% in February from 2.3% in January. Among the borrowing sectors, the annual growth rate of adjusted loans to households increased to 1.5% in February from 1.3% in January, while the annual growth rate of adjusted loans to non-financial corporations increased to 2.2% in February from 2.0% in January.

Chart 3

Adjusted loans to the private sector

(annual growth rates)

Data for adjusted loans to the private sector

Notes:
- Data in this press release are adjusted for seasonal and end-of-month calendar effects, unless stated otherwise.
- “Private sector” refers to euro area non-MFIs excluding general government.
- Hyperlinks lead to data that may change with subsequent releases as a result of revisions. Figures shown in annex tables are a snapshot of the data as at the time of the current release.
MIL OSI Europe News –
March 27, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: We calculated how much Dutton’s excise cut would save you on fuel – and few will save as much as promised

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra

Daria Nipot/Shutterstock

The opposition has unveiled its response to Labor’s A$17 billion “top-up” tax cuts outlined in Tuesday night’s federal budget: cheaper fuel for Australians.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton will take to the election a policy to halve the fuel excise for 12 months. It would drop from 50.8 cents a litre to 25.4 cents, costing the government $6 billion.

It is a revival of the six-month reduction by the Morrison government ahead of the 2022 election.

So, how much might people save at the fuel pump? Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor is touting savings of around $1,500 over 12 months for families who fill up (not just top up) two cars every week.

But few households consume anywhere near this much petrol. Households with electric cars – or no car at all – will get no direct benefit.

Lowering petrol and diesel prices also shows a lack of commitment to climate action. It reduces the incentive for people to switch to electric cars, use public transport or drive less.

Read more:
Peter Dutton promises $6 billion 12-month halving of petrol and diesel excise

Not everyone benefits from cheaper fuel

Cutting petrol prices is not a well-targeted way of helping those people doing it tough. On average, high-income households spend more on petrol than low-income households. There’s also significant variation by area.

By updating modelling we did at the time of the Morrison government fuel excise cuts, we find that under Dutton’s proposal, the average inner-city household in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide will save around $270 over 12 months. The average outer suburban household in these cities will save $450.

Inner-city dwellers drive less as they have more ability to use public transport, or even walk or ride to work. It is people on the urban fringe, and some inner regional areas, who typically face long commutes.

Across inner regional Australia, areas relatively close to major cities, the average household saves $410. For outer regional, remote and very remote areas, total savings fall in the range between $370 and $410.

Effects on inflation

If the cut to the excise of about 25 cents is fully passed on, the retail petrol price should drop from around $1.80 to $1.55, around 15%. As petrol has a weight of 3.7% in the consumer price index, the direct impact would be to reduce the CPI by around 0.5% when it is introduced and increase it by 0.5% a year later.

There will be some, likely much smaller, indirect effects. Retailers may pass on some of the reduced cost of having goods delivered to them. Tradies may pass on some of their reduced cost of driving. As a very visible price, there may be some impact on inflationary expectations.

On the other hand, the increased purchasing power – and therefore spending – by some households may push up other prices.

As the impact is temporary, and will not be reflected in the trimmed mean measure of underlying inflation, it is unlikely to have much effect on interest rate decisions by the Reserve Bank.

What will be the effect on the federal budget?

Dutton claims his policy will cost the budget around $6 billion.

But this assumes the cut remains temporary. It is unlikely that households will feel cost-of-living pressures have gone away by mid-2026. A Dutton government would be under pressure to extend the cut in the May 2026 budget to avoid petrol prices going back up.

History shows governments find it hard to reverse cuts once implemented. In 2001, for example, the Howard government was panicked by poor opinion polls into suspending indexation of the petrol excise when prices reached $1 a litre.

Indexation was not restored for 14 years, at an estimated cost of more than $40 billion in forgone tax revenue.

What are the political impacts?

With this policy, it would appear Dutton is giving up on trying to regain the former Liberal seats lost to the Teals. Voters in these inner city seats drive less than the average and are more concerned about climate change.

He seems instead to be concentrating his campaign on outer suburban seats and what were termed in the Abbott era “Tony’s tradies”.

So, is it a good idea?

In 2022, the Economic Society of Australia asked 46 leading economists whether they thought cutting the fuel excise would be good economic policy. Not a single one thought it was a good idea. It’s unlikely that sentiment has changed.

John Hawkins was formerly a senior economist with Treasury and the Reserve Bank.

Yogi Vidyattama has previously received funding from The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts to do research related to fuel excise and road pricing in 2016-2017.

– ref. We calculated how much Dutton’s excise cut would save you on fuel – and few will save as much as promised – https://theconversation.com/we-calculated-how-much-duttons-excise-cut-would-save-you-on-fuel-and-few-will-save-as-much-as-promised-253214

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Banking: Continued significant geographical differences in mortgage installments

Source: Danmarks Nationalbank

The larger geographical difference in ordinary installments can be illustrated with Gentofte and Lolland, which are the municipalities where homeowners repay the least and the most, respectively. Here, the difference in ordinary installments per million in mortgage debt has increased from kr. 26,704 in 2020 to kr. 32,511 in 2024. In Gentofte, homeowners paid an average of kr. 8,055 in installments in 2024 compared to kr. 40,566 in Lolland. The average installments in the municipalities where homeowners already paid the least in installments have decreased the most since 2020.

Since 2020, the differences in the share of interest-only mortgage loans have also increased across the country, varying in 024 from 77.4 percent in Gentofte to 16.8 percent in Tønder. Mortgage loans without installments are most widespread and have also increased the most in and around the larger cities and in North Zealand. Conversely, the southern and western municipalities have decreased their share of interest-only mortgage debt.

MIL OSI Global Banks –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: Transparent procurement rules and control over contract execution: how the unified automated information system for tenders works

Translartion. Region: Russians Fedetion –

Source: Moscow Government – Government of Moscow –

The Unified Automated Information System of Moscow City Trades (EAIST) has turned 20 years old. During its existence, customers have concluded more than 5.5 million contracts. This was reported by Maria Bagreeva, Deputy Mayor of Moscow, Head of the Moscow Department of Economic Policy and Development.

“In March 2005, the Moscow Government launched a unified automated information system for tenders to convert the capital’s state procurement into electronic form. Today, the system provides a full cycle of procurement procedures. With its help, schools, kindergartens, hospitals, utilities, and Moscow authorities plan purchases, prepare sets of documents, calculate initial prices, and agree and sign contracts. Using EAIST, Moscow customers conclude more than two thousand contracts daily, and over the 20 years of the system’s operation, their number has exceeded 5.5 million,” said Maria Bagreeva.

EAIST is connected to almost 50 external systems. Among them are the supplier portal, the Federal Treasury and Bank of Russia services, as well as the unified medical information and analytical system, electronic trading platforms and Moscow industry systems. Thanks to such integration, the systems can exchange data for concluding contracts, their execution and control. This simplifies the work of customers and suppliers, reducing deadlines and paperwork.

The specialists of the Main Control Department use EAIST to control the entire procurement process: from planning to contract execution. They pay special attention to control at the preliminary stage. For this purpose, 1.2 thousand control points are built into the system, said Evgeny Danchikov, Minister of the Moscow Government and Head of the Main Control Department of the City of Moscow. For example, every year before inclusion in the plan-schedule, the validity of more than 25 thousand purchases with an initial price from three million to 100 million rubles is assessed. At this stage, about seven thousand comments related to the establishment of inflated values of product characteristics and incorrect price calculations are eliminated. As a result, at the post-control stage, it was possible to reduce violations by 13.2 times. The system is constantly evolving and is an important tool for controllers.

“EAIST uses modern domestic software solutions and applies 472 sets of standard documentation. This not only makes the procurement process faster and more convenient, but also helps to minimize the likelihood of customer errors, ensure fair competition, uniform, clear and transparent rules for concluding a contract. In addition, the system allows the Moscow Government to quickly process and analyze a huge array of data. Ultimately, this leads to the optimization of the capital’s contract system,” added the head of the Moscow City Department for Competition Policy

Kirill Purtov.

Artificial intelligence has been implemented into the work of the EAIST technical support service. Thanks to the digital assistant, users can quickly get answers to frequently asked questions, and support specialists are connected to solve more specialized and non-standard tasks. Already now, artificial intelligence independently processes about 10 percent of requests. And in the future, it will be able to autonomously answer almost a third of the questions received by technical support. Currently, the neural network knowledge base contains almost 1.7 thousand answers to common questions related to the work of EAIST. Artificial intelligence continues to learn based on the answers of technical support operators to user questions.

According to the deputy head Department of Information Technology of the City of Moscow Roman Urnysheva, EAIST is the foundation of the capital’s procurement ecosystem. It helps ensure the transparency of procurement, control the execution of contracts, optimize the preparation and implementation of procurement for the needs of the capital, from the purchase of office supplies and water to the construction of hospitals, metro stations and the implementation of other significant projects for millions of city residents. Every day, more than 10 thousand users work in EAIST and about 200-250 million transactions are processed, and the system itself is constantly growing and developing.

The functional customers of EAIST on the part of the Moscow Government are the capital’s Department of Competition Policy, the Department of Economic Policy and Development, the Main Control Directorate and the Department of Information Technology, which is also the operator of the system.

The development of electronic services for business corresponds to the objectives of the national project “Data Economy and Digital Transformation of the State” and the regional project of the city of Moscow “Digital Public Administration”. More information about this and other national projects can be found by link.

Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

Please Note; This Information is Raw Content Directly from the Information Source. It is access to What the Source Is Stating and Does Not Reflect

https: //vv.mos.ru/nevs/ite/151840073/

MIL OSI Russia News –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI China: Announcement on Open Market Operations No.59 [2025]

Source: Peoples Bank of China

Announcement on Open Market Operations No.59 [2025]

(Open Market Operations Office, March 27, 2025)

The People’s Bank of China conducted reverse repo operations in the amount of RMB218.5 billion through quantity bidding at a fixed interest rate on March 27, 2025.

Details of the Reverse Repo Operations

Maturity

Rate

Bidding Volume

Winning Bid Volume

7 days

1.50%

RMB218.5 billion

RMB218.5 billion

Date of last update Nov. 29 2018

2025年03月27日

MIL OSI China News –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Australia: Address to the Canberra Business Chamber and Institute of Public Accountants online budget breakfast

Source: Australian Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry

It’s terrific to be with you and I’m sorry we’re not meeting in person in the Great Hall today. I acknowledge that I’m on Ngunnawal land today, and acknowledge all First Nations people joining us.

Thank you to the Canberra Business Chamber and the Institute of Public Accountants for again putting on this event, which is really a fixture in the budget calendar. I’ve done your event many times. I enjoy it more in person than virtually, but it is a real pleasure to be able to engage with the Canberra business community.

Let me start off with where we are in a global context, then go to a couple of the key measures in the Budget and finally finish up by asking the question: ‘What does the Budget mean for Canberra?’

If we look around the world, uncertainty is up. We’ve always lived in an uncertain world, but policy uncertainty is combining with geopolitical uncertainty. At this moment, we’ve seen a range of our counterpart economies go into recession as they’ve sought to battle inflation. The UK and New Zealand have suffered recessions, and many other economies around the world have experienced quarters of negative growth as they sought to tame the global cost‑of‑living challenge. Australia, uniquely in our history, has managed to bring inflation down into the Reserve Bank’s target band without a significant rise in unemployment. We should be collectively extraordinarily proud of this. It’s not the story of the 70s, the 80s or the 90s, where taming inflation meant increasing unemployment.

In Australia, we’ve managed to maintain full employment while getting prices back under control. And that in itself is a remarkable achievement. More than a million jobs created, interest rates now coming down, inflation back within the band, a strong labour market. So, while you look around the world and see a lot of uncertainty, there’s not many places you’d rather be than Australia.

The Treasurer last night talked about 5 big themes. I don’t have half an hour, so let me focus on 2: cost of living and productivity. In terms of cost of living, our biggest measure is continuing the tax cuts that we began last year. Last year as you remember, we adjusted the tax cuts so every taxpayer got a tax cut. Now we’re announcing that from 2026–27, we’ll be delivering a tax cut worth $268 for everyone earning over $45,000 per year, and the same again the year after that. That will be worth about $10 a week for the average worker, and it adds to the previous tax cut worth about $40 a week for the average worker to around $50 a week. That sits alongside the energy bill relief which will be extended for another half year, reflecting the pressure many households are under.

And then there’s the systemic changes: cheaper medicines, cheaper childcare. The work we’re doing in supermarket competition has a cost‑of‑living lens as well. We’ve commissioned the biggest review of the supermarkets in 17 years, and that review continues to make recommendations which build on the government’s work to tackle shrinkflation and ensure that Australian shoppers get a better deal at the checkout. You’ll soon be seeing the next iteration of CHOICE’s quarterly gross price grocery price monitoring, which is another measure that Labor has put in place to ensure that shoppers get a better deal.

Now, Emma [Alberici] talked about productivity and about a couple of the productivity boosting measures we have in place. I want to focus on those because it is really important that we as progressives, are focused on not only boosting demand, but also on the supply side, on ensuring that we’re unlocking the growth potential of the Australian economy. Emma rightly talked about the work that we’ve done on early learning, providing that 3 day guarantee, following the experts and getting rid of the activity test in order to unlock the productivity potential of the Australian workforce. We’re investing in skills, finally completing that Gonski project of ensuring that every school gets its appropriate level of funding, and that final agreement with the Queensland Premier that was announced this week is the last piece of the puzzle in those Gonski reforms. It’s not just money, it’s about reforms. It’s about more targeted teaching, more intensive literacy and numeracy education to tackle that challenge that we’ve seen in the OECD PISA tests, where Australian students since the beginning of the millennium have slipped back about a year of achievement. We need to do better, and this money will allow us to do that.

The boost in Free TAFE places is vital in ensuring that we have more skills for the jobs in the modern economy, particularly in construction. We understand that we need to increase uptake and we need to encourage apprentices to stay in on the tools. We recognise that by boosting investment in modular methods of construction, we can also unlock productivity in the housing sector. Housing sector productivity has gone down in Australia, as it has in many other advanced countries, and a recent Productivity Commission report talked about some of the challenges. They’re not bagging unions – far from it. They’re talking about the challenges of scale and about the way in which modular construction has sometimes struggled, about some of the regulatory challenges that housing construction faces, and our government is very focused on unlocking housing sector productivity.

Now, Emma also talked about one of our key productivity boosting measures in this Budget, which is around the competition reforms relating to non‑competes. When I first started looking at this about 5 years ago, people said ‘Oh, it’s just an American thing. Sure, one in 5 American workers have non‑competes but you won’t find the same in Australia.’ So, we worked with e61 and with the ABS in order to do surveys that revealed, lo and behold, that one in 5 Australian workers were subject to a non‑compete clause – a clause that stopped them from moving to a better job. And then the argument came ‘It’s just executives being put on gardening leave’. But it turned out in the surveys that it’s gardeners, it’s early childhood workers, security guards, a whole range of workers in low‑wage professions that have been caught by standard form employment agreements which are preventing them from moving to a better job.

Our reform will then unlock a productivity boost, because if you want to start a firm on a full‑employment economy, you need to hire workers from other firms. It’ll apply to workers earning under $175,000 – the Fair Work Act high‑income threshold. Our estimate, the estimates we have from the experts on this suggests that it will boost wages by around $2,500 per year. That means for those affected workers, those one in 5 – that’s a boost of around $50 a week, commensurate with the tax cut gains that I talked about.

Getting rid of non‑compete laws for low wage workers shouldn’t trouble businesses, because you can still put in place non‑disclosure agreements that ensure that your secrets can’t walk out. And in fact, what’s going on at the moment is that many of these non‑compete clauses are not legally enforceable. We’re tying up workers and firms in a thicket of legal regulations. By getting rid of non‑competes and encouraging firms to instead use targeted non‑disclosure agreements, we will unlock productivity.

Finally, for Canberra this Budget builds on the investments of past budgets. On our record investment in the national cultural institutions. Investment in the War Memorial and the National Security precinct. This Albanese Labor government hasn’t neglected Canberra’s infrastructure spend, as the previous government did in their final budget, when Canberra received just one‑fifth of our fair share of infrastructure investment from the Coalition. Instead, this Albanese government has invested in bike paths, roads, and light rail for the nation’s capital.

We’ve got a public service which is right sized for the needs of the nation, and the Coalition’s proposals for a public service cut would devastate the ACT. On one hand, they’re saying that they’re going to cut one in 5 public servants which suggests that frontline services such as people processing veterans’ claims or parental leave benefits would suffer. But then they try and say, ‘well we won’t hurt frontline services – we’ll only cut the Canberra public service’. If they rip 41,000 public service jobs out, and only in Canberra – that’s half the public service in Canberra. That would also devastate the nation’s capacity to deal with future pandemics, with national security risks, and with biosecurity challenges. The Coalition can’t have it both ways. Either their public service cuts are a threat to frontline services, or they will devastate the nation’s policy infrastructure, including our national security.

So, thanks for the chance to talk about Budget 2025. Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher have put together a fantastic Budget which invests in productivity, tackles the cost of living, and delivers for Australia.

MIL OSI News –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Australia: Interview with Georgia Stynes, Canberra Drive, ABC Radio

Source: Australian Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry

Georgia Stynes:

Our guest is the Labor Member for Fenner, Dr Andrew Leigh, who has been listening into this previous conversation and joins us. Good afternoon.

Andrew Leigh:

Good afternoon Georgia, great to be with you.

Stynes:

Yeah, nice to be with you too. Do you acknowledge that there were some forgotten people in this Budget that a lot of the measures seem to be aimed towards, well, either people who are paying tax or business?

Leigh:

Well in our previous Budgets, we’ve raised the JobSeeker rate, we’ve increased Commonwealth Rent Assistance by over 40 per cent. We have prioritised those who are doing it tough by supporting increases to the minimum wage and supporting increases to aged care workers and early childhood workers.

Our tax cuts are directed towards everyone. So, everyone earning over $45,000 receives that same benefit over the 2 tax cuts. Somewhere around $10 a week in conjunction with our previous tax cut totals around $50 a week or $2,500 a year. So, we’ve looked to deliver egalitarian reforms at the same time as focusing on the long run productivity challenge that our predecessors left us with.

Stynes:

To be fair, that that would buy you a democracy sausage though at election day, which is partly what’s being said is that this looked like an election budget. There weren’t lots of big things, big picture things.

Leigh:

Look, I think $50 a week is pretty significant. And you put that alongside the energy bill rebates, that $75 off each of your next 2 quarterly bills. The work we’ve done around cheaper medicines, cheaper childcare and housing affordability through our work with the ACT Government and other state and territory governments, historic investment in housing, all of that is focused on making us a more productive economy and at the same time helping to keep our lid on prices.

Leigh:

You live in Canberra, you’ve lived in Canberra for a long time and I know you spend a lot of time out in the community ACTCOSS, Vinnies, lots of agencies – Marymead Catholic Care are telling us that they’re seeing people come through their doors that have never come through their doors before. People that used to donate to them are now queuing up for food banks. Things have changed.

Don’t you think this was an opportunity? The Budget was an opportunity to help those people struggling with the cost of living?

Leigh:

Last week the ACT Labor team was out at Marymead in Lyneham around an announcement that we’d made of investing in housing for women and children fleeing domestic and family violence. We pioritise those social spends and social supports in this Budget, as we have the productivity boosting reforms. We’re aiming to be an inclusive government that makes these investments for everyone.

And I don’t think there has been an Australian Government, certainly in my lifetime, that has given so much of a priority to Canberra. Through the investments in the national cultural institutions, the National Security Precinct, the work in the War Memorial, prioritising the public service over outsourced consultants and contractors and giving the ACT our fair share of infrastructure spending, which you see strongly reflected in this Budget with the investments in the Monaro Highway, Gundaroo Drive and the like.

Stynes:

Do you acknowledge that Canberra has changed? That we are seeing more people on the streets and there are people struggling, that we are in a cost‑of‑living crisis?

Leigh:

Look, I think there’s certainly cost‑of‑living challenges. Inflation is now back within the Reserve Bank’s target band and we’ve done that for the first time in Australian history without smashing the labour market. Previously, we had a big surge in joblessness as Australia sought to bring down prices. We haven’t done that this time. We’ve got inflation under control while maintaining a historically low rate of unemployment – the lowest average rate of unemployment of any government in 50 years.

The UK has gone into recession, New Zealand has gone into recession. Other countries have suffered quarters of negative growth as they’ve sought to tame inflation. Australia has tamed inflation while maintaining full employment. And that is so important to the social equity goals that you’re talking about there Georgia.

Stynes:

Dr Andrew Leigh is our guest. He’s the Labor Member for Fenner. Just on the text line, one listener says ‘What about a Newstart hike? Why didn’t that happen? Another listener has said ‘Yeah, the people currently living in tents in and around Canberra will get cold comfort from this Budget’. Another listener has said ‘long‑term unemployment really needed more analysis. They need to be looking at why this is happening. There’s a huge resource there if the government could help them do courses lead to degrees, we could get them into aged care or others that need employees.’

I just want to, I know you’re very busy – just before we run out of time. One of the things that you’re quite passionate about is this non‑compete clause. Can you just explain to people how this will work? The changes?

Leigh:

One in 5 workers are subject to a non‑compete which makes it hard for them to move to a better job. People like the 17‑year‑old dance instructor who found herself harassed at work and then when she moved to a competing dance studio, found herself being threatened for breach of contract by her former employer. These non‑compete clauses are dampening down wages and decreasing productivity.

And so we’re going to be getting rid of non‑compete clauses for workers earning under $175,000. That’s going to be great for wages. Those affected workers will see on average a 4 per cent wage boost and it’ll be great for productivity. It’ll make it easier to start a business because in a full employment economy you need to hire workers from other firms if you’re going to get a new business off the ground.

Stynes:

How many people does that actually affect in Canberra? Is that dancer an example here in Canberra or is that a federal example?

Leigh:

That’s an example from interstate, but certainly in the ACT I would expect that it would be around one in 5 workers affected as well. You know, these aren’t just high paid executives who are being affected. These are gardeners, cleaners, security guards, early childhood workers who are signing up to standard form employment agreements Georgia, which contain non‑compete clauses making it harder for them to move to a better job.

Job mobility is a really important part of a productive economy. It’s a really important part of an economy in which wages grow. Labor wants people to earn more and keep more of what they earn.

Stynes:

Just to clarify though, this is also working, you know, when you’ve got people you would know too, people who work in say banking or in other areas or a lawyer and they, they resign and then they’re sort of between another job, they can’t go and work for another law firm between that period. Is that what you’re talking about or are you talking about other things?

Leigh:

If they earn less than $175,000 yes, they’ll be caught. And I should be clear Georgia, for any of your listeners who are running small businesses, those small businesses still have the protection of intellectual property laws, of non‑disclosure agreements. So they can hold their secrets but they can’t bind their staff to the desk.

Stynes:

When we talk about – because just back on that for a minute. That happens in the public service, obviously that happens in corporate jobs. But you’re saying the cap is how much they earn, is that right?

Leigh:

That’s right. And so, this is about getting wage growth going. We’ve seen a decline in job mobility under the former government and that may well be one of the reasons why we saw such lousy wage outcomes, why real wages were falling so sharply when we took office.

Allowing people to move to a better job is really fundamental. It’s a question of freedom and opportunity and it’s also a way of ensuring that people get the wage gains they deserve.

Stynes:

There’s quite a few texts coming through just before you go too. One person says, ‘But the point is we have historically high rates of homelessness in this country’. Another listener has said ‘These tax cuts are a huge waste of money’.

Spreading across Australia reduces its impact per person. Wouldn’t it have been better for this huge amount to go into one or 2 areas – say health, say education, say homelessness. Do you think that might have been a better look if that money had actually gone there?

Leigh:

Well, health, education, homelessness are all big priorities for us. In education, you’ve got the 3 day childcare guarantee and the national schools funding agreement that we’ve now signed up to with all states and territories. With health, we’ve been moving to get cheaper medicines. Reforms in this Budget will bring down the cost of PBS medicines from $31 to $25.

In housing, we’ve been making bigger investments in social housing than any previous Australian Government through the Housing Australia Future Fund and our work with the states and territories on dealing with planning and zoning. So, all of those areas are big priorities for the government and were front and centre in the Budget last night.

Stynes:

There is criticism that this was a cobbled together Budget. The idea that this is fit for an election, but it wasn’t expected to be delivered. Is that true? Was this cobbled together?

Leigh:

Not at all. This is a Budget that delivers tax cuts which the Liberals and Nationals today voted against, and which focuses on long‑term reform such as getting competition policy going again. It’s got reforms which will allow electricians to work across state and territory borders. Really important for a sparkie in Queanbeyan to be able to do a job in O’Connor.

And it’s got reforms which are focused on investing for the long run. Increasing the funding to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, so it can do more innovative work in tackling climate change and that decarbonisation challenge.

Stynes:

We’ll have to leave it there I’m sorry but thank you so much for your time, I appreciate it.

Leigh:

Thank you, Georgia.

Stynes:

Thank you. That’s Dr Leigh there, Labor Member for Fenner.

MIL OSI News –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Submissions: Australia – CommBank establishes Seattle Tech Hub to further accelerate its AI capability – CBA

Source: Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA)

Recognising the role of technology and innovation in delivering excellent customer experiences.

CommBank is establishing a dedicated Tech Hub in Seattle, Washington (USA), to advance the bank’s technology leadership and delivery of outstanding customer experiences by equipping teams with the cutting-edge skills needed to stay ahead.

CommBank Chief Executive Officer, Matt Comyn said, “As the rate of global innovation continues to accelerate, we increasingly believe that the bank’s technology leadership will continue to provide a strong foundation to CommBank’s strategic performance and competitive advantage. Technology delivers superior customer experiences to our 16 million customers, which is at the core of our strategy to be tomorrow’s bank today.”

Global opportunity for CommBank’s tech teams

The first cohort of CommBank technologists currently at the Seattle Tech Hub are focused on learning to fast-track adoption of Agentic AI and Gen AI powered solutions to help small business banking customers manage their finances and run their businesses. The current cohort will also explore modernising testing to respond to customer feedback faster.

CommBank’s Group Executive Technology Gavin Munroe says the Tech Hub will give the bank’s technologists a leading global advantage and enable the delivery of world-class digital experiences for customers at a safer and faster pace.

“A Tech Hub based in Seattle – an area that is home to leading global technology companies – will connect our technologists with our partners to accelerate how we deliver new banking solutions for customers. Our teams will bring new ideas back to Australia to enhance how we work, while boosting the knowledge and expertise in Australia’s tech ecosystem.

“The Seattle Tech Hub is part of our focus on fast-tracking how we’re using new technologies like Agentic AI, while creating an environment where technologists can continue to grow, learn and develop their career,” says Mr Munroe.

Through the Tech Hub, which opened this month, CBA technology teams will have the opportunity to take part in a three-week exchange within the Seattle tech precinct, where they will participate in collaborative learning opportunities together with global technology leaders such as Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, H2O and Microsoft to deliver technology-led customer experiences.

The Tech Hub will serve as a strategic gateway for the bank to collaborate with global technology leaders, foster innovation exchange, broaden employee learning to harness cutting-edge solutions. This presence in one of the world’s leading tech ecosystems will accelerate our transformation while enabling us to attract top talent and develop breakthrough capabilities for our customers.

AWS Vice President of Agentic AI Swami Sivasubramanian said: “As CommBank’s preferred cloud provider, we’re excited about the learning opportunities that their new Seattle Tech Hub will offer. I’m confident this move will not only give them access to the best industry talent, but also bring our teams closer as we continue to scale AI innovations globally. We have entered an even more transformative phase with generative AI and the emergence of agentic AI applications represents a fundamental shift in its evolution. I look forward to our teams collaborating closely and achieving productivity and scale gains that will reshape banking experiences for customers.”

Microsoft Business and Industry Copilot Corporate Vice President Charles Lamanna said: “CommBank’s Seattle Technology Hub exemplifies its leadership in banking innovation. By placing its people at the center of the global tech ecosystem, CommBank is ensuring it stays ahead of emerging trends and technologies. Microsoft is proud to support the bank’s vision by providing tools and access to expertise that will empower its team, enhance their learning, and push the boundaries of what is possible for their 16 million customers.”

MIL OSI – Submitted News –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI New Zealand: South Korea/Israel/OPT: HD Hyundai machinery used in West Bank demolitions – Amnesty International

Source: Amnesty International

HD Hyundai machinery has been widely used in demolitions of Palestinian-owned structures in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), according to new visual and testimonial evidence documented by Amnesty International Korea and local human rights groups.

While the company denies their involvement, images and videos verified by the groups identified 59 Palestinian-owned homes, businesses and other structures that were demolished between September 2019 and February 2025 using machinery made by the South Korea conglomerate.

These demolitions resulted in the forced displacement of approximately 250 Palestinians and damaged the livelihoods of hundreds of others.

“It is imperative that HD Hyundai takes decisive action to immediately suspend distribution of its products in Israel and conduct heightened due diligence to ensure its operations, products or services do not perpetuate human rights abuses,” said Montse Ferrer, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director.

For its investigation, Amnesty International Korea in collaboration with the Evidence Lab, Amnesty International’s digital investigations team, verified a total of 347 images and videos of demolitions obtained through partnerships with local organizations.

Amnesty International Korea, in collaboration with the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, also gathered testimonies from victims whose homes and businesses were destroyed by HD Hyundai bulldozers in eight instances across the West Bank.

One resident, a plumber named Yaaqoub Barqan, described how the Israeli military turned his home into rubble in July 2024.

“About 30 armed soldiers arrived in military jeeps, along with three pieces of heavy equipment, including a Hyundai excavator. The excavator destroyed the house in less than 20 minutes. My wife fainted watching our home being destroyed and is still receiving psychiatric treatment,” he said.

These findings follow research from March 2023 in which Amnesty International and Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) documented five instances where Israeli forces used excavators manufactured by Hyundai Construction Equipment (Hyundai CE) to raze Palestinian property that displaced at least 15 Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, an area south of the occupied West Bank where Palestinians live under imminent threat of mass expulsion.

In March 2024, in a response to media inquiries, HD Hyundai claimed it had reviewed its dealer’s records and asserted that there were no sales records to government agencies, such as for demolition work in Israel, and that compliance regulations were followed.

However, Amnesty International Korea’s latest research revealed at least 32 shipments of HD Hyundai heavy machinery to Israeli distributor EFCO were made between October 2021 and October 2023 along with 12 shipments of Hyundai Infracore equipment to Emcol Ltd, Hyundai Infracore’s major distributor in Israel.

Amnesty International Korea first contacted HD Hyundai in March 2023, and then again in October 2024 and March 2025, to inform the company about the use of its machinery in unlawful demolitions in the OPT. On 17 March 2025, Hyundai Infracore, Emcol and EFCO were contacted.

HD Hyundai XiteSolution, the parent company of HD Hyundai CE and HD Hyundai Infracore, responded on 25 March 2025 saying that it “has no involvement with activities in said conflict regions”. The company did not respond directly to questions posed by Amnesty International Korea. Emcol and EFCO did not respond.

“HD Hyundai Group, like any corporate actor, must respect human rights throughout its operations. It must do more to guarantee that its machinery is not being used in the destruction of homes and livelihoods in the OPT, especially as demolitions are a key tool in upholding Israel’s system of apartheid,” Montse Ferrer said.

MIL OSI New Zealand News –

March 27, 2025

MIL-OSI Economics: Money Market Operations as on March 26, 2025

Source: Reserve Bank of India


(Amount in ₹ crore, Rate in Per cent)

	Volume (One Leg)	Weighted Average Rate	Range
A. Overnight Segment (I+II+III+IV)	5,87,112.89	6.14	3.00-6.46
I. Call Money	13,209.17	6.20	5.15-6.35
II. Triparty Repo	4,14,106.80	6.10	5.60-6.26
III. Market Repo	1,58,230.02	6.23	3.00-6.40
IV. Repo in Corporate Bond	1,566.90	6.45	6.45-6.46
B. Term Segment
I. Notice Money**	72.50	6.28	6.20-6.30
II. Term Money^@@	1,275.00	–	6.55-7.50
III. Triparty Repo	12,598.75	7.29	6.20-7.60
IV. Market Repo	391.57	6.88	6.80-6.90
V. Repo in Corporate Bond	0.00	–	–

	Auction Date	Tenor (Days)	Maturity Date	Amount	Current Rate / Cut off Rate
C. Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF), Marginal Standing Facility (MSF) & Standing Deposit Facility (SDF)
I. Today’s Operations
1. Fixed Rate
2. Variable Rate^&
(I) Main Operation
(a) Repo
(b) Reverse Repo
(II) Fine Tuning Operations
(a) Repo	Wed, 26/03/2025	1	Thu, 27/03/2025	35,486.00	6.26
(b) Reverse Repo
(III) Long Term Operations^
(a) Repo
(b) Reverse Repo
3. MSF^#	Wed, 26/03/2025	1	Thu, 27/03/2025	1,364.00	6.50
4. SDF^Δ#	Wed, 26/03/2025	1	Thu, 27/03/2025	1,88,543.00	6.00
5. Net liquidity injected from today’s operations [injection (+)/absorption (-)]*				-1,51,693.00
II. Outstanding Operations
1. Fixed Rate
2. Variable Rate^&
(I) Main Operation
(a) Repo
(b) Reverse Repo
(II) Fine Tuning Operations
(a) Repo
(b) Reverse Repo
(III) Long Term Operations^
(a) Repo	Fri, 21/02/2025	45	Mon, 07/04/2025	57,951.00	6.26
	Fri, 14/02/2025	49	Fri, 04/04/2025	75,003.00	6.28
	Fri, 07/02/2025	56	Fri, 04/04/2025	50,010.00	6.31
(b) Reverse Repo
3. MSF^#
4. SDF^Δ#
D. Standing Liquidity Facility (SLF) Availed from RBI^$				9,517.09
E. Net liquidity injected from outstanding operations [injection (+)/absorption (-)]*				1,92,481.09
F. Net liquidity injected (outstanding including today’s operations) [injection (+)/absorption (-)]*				40,788.09
G. Cash Reserves Position of Scheduled Commercial Banks
(i) Cash balances with RBI as on		March 26, 2025		9,49,692.66
(ii) Average daily cash reserve requirement for the fortnight ending		April 04, 2025		9,28,983.00
H. Government of India Surplus Cash Balance Reckoned for Auction as on^¥		March 26, 2025		35,486.00
I. Net durable liquidity [surplus (+)/deficit (-)] as on		March 07, 2025		54,323.00
^@ Based on Reserve Bank of India (RBI) / Clearing Corporation of India Limited (CCIL).
– Not Applicable / No Transaction.
** Relates to uncollateralized transactions of 2 to 14 days tenor.
^@@ Relates to uncollateralized transactions of 15 days to one year tenor.
^$ Includes refinance facilities extended by RBI.
^& As per the Press Release No. 2019-2020/1900 dated February 06, 2020.
^Δ As per the Press Release No. 2022-2023/41 dated April 08, 2022.
* Net liquidity is calculated as Repo+MSF+SLF-Reverse Repo-SDF.
^¥ As per the Press Release No. 2014-2015/1971 dated March 19, 2015.
^# As per the Press Release No. 2023-2024/1548 dated December 27, 2023.
^ As per the Press Release No. 2024-2025/2082 dated February 05, 2025, Press Release No. 2024-2025/2138 dated February 12, 2025, and Press Release No. 2024-2025/2209 dated February 20, 2025.
Ajit Prasad Deputy General Manager (Communications)
Press Release: 2024-2025/2472

MIL OSI Economics –

March 27, 2025

MIL-OSI Economics: Asia Bond Monitor – March 2025

Source: Asia Development Bank

It notes a slight weakening of financial market conditions in emerging East Asia from 1 December 2024 to 28 February 2025. The region’s local currency bond market expanded 3.1% quarter-on-quarter in Q4 of 2024, compared with 2.7% in the previous quarter. Issuance of local currency bonds in the region totaled USD2.6 trillion in Q4 2024 on a contraction of 7.5% q-o-q due to decreased bond sales. At the end of 2024, sustainable bonds outstanding in ASEAN+3 markets totaled USD917.6 billion, with growth moderating to 12.1% year-on-year from 29.4% y-o-y in 2023 amid a slowdown in issuance.

MIL OSI Economics –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI China: BOC’s after-tax profits rise 2.58 percent in 2024

Source: China State Council Information Office

Bank of China (BOC), one of the country’s biggest lenders, said Wednesday its after-tax profits rose 2.58 percent year on year to 252.7 billion yuan (about 35.22 billion U.S. dollars) in 2024.

Its revenues totaled 632.8 billion yuan, an increase of 1.38 percent year on year, and its non-performing loan ratio stood at 1.25 percent at the end of last year, down 0.02 percentage points from the end of 2023.

By the end of 2024, the lender’s outstanding loans to private enterprises had surpassed 4.42 trillion yuan, representing a cumulative increase of 81 percent in the past three years.

“We capitalize on the BOC’s global and comprehensive strengths, focusing on enhancing our service effectiveness for private enterprises,” said BOC President Zhang Hui.

The bank will refine its multi-tiered financial supply system to better support the development of the private economy, and plans to provide over 5 billion U.S. dollars in intended financing support for private enterprises’ overseas projects this year, Zhang added.

MIL OSI China News –

March 27, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: Foreign aid cuts could mean 10 million more HIV infections by 2030 – and almost 3 million extra deaths

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rowan Martin-Hughes, Senior Research Fellow, Burnet Institute

CI Photos/Shutterstock

In January, the Trump administration ordered a broad pause on all US funding for foreign aid.

Among other issues, this has significant effects on US funding for HIV. The United States has been the world’s biggest donor to international HIV assistance, providing 73% of funding in 2023.

A large part of this is the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which oversees programs in low- and middle-income countries to prevent, diagnose and treat the virus. These programs have been significantly disrupted.

What’s more, recent funding cuts for international HIV assistance go beyond the US. Five countries that provide the largest amount of foreign aid for HIV – the US, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the Netherlands – have announced cuts of between 8% and 70% to international aid in 2025 and 2026.

Together, this may mean a 24% reduction in international HIV spending, in addition to the US foreign aid pause.

We wanted to know how these cuts might affect HIV infections and deaths in the years to come. In a new study, we found the worst-case scenario could see more than 10 million extra infections than what we’d otherwise anticipate in the next five years, and almost 3 million additional deaths.

What is HIV?

HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is a virus that attacks the body’s immune system. HIV can be transmitted at birth, during unprotected sex or thorough blood-to-blood contact such as shared needles.

If left untreated, HIV can progress to AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), a condition in which the immune system is severely damaged, and which can be fatal.

HIV was the world’s deadliest infectious disease in the early 1990s. There’s still no cure for HIV, but modern treatments allow the virus to be suppressed with a daily pill. People with HIV who continue treatment can live without symptoms and don’t risk infecting others.

A sustained global effort towards awareness, prevention, testing and treatment has reduced annual new HIV infections by 39% (from 2.1 million in 2010 to 1.3 million in 2023), and annual deaths by 51% (from 1.3 million to 630,000).

Most of that drop happened in sub-Saharan Africa, where the epidemic was worst. Today, nearly two-thirds of people with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa, and nearly all live in low- and middle-income countries.

HIV can be diagnosed with a simple blood test.
MaryBeth Semosky/Shutterstock

Our study

We wanted to estimate the impact of recent funding cuts from the US, UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands on HIV infections and deaths. To do this, we used our mathematical model for 26 low- and middle-income countries. The model includes data on international HIV spending as well as data on HIV cases and deaths.

These 26 countries represent roughly half of all people living with HIV in low- and middle income countries, and half of international HIV spending. We set up each country model in collaboration with national HIV/AIDS teams, so the data sources reflected the best available local knowledge. We then extrapolated our findings from the 26 countries we modelled to all low- and middle-income countries.

For each country, we first projected the number of new HIV infections and deaths that would occur if HIV spending stayed the same.

Second, we modelled scenarios for anticipated cuts based on a 24% reduction in international HIV funding for each country.

Finally, we modelled scenarios for the possible immediate discontinuation of PEPFAR in addition to other anticipated cuts.

With the 24% cuts and PEPFAR discontinued, we estimated there could be 4.43 million to 10.75 million additional HIV infections between 2025 and 2030, and 770,000 to 2.93 million extra HIV-related deaths. Most of these would be because of cuts to treatment. For children, there could be up to an additional 882,400 infections and 119,000 deaths.

In the more optimistic scenario in which PEPFAR continues but 24% is still cut from international HIV funding, we estimated there could be 70,000 to 1.73 million extra new HIV infections and 5,000 to 61,000 additional deaths between 2025 and 2030. This would still be 50% higher than if current spending were to continue.

The wide range in our estimates reflects low- and middle-income countries committing to far more domestic funding for HIV in the best case, or broader health system dysfunction and a sustained gap in funding for HIV treatment in the worst case.

Some funding for HIV treatment may be saved by taking that money from HIV prevention efforts, but this would have other consequences.

The range also reflects limitations in the available data, and uncertainty within our analysis. But most of our assumptions were cautious, so these results likely underestimate the true impacts of funding cuts to HIV programs globally.

Sending progress backwards

If funding cuts continue, the world could face higher rates of annual new HIV infections by 2030 (up to 3.4 million) than at the peak of the global epidemic in 1995 (3.3 million).

Sub-Saharan Africa will experience by far the greatest effects due to the high proportion of HIV treatment that has relied on international funding.

In other regions, we estimate vulnerable groups such as people who inject drugs, sex workers, men who have sex with men, and trans and gender diverse people may experience increases in new HIV infections that are 1.3 to 6 times greater than the general population.

The Asia-Pacific received US$591 million in international funding for HIV in 2023, which is the second highest after sub-Saharan Africa. So this region would likely experience a substantial rise in HIV as a result of anticipated funding cuts.

Notably, more than 10% of new HIV infections among people born in Australia are estimated to have been acquired overseas. More HIV in the region is likely to mean more HIV in Australia.

But concern is greatest for countries that are most acutely affected by HIV and AIDS, many of which will be most affected by international funding cuts.

Rowan Martin-Hughes receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. He has previously received funding to conduct HIV modelling studies from the Australian government Department of Health and Aged Care, Gates Foundation, Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, UNAIDS, UNFPA, UNICEF, World Bank and World Health Organization.

Debra ten Brink has previously received funding to conduct HIV modelling studies from the Australian government Department of Health and Aged Care, Gates Foundation, Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, UNAIDS, UNFPA, UNICEF, World Bank and World Health Organization.

Nick Scott receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. He has previously received funding to conduct HIV modelling studies from the Australian government Department of Health and Aged Care, Gates Foundation, Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, UNAIDS, UNFPA, UNICEF, World Bank and World Health Organization.

– ref. Foreign aid cuts could mean 10 million more HIV infections by 2030 – and almost 3 million extra deaths – https://theconversation.com/foreign-aid-cuts-could-mean-10-million-more-hiv-infections-by-2030-and-almost-3-million-extra-deaths-253017

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Senator Markey Hosts Office Hours on Importance of Protecting SNAP and Food Security Benefits as Trump Administration, Congressional Republicans Plan for Cuts

US Senate News:

Source: United States Senator for Massachusetts Ed Markey

Massachusetts receives $2.6 billion in SNAP annually

Washington (March 26, 2025) – Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) today hosted a virtual meeting with Congressman Jim McGovern (MA-02), advocates from Mass Law Reform Institute, Project Bread, Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, Greater Boston Food Bank, Worcester County Food Bank, Massachusetts Food System Collaborative, and Merrimack Valley Food Bank, and hundreds of constituents on the importance of protecting SNAP and other essential food security benefits for people in Massachusetts. Last month, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Republicans in Congress advanced their plan to cut billions from SNAP, school meals, food banks, and farmers markets after stripping funding for programs that help schools purchase locally grown food.

Massachusetts receives $220 million in federal funding for food security monthly, reaching families in every city and town in the Commonwealth. SNAP helps one in six Massachusetts residents, or about 670,000 families, put food on their table, but nearly 20 percent of families in Massachusetts still report struggling with food access. Families across the Commonwealth are seeing their purchasing power decrease as food costs increase at the sixth-highest rate in the country.

“Food is essential—it is how we feed our families and sustain ourselves; how children get the nutrition they need to learn; and how we share our cultures and build our community. SNAP is a critical lifeline in uplifting millions of families to put food on their table,” said Senator Markey. “I heard stories from early educators, community college students, food bank leaders, and advocates that I can use to show Republicans what cuts to food security benefits will mean. If they want to make these cuts, I’m going to make sure every American knows that Republicans are taking food from people’s dinner tables to fuel billionaires’ tax breaks.”

“The proposed twenty percent cuts to SNAP pose a significant threat to food insecurity here in the Commonwealth,” said Catherine D’Amato, President, and CEO of the Greater Boston Food Bank. “GBFB estimates that the proposed reduction in SNAP benefits equal 118 million meals lost throughout the state. To put that in perspective, imagine a packed Gillette Stadium with around 65,000 fans. If each person there needed three meals a day, 118 million meals could feed a sold-out crowd every day for over 600 days—almost two years! The already overburdened emergency food system here in Massachusetts will not be able to bridge this gap without significant philanthropic support and policy interventions.”

“MLRI is grateful to Senator Markey and our entire delegation for their work to protect SNAP, Medicaid, and our safety-net,” said Vicky Negus, Benefits Policy Advocate at the Mass Law Reform Institute. “SNAP is our country’s most effective anti-poverty program – helping 1 in 6 MA residents put food on the table. Cutting SNAP would harm families struggling to get by for generations to come, worsen hunger, and harm health and our local economies.”

“Each month, SNAP benefits support approximately 194,000 individuals in Western Massachusetts, bringing in around $35 million in federal dollars to the region,” said Christina Maxwell, Director of Programs at the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. “Reducing SNAP benefits will not only increase hunger but also hurt farmers, local economies, and small businesses that depend on these federal dollars.”

“The federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the very foundation and source of nutritious food for 42 million children, older adults, and hard-working adults in every community in the United States. People who are constituents of every Senator and Representative in Congress. We applaud Senator Markey and the entire MA delegation for their vigorous and vigilant protection of SNAP. It is immoral for elected officials to take money from SNAP, which is food for their constituents, to free billions of dollars for tax cuts for billionaires. Food Banks and food pantries cannot fill the food gap created by a reduction in federal financial support. The federal budget is the people’s budget, and Congress should ensure that SNAP thrives,” said Jean McMurray, CEO of the Worcester County Food Bank.

“The Massachusetts Food System Collaborative appreciates Senator Ed Markey’s leadership in supporting SNAP and the federal grant programs that help make Massachusetts farms more sustainable and feed hungry residents. At a time of heightened food insecurity, proposed cuts to SNAP will only put more pressure on the emergency food system, force families to make impossible choices between food and rent, increase diet-related illness, and take dollars out of the local economy. Massachusetts farmers are facing significant cuts to grant programs that helped feed more food insecure residents and provided expanded market channels, and cuts to SNAP will further destabilize the local food system,” said Rebecca Miller, Policy Director at the Massachusetts Food System Collaborative.

“SNAP is the most effective solution we have in the fight against hunger,” said Erin McAleer, President and CEO of Project Bread, the leading statewide food security organization in Massachusetts. “We need to strengthen and expand SNAP’s impact to support our neighbors experiencing food insecurity, instead of cutting into a critical lifeline for over 1 million Massachusetts residents. We are asking Congress to reject cuts to SNAP and reject the harm that would impact our communities nationwide.”

MIL OSI USA News –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI: Banco Itaú Chile Files Material Event Notice announcing Dividend Distribution Proposal

Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

SANTIAGO, Chile, March 26, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — BANCO ITAÚ CHILE (SSE: ITAUCL) (the “Bank”) today announced that its Board of Directors has agreed, in its ordinary meeting held on this same date, to propose to the Ordinary Shareholders’ Meeting, to be held on April 24, 2025, the distribution of 30% of the profits for the 2024 fiscal year, corresponding to the amount of $112,988,077,742 as a dividend to shareholders, among the total of the Bank’s 216,340,749 validly issued shares in circulation. Therefore, if approved as indicated, a dividend of $522.2690513195920 per share would be distributed. Additionally, it will be proposed to the Shareholders’ Meeting that the remaining 70% of the profits be retained.

The dividends that are approved will be available to shareholders starting on May 7, 2025. In this regard, shareholders who are registered in the Shareholder Registry at midnight on April 30, 2025, that is, those who are registered in said registry 5 business days prior to the payment date, will be entitled to receive dividends.

The full Material Event Notice is available on the company’s investor relations website at ir.itau.cl.
Investor Relations – Banco Itaú Chile

IR@itau.cl / ir.itau.cl

The MIL Network –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI New Zealand: Speech to KangaNews Debt Capital Markets Forum

Source: New Zealand Government

Opening
Good afternoon. I’m excited to be here at the KangaNews Debt Capital Markets Forum.
It’s a pleasure to be here with all of you – investors, financial institutions, and wholesale market participants who play a vital role in unlocking New Zealand’s economic future.
I’d like to thank ANZ for hosting this event and for inviting me to speak.
Debt capital markets are fundamental to the success of the Government’s plan to go for growth.
Capital is like water to a seed – it enables New Zealanders, businesses, government, and NGOs to action and grow their bright-ideas, ambitions, and aspirations.
The deeper our capital markets get, the more opportunities our country will have to thrive.
Today, I want to discuss how the Government is unlocking growth and overcoming funding and financing challenges in housing and infrastructure in a fiscally constrained environment.
I will also be announcing actions Cabinet has recently agreed to that will reduce debt financing barriers for Community Housing Providers.
Unlocking growth
New Zealanders have said that inflation and the economy are in the top three issues facing the country.
The only sustainable way to fix the cost-of-living crisis is to ensure wages grow faster than inflation.
That means growing the economy through more high-paying jobs, increased productivity, greater innovation, and more investment.
The best thing the Government can do to support this is:

one ensuring systems, regulations, and laws are growth-enabling – like the Resource Management Act, and
two getting interest rates lower.

Now, the Government doesn’t set the Official Cash Rate (OCR) – that’s the Reserve Bank’s job – but we can help support lower interest rates through responsible fiscal management, getting the government’s books back in order, and investing in productivity-enhancing infrastructure.
That’s what we have been doing, and since we came into Government the OCR has dropped 175 basis points.
In Budget 2024, we found $5.9 billion on average in annual operating savings and revenue, and $3.1 billion in capital savings and revenue over the forecast period. We reprioritised savings to fund tax relief and cost pressures in Health, and to support other growth-enabling initiatives.
For us, it’s about ensuring every public dollar goes to its best use. Greater value for money means we can provide more and higher quality services that people need.
Budget 2025 will be no different.
Without swerving too far into the Minister of Finance’s lane – I can say that Budget 2025 will focus on four areas:

Lifting economic growth through measures to tackle New Zealand’s long-term productivity challenges,
Using a social investment approach to improve life outcomes for people with high needs,
Keeping tight control of government spending, while funding high-priority commitments and cost pressures, and
Developing a pipeline of long-term infrastructure investments.

In terms of infrastructure, this Government has and will continue to invest a record amount. More than $68 billion in capital is forecast to be spent by central government on infrastructure over the next five years.
For comparison from 2019 to 2023, $50.8 billion in capital was spent on infrastructure.
Infrastructure Investment Summit
However, we know achieving economic growth is not all about government. We can’t unlock New Zealand’s potential without the private sector.
So, we are also focused on attracting long-term private capital, capacity, and capability into our economy.
To do this, earlier this month, the Prime Minister and I hosted the New Zealand Infrastructure Investment Summit in Auckland, which was attended by over 100 world-leading institutional investors, private investment firms, and construction companies.
It was a huge win for our country, and it was good to see some of you there.
During the Summit, we reaffirmed New Zealand’s position as being open for business, and as a safe and strong country to invest in.
Overall, we focused on three areas:

First, New Zealand’s infrastructure vision and upcoming public infrastructure opportunities,
Second, changes to policy, regulation, and legislation to make it easier to do business here, and
Third, other investment opportunities in growth sectors and the Māori economy.

I just want to briefly touch on the first area.
It was great to get investable and developable opportunities in public infrastructure to market, including Christchurch Men’s Prison PPP and the Northland RoNS PPP.
But as Minister for Infrastructure, I think showcasing our long-term infrastructure pipeline made the biggest impression.
This is what will give the private sector confidence to stay here and invest in people and equipment.
Firms just want to know: What’s next.
For example, the Italian tunnelling company Ghella was preparing to leave New Zealand after completing the 16.2-kilometre Central Interceptor tunnel in Auckland. But following presentations on the pipeline and the positivity of the Summit, Ghella have decided to keep their workers, expertise, and tens of millions of dollars of plant, equipment, and associated services here.
Similarly, Plenary, an infrastructure investment firm managing more than $100 billion in assets has also committed to opening an office in New Zealand and to bidding on at least five PPPs over the next five years due to the PPP pipeline.
Many global firms showed an interest in New Zealand.
When Guido Cacciaguerra of Webuild, a multinational construction and civil engineering firm, said “the Italians are coming back”, all I could think was – yes, that’s fantastic.
These guys helped us construct tunnels for the Tongariro hydro scheme in the 1960s.
It’s partnerships like these we need to help us close our infrastructure deficit, and we are committed to keep this momentum going.
Overcoming funding and financing challenges in infrastructure and housing
Now, let’s move onto overcoming funding and financing challenges in infrastructure and housing.
Public infrastructure in New Zealand has historically been primarily funded by taxpayers or ratepayers.
But our heavy reliance on this blunt approach is not serving us well and has led to perverse outcomes including congestion, run-down assets, and the unresponsive provision infrastructure – contributing to unaffordable housing.
The scale of New Zealand’s infrastructure challenge means we cannot continue the status quo – we need to leverage private capital and alternative funding and financing tools.
I want to outline several pieces of work that interact with debt capital markets, including:

The establishment of the National Infrastructure Funding and Financing Ltd– or NIFFCo,
Treasury’s new Funding and Financing Framework,
The refresh of the Government’s PPP policies, and
New funding and financing tools for infrastructure to support growth.

Establishment of NIFFCo
Let’s start with NIFFCo.
On 1 December 2024, we established NIFFCo to carry out three key functions:

Its first function is to act as the Crown’s ‘shopfront’ to facilitate private sector investment and interest in infrastructure – this includes receiving and evaluating any Market Led Proposals, or Unsolicited Bids.
Its second function is to partner with agencies, and in some cases, local government, to provide expertise on projects involving complex procurement, alternative funding mechanisms and private finance – including PPPs and IFF Act transactions.
Its third function is to administer central government infrastructure funds.

When you decide to join us in transforming New Zealand’s infrastructure, you will likely work with NIFFCo.
Overall, I expect NIFFCo will help unlock access to capital for infrastructure and give the private sector a clear and knowledgeable Government-side partner to work with on projects and transactions.
So, if you want to put forward a project, are looking for an opportunity to invest in New Zealand infrastructure or want to partner with Government – NIFFCo is open for business.
NIFFCo will also lift the government’s commercial capability and help us be a better client of infrastructure. It will do this by deploying expertise into agencies that are working on projects involving private finance and alternative funding mechanisms.
This includes, but is not limited to, projects involving traditional loans, equity investments, PPPs, developer levies, beneficiary levies, concessions, or other value uplift mechanisms.
Funding and Financing Framework
Now, let’s talk about Treasury’s new Funding and Financing Framework.
Last year, Treasury released this Framework to broaden the funding base for Crown investments, and to utilise private capital where efficient.
It provides guidance to agencies that they should, in the first instance, seek user or beneficiary pays to fund new infrastructure projects rather than defaulting to taxpayer money.
I expect proposals from sectors like transport, water, energy, housing, and adaptation to demonstrate how user or beneficiary pays can contribute towards funding.
More utilisation of user- and beneficiary-pays will provide greater opportunities for the private sector, including debt capital markets, to participate in public investments.
We want to use the government’s balance sheet more strategically and apply good commercial disciplines when deciding how to financially support a proposal – essentially providing “just enough support” to make proposals feasible.
This will mean we can deliver more projects, and channel support to sectors where it is appropriate for the Crown to be the primary funder, like in health and education.
PPP Framework and other guidance
To match our more commercial Funding and Financing Framework – we also needed to modernise the Crown’s policies and contracts, particularly in the PPP space.
After extensive engagement, in November last year, we released a Blueprint outlining how the government will approach future PPPs.
There are several key elements in the refreshed Blueprint that will foster a more appealing market for all participants:

A more practical approach to risk transfer,
Guidance for agencies on bid cost recognition,
Enhancing the Interactive Tender Process,
Allowing reasonable price validation to occur during the procurement process,
Improving the process for managing claims and dispute resolution, and
Increasing the capability and resourcing of the Crown so that we can be a better client.

Our approach is to be smart about private capital and use it in a way that unlocks investment, enhances incentives for on-time on-budget delivery, and brings more maturity to the design, build, and maintenance of projects.
The new PPP Blueprint sits alongside new Strategic Leasing Guidance, and Guideline for Market Led Proposals.
New infrastructure funding and financing tools to get more houses built
Let’s move onto new infrastructure funding and financing tools to get more houses built.
As Minister of Housing, I am committed to – well, more accurately obsessed with – fixing our housing crisis.
We are not a small country by land mass, but our restrictive planning system, particularly restrictions on the supply of urban land, has created a scorching hot land and housing market driven by artificial scarcity.
We are changing that by allowing our cities to grow up and out. But this won’t be enough on its own. We also need to enable the timely provision of enabling infrastructure.
Put simply, you can’t have housing without water, transport, and community facilities.
However, under current settings councils, infrastructure providers, and developers face significant challenges to fund and finance enabling infrastructure for housing.
We want to move to a future state where funding and financing tools enable the responsive supply of infrastructure where it is commercially viable to build new houses.
This will shift market expectations of future scarcity, bring down the cost of land for new housing, and improve incentives to develop land sooner instead of land banking.
To achieve this future, our overarching approach is that growth pays for growth.
Last month, I announced five changes to our infrastructure funding and financing toolkit to support urban growth.
I won’t cover all of these. But the most relevant to you are changes to the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act (IFF) Act.
The IFF Act allows the creation of a Special Purpose Vehicle to raise finance for projects, where the cost is repaid through a levy charged to properties that benefit from a project over a period of about 20 to 30 years.
We are making several remedial amendments to improve the effectiveness of the Act, particularly for developer-led projects, which will make the process simpler and cheaper.
We are also broadening the Act to enable levies to be charged for major transport projects – a gamechanger in New Zealand for funding city-shaping projects.
These changes will lead to the Act being more effective, efficient, and utilised more often.
I expect, private capital will have far more opportunity to support public infrastructure projects.
Reducing debt financing barriers for CHPs
Now, I would like to move onto actions the Government is taking to reduce debt financing barriers for Community Housing Providers, or CHPs.
As I noted earlier, we are fixing the housing crisis by getting the underlying market fundamentals right. This is the single best thing we can do to make housing more affordable.
At the same time, I recognise that these changes will take some time and that there will always be New Zealanders who need housing support.
This Government believes in social housing, and we believe the CHP sector and private capital have a greater role to play in this space.
Currently, CHPs account for 16% of our social homes – or around 13,000 houses.
My ambition for the social housing system is to create a level playing field between CHPs and Kāinga Ora.
I’m obsessed with building houses across the housing continuum for people who need them. But I am agnostic as to whether those houses are delivered by CHPs or by the government.
I call this competitive neutrality. In some areas and for some people, CHPs are the answer. In other areas, Kāinga Ora is the way to go.
However, we don’t have competitive neutrality right now.
As I am sure you are aware, Kāinga Ora can borrow at a small margin above the Crown’s cost of financing, while CHPs effectively get access to finance at commercial rates.
Update on last year’s announcement
In November last year, I outlined three actions we are taking to help CHPs access borrowing to deliver housing:
The first was making $70 million of Operating Supplement available upfront, unlocking equity CHPs need to raise debt.
The second was making changes to IRRS contracts that makes the revenue stream more attractive for financiers.
And the third was to review the use of leasing to provide social housing.
I’ll just give you a quick update on where those are at.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development are implementing updated criteria for providing Operating Supplement upfront to support delivery of the 1,500 CHP places committed through Budget 2024.
The updated criteria will focus on the basics – strategic alignment, value for money, deliverability, and whether upfront funding is really needed to unlock financing. We are also removing unhelpful eligibility requirements and allowing larger CHPs and projects in urban areas to access upfront funding, where appropriate.
On updates to the IRRS contracts, HUD are making the following changes that will be in place for the contracting of places from late May onwards:

Additional compensation where the Termination for Convenience clause is exercised on Build to Lease projects,
Limiting the ‘step-in’ period to six months, and
Providing a Financier Direct Deed when requested on all Build to Own projects.

These changes will go some way to reducing real and perceived risk to financiers, although I acknowledge that there is more work to do.
On the use of leasing to provide social housing, HUD has moved to an ownership-agnostic approach.
Leasing could be useful where CHPs want to leverage their local expertise in managing social housing, while partnering with developers who could leverage their larger balance sheets to access finance that a small CHP could not.
CHP credit enhancement
Last year, I also announced that the Government would explore a credit enhancement intervention for CHPs, so that they can access suitable debt.
I am pleased to announce today that Cabinet has agreed to establish Crown lending facilities of up to $150 million for the Community Housing Funding Agency (CHFA) to cover:

an interim lending facility to be provided in early April to support CHFA’s immediate financing needs, and
a final liquidity facility.

In addition to this, the Minister of Finance intends to offer a loan guarantee scheme to banks to support their CHP lending.
Both of these interventions align with our market-led approach to fixing our housing crisis, and our transition to more efficient and effective Crown investment.
The liquidity facility and loan guarantee scheme will provide critical support whilst we get the system right.
Let’s start with CHFA –
CHFA was launched by Community Finance in 2024 and aggregates the finance requirements for CHPs around New Zealand, unlocking lower cost finance at scale to support the delivery of social housing.
The CHFA is largest lender to CHPs in New Zealand already indicating they are providing lending solutions highly valued by the sector.
A Crown liquidity facility and credit rating will allow CHFA to lend to more CHPs on a much larger scale.
This will lay the foundation for CHFA to borrow billions of dollars, supporting not just the delivery of social housing, but also CHPs’ broader affordable housing portfolios.
Housing Australia has a similar model – the Affordable Housing Bond Aggregator (AHBA).
Since its inception in 2018, Housing Australia has approved around $4.5 billion in AHBA loans to support the development of more than 18,800 social and affordable homes.
The AHBA loans have helped the sector save an estimated $800 million in interest and fees.
I want this for New Zealand too.
Finally, on the loan guarantee scheme, the Minister of Finance and I have endorsed key design criteria as a starting point for Government’s engagement with banks.
I don’t want to get into too much detail, I will leave that to officials –
But, at a high-level, I expect that this scheme will encourage participation among banks and enable them to pass on meaningfully reduced interest rates and other lending accommodations to CHPs.
Relatedly, last year, the Minister of Finance wrote to the Reserve Bank asking them to look further at the risk weights for lending to CHPs. The Bank intends to consult on potential changes in the middle of 2025. This process may also lead to a meaningful reduction in borrowing costs for CHPs.
Overall, I am really excited about how these changes will support the CHP sector – we heard you, and we hope these changes enable you to grow and do more good work.
Conclusion
Delivering on this Government’s vision for growth and higher living standards will require a strong partnership between government, investors, and the private sector.
Capital markets will play a pivotal role in financing New Zealand’s infrastructure future, and I encourage all of you to explore how your expertise and resources can contribute to this effort.
We are committed to creating a stable, predictable, and investable infrastructure and housing environment – one that supports economic growth, enhances productivity, and improves the quality of life for New Zealanders.
Together, through innovation and partnership, I am confident we can build a more prosperous New Zealand.
I look forward to your insights and collaboration.
Thank you.

MIL OSI New Zealand News –

March 27, 2025
MIL-OSI Security: Utah Man Facing Federal Charges After Allegedly Attempting to Rob a Bank

Source: Office of United States Attorneys

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – A Utah man was indicted by a federal grand jury in Salt Lake City today for a violent crime after he allegedly attempted to rob First Utah Bank.

Christopher Thomas Kirby, 37, of West Valley City, Utah, was initially charged by complaint on March 19, 2025.

According to court documents, on March 19, 2025, at approximately 1:32 p.m., a man, later identified at Kirby, passed a note to a teller at First Utah Bank in West Valley City demanding money. According to responding officers, the note read “this is a robbery I have a bomb on my [sic] that will explode I need 20,000 in bag.” While the teller went into the vault under the guise of getting the money, she hit the silent alarm button and called 911. Officers arrived and took Kirby into custody.

Kirby is charged with one count of attempted bank robbery. His initial appearance on the indictment was March 26, 2025, before a U.S. Magistrate Judge at the Orrin G. Hatch United States District Courthouse in downtown Salt Lake City.

Acting United States Attorney Felice John Viti for the District of Utah made the announcement.

The case is being investigated jointly by an FBI Task Force Officer assigned to the Salt Lake City Violent Crimes squad and the West Valley City Police Department.

Assistant United States Attorney Carlos A. Esqueda of the District of Utah is prosecuting the case.

This case is part of Operation Take Back America, a nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the Department of Justice to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), and protect our communities from the perpetrators of violent crime. Operation Take Back America streamlines efforts and resources from the Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETFs) and Project Safe Neighborhood (PSN).

An indictment is merely an allegation and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

MIL Security OSI –

March 27, 2025

Maturity	Rate	Bidding Volume	Winning Bid Volume
7 days	1.50%	RMB218.5 billion	RMB218.5 billion

Category: Banking

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Updates to this page

Components of the broad monetary aggregate M3

Chart 1

Counterparts of the broad monetary aggregate M3

Chart 2

Claims on euro area residents

Chart 3

Notes:

Financial crime today

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A technology stack to maintain financial system integrity

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Transcript

Components of the broad monetary aggregate M3

Chart 1

Counterparts of the broad monetary aggregate M3

Chart 2

Claims on euro area residents

Chart 3

Notes:

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Effects on inflation

What will be the effect on the federal budget?

What are the political impacts?

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Our study

Sending progress backwards