Business

By Makiko Yamazaki

TOKYO, May 11 (Reuters) – Private-sector members of Japan’s key economic advisory panel urged the Bank of Japan on Monday to be cautious about the risk of funding strains on smaller firms from prolonged tensions in the Middle East.

The proposals, submitted to the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP), effectively call for caution in policy normalisation even as the BOJ has signalled a near-term rate hike on inflation risks stemming from the Iran war.

The council oversees Japan’s fiscal blueprint and long-term economic policies.

“We expect the BOJ to conduct appropriate monetary policy while closely monitoring price developments, including inflation expectations, and taking into account trends in supply and demand for funds across financial markets,” the four private-sector members said in a statement.

While there are no clear signs of financing strains on small and midsize firms right now, the members cited concerns that higher energy costs and supply disruptions could potentially increase funding needs at those companies.

Bracing for prolonged supply shocks, companies have already been scrambling to secure cash as a precaution. According to BOJ data, contracts for commitment lines, which allow companies to borrow from banks within a pre-agreed limit, rose by 2.5 trillion yen ($16 billion) in March, the largest monthly increase since May 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The BOJ kept interest rates steady last month, but dropped strong signals about the chance of a hike as soon as June due to growing concern that higher energy costs could push up inflation, leaving it behind the curve.

Analysts say the slow pace of rate hikes is behind the yen’s persistent weakness, which is turning into a policy nightmare for authorities as it ramps up the cost of imports from crude oil to food.

But higher interest rates could also translate into increased debt servicing burdens particularly at small and midsize firms that tend to rely more heavily on bank lending and often have thinner cash buffers.

The four private-sector members, two of whom are seen as reflationist aides of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, also stressed the importance of close coordination between the BOJ and the government.

In addition, the members recommended that the government use a range of indicators on fiscal conditions rather than relying on a single gauge, moving away from Japan’s long-standing focus on the primary balance as the main measure of fiscal discipline.

($1 = 156.6500 yen)

(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Kim Coghill)

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For years, younger Americans have been more optimistic about the job market than older Americans, even through the depths of the Great Recession. But in an abrupt shift, a new poll released Monday finds young people’s confidence has plummeted over the past two years — while their elders remain more upbeat.

The gap between young and older Americans’ views of the job market now is greater than in any other country among the 141 surveyed, according to the Gallup World Poll. In the United States, 43% of those aged 15-34 believe it’s “a good time” to find a job in the area where they live, well below the 64% of those aged 55 and over who say the same.

Around the world, it’s the opposite. Globally, the median share of younger people who say it’s “a good time” to find work in their local job market is 48%, compared with 38% among older people.

The findings reveal a generational rift in Americans’ views of economic opportunity, with young people feeling increasingly downtrodden about job prospects, while older people still largely think it’s a good time to find work. The schism is likely to continue fueling generational divides in politics, where younger voters have focused on economic issues such as housing costs and have registered less faith in institutions.

“It’s an incredibly new phenomenon,” Benedict Vigers of Gallup said of young Americans’ pessimism. He added that last year was the first time in Gallup’s decades of polling that young Americans were more pessimistic about the job market than their peers in other developed countries. “Has this happened in most other advanced economies? The answer is a resounding no.”

Young people, with fewer physical limitations and family responsibilities — along with an ability to adapt more quickly than older counterparts — normally are more optimistic about their ability to land work.

But the new Gallup analysis finds the U.S. is one of only five countries where younger people are at least 10 points more pessimistic about the availability of work than older ones, joining China, Hong Kong, Norway, Serbia and the United Arab Emirates.

Among the 141 countries surveyed, younger Americans ranked 87th in job market expectations. Even that is striking, Vigers said, because young Americans have long stood out globally for their optimism about job opportunities. Other countries, such as New Zealand and Canada, had lower levels of optimism among the youngest group, but there was no significant generational divide.

The divergence between younger and older Americans happened suddenly. Every U.S. age group registered a drop in confidence in the job market after 2023 — following a post-COVID rebound in 2021 and 2022 — but those 34 and younger saw the largest decline in recent years. The share of younger Americans saying it was “a good time” to find a job plunged by 27 percentage points from 2023 to 2025. That’s comparable to the rate of decline for young people during the 2008 global financial crisis, which also saw a drastic drop in confidence for older Americans. But that hasn’t happened in the last few years. In fact, older Americans’ views have barely dropped.

Older Americans also have a sunnier view of the economic landscape more generally, according to recent AP-NORC polling. About 8 in 10 adults under 35 describe the U.S. economy as very or somewhat poor, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in April. Only about 6 in 10 adults 55 and older say the same, although a majority still see the U.S. economy negatively.

John Della Volpe, a pollster who regularly surveys U.S. youth for the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, said young people are frequently frustrated at how prior generations don’t understand their current economic challenges.

“It’s just another thing that drains their mental health — ‘my parents don’t understand that their pathway at this stage in life that I’m in was so much easier,’” Della Volpe said.

Younger Americans’ job market views now register close to the level they did in 2010, when the country was still deep in the Great Recession. This is not the first Gallup poll to find striking levels of pessimism among young Americans — they also register notably high levels of anxiety about pocketbook issues compared with people their age in other countries.

A separate Gallup survey on perceived U.S. job prospects found pessimism emerging at the end of 2024 and continuing into 2025. That coincides with the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term and the rise of artificial intelligence, which many fear will transform the labor market and eliminate many entry-level jobs.

The new poll finds the most frustrated groups of young people are those who haven’t secured a first job yet, college graduates and young women. But the heightened pessimism spreads across all subgroups of younger Americans, including men and those who haven’t attended college.

“Whoever they are, they are more pessimistic than they were three years ago,” Vigers said of young Americans.

The older Americans who have a less dire view of the job market are themselves more likely to be retired and not looking for work. They’re also more likely to own their own homes, a longtime building block of American prosperity that has increasingly seemed out of reach to younger people.

Day-to-day financial concerns were a key issue in the 2024 election, particularly for younger voters, and Trump improved on his previous performance among this group as he ran on a platform of economic prosperity, fighting inflation and affordability. But like other groups that were important parts of Trump’s 2024 coalition, some younger Americans have soured on the president as inflation continues, recent AP-NORC polling finds.

About 8 in 10 adults under 35 disapprove of how Trump is handling the economy and the cost of living, the recent AP-NORC poll found, compared with about 6 in 10 older adults.

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The Gallup World Poll results are based on telephone interviews conducted among approximately 1,000 U.S. adults from June 14 to July 16, 2025. The margin of error is ±4.4 percentage points for the U.S. sample.

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Associated Press writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.

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By Kanishka Ajmera

May 11 (Reuters) – BofA Global Research and Goldman Sachs are the latest brokerages to revise their U.S. Federal Reserve rate calls to later dates, citing elevated inflation due to high energy prices and growing strength in the labor market.

BofA Global Research now expects the Fed to remain on hold for the rest of this year, with two 25bp cuts in July and September 2027, while Goldman Sachs sees cuts in December 2026 and March 2027 compared to its earlier forecast of a first rate cut in September 2026.

A host of global brokerages have recast their projections for U.S. rate cuts in 2026, split between some easing and no cuts at all, as the 10-week-old Middle East war has pushed energy prices higher and left policymakers cautious about inflation risks.

Data on Friday showed U.S. employment increased more than expected in April and the unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%, reinforcing expectations that the central bank would leave interest rates unchanged for some time.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote that “if the labor market does not weaken sufficiently this year, we would instead expect the FOMC to deliver two final cuts in 2027,” in a note dated May 8.

The Fed held rates steady at its April 29 meeting in an unusually divisive 8–4 vote, the closest since 1992. U.S. inflation remains well above the Fed’s 2% target.

Traders expect the central bank to hold interest rates steady in the 3.50% to 3.75% range until the end of the year.

“We think (incoming Fed Chair) Warsh will push for lower rates, but the data flow precludes cuts for now,” analysts at BofA said in a note dated May 8.

“However, cuts should be in play by next summer, with inflation much closer to target.”

(Reporting by Kanishka Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman and Ronojoy Mazumdar)

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By Rajesh Kumar Singh

CHICAGO, May 11 (Reuters) – The collapse of Spirit Airlines, one of the industry’s fiercest discounters, has given U.S. budget carriers more room to lift fares, but its exit does little to fix the long-running strain on the cheap-flight model.

The Florida-based airline ceased operations on May 2 after creditors failed to agree on a $500 million government bailout. Now, rivals including JetBlue Airways and Frontier Airlines are targeting its markets while they contend with the same surging fuel costs that doomed Spirit.

The challenges that existed for discounters before Spirit ceased operations will not disappear, experts said. The post-pandemic spike in wages, rising aircraft lease costs and maintenance bills have eroded the advantages that defined the low-cost airline industry.

With a customer base of price-sensitive travelers, discounters have a limited ability to pass on higher costs without hurting demand.

“I expect Spirit’s liquidation to be a modest benefit to its low-cost competitors,” said Joe Rohlena, senior director at Fitch Ratings. “But I don’t expect it to be sufficient on its own to overcome other hurdles that the discounters are facing.”

Frontier has reported adjusted per-share losses in eight of the past 13 quarters, while JetBlue has not posted a full-year profit since 2019. Both stocks have lost about three-quarters of their value in the last five years.

Big U.S. airlines such as Delta Air Lines and United Airlines remained profitable in 2025, helped by higher-income travelers.

Frontier’s adjusted earnings before interest and taxes margin plunged from 9.3% in 2019 to negative 12.1% in 2025, while JetBlue’s declined from about 10.0% to negative 3.7%, according to an analysis from TD Cowen. Delta’s EBIT margin fell from 19% to 10%.

ALL SPIRIT SEATS WON’T BE REPLACED

Spirit’s exit is unlikely to trigger a wholesale rebuilding of capacity, executives said, as discounters have been shrinking networks. Carriers instead are likely to cherry-pick Spirit routes to replace seats.

Frontier said the industry has filled about half of Spirit’s earlier May capacity reductions, with Frontier accounting for roughly 40% of that restored capacity. It expects Spirit’s exit to lift revenue per seat by 3% to 5%.

CEO Jimmy Dempsey, in a statement, noted the company’s record adjusted revenue in its most recent quarter, saying it is in a good position to replace lost capacity and emerge “structurally stronger.”

JetBlue is expanding in Spirit’s former Fort Lauderdale stronghold and enticing eligible Spirit flyers with loyalty matches. It expects 130 daily departures by the summer, more than 75% above its 2025 levels.

JetBlue did not respond to a request for comment.

Not all low-cost carriers have suffered. Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air posted a 14.9% adjusted operating margin in the quarter compared with negative margins for JetBlue and Frontier, due to its focus on lesser-served leisure routes with little competition.

HIGH FUEL COSTS HIT PROFITS

Ultimately, low-cost carriers have little room for error if fuel costs remain high. But pricing power is limited, said Andrew Levy, CEO of Houston-based budget carrier Avelo Airlines, making it “a little harder for companies like mine.”

His airline’s fuel bill rose from about $2.56 a gallon in February to roughly $4.71 in April, prompting it to raise base fares by about $20, lift fees and use promotions to sustain demand, he said.

The fuel-price hit could run into tens of millions of dollars for Frontier and well over $100 million for JetBlue this quarter. JetBlue expects to recover only 30% to 40% of higher fuel costs, while Frontier expects to recoup about 35% to 45%.

Frontier paid $268 million for fuel at $2.88 a gallon in the first quarter, and has forecast $4.25 a gallon for the current quarter. Assuming similar consumption, the unrecovered fuel increase would imply a roughly $70 million to $83 million hit to earnings.

Similarly, JetBlue paid $2.96 a gallon in the first quarter, but has forecast a range of $4.13 to $4.28 for the current quarter. Assuming similar consumption, fuel costs would rise from $573 million in the first quarter to a range of $797 million to $826 million.

“The ability to recoup sharply higher fuel prices is the primary consideration at the moment,” said Jarrett Bilous, an analyst at S&P Global.

(Reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago; additional reporting by Doyinsola Oladipo in New York; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh and David Gaffen)

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Neon chief and co-founder Tom Quinn has watched the last six Palme d’Or ceremonies from the same spot: gathered with colleagues around a laptop on the breakfast tables at his Cannes hotel.

“I think we upgraded a couple years ago and connected the computer to a TV,” Quinn says. “I wouldn’t want to do it any different.”

Quinn has good reason to keep any good luck charm. In all six of those awards ceremonies, Neon has won the Palme, the prestigious top honor of the Cannes Film Festival. It’s an unparalleled streak for one of the most sought-after prizes in movies, second only to the best picture Oscar. No other studio has ever come close to anything like it.

“No one ever believes it, but we’ve never gone to Cannes thinking we were going to win the Palme d’Or,” Quinn says. “It’s been a surprise every single year.”

When the 79th Cannes Film Festival gets underway Tuesday, Neon — a 60-person company founded in 2017 — rides in as an unlikely heavyweight. It’s backing more than a quarter of the 22 films in competition for the Palme. Its odds of making it seven in a row are good. Some of the most hotly anticipated titles — including Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden,” Korean auteur Na Hong-jin’s “Hope” and James Gray’s “Paper Tiger” — are Neon’s.

Altogether, the indie distributor has nine films in Cannes. All, Quinn notes, they signed on for before the films’ Cannes invite.

“I hate to break it to everyone but don’t hate us for our good taste,” says Quinn. “Who’s chasing who here? Thierry (Frémaux, Cannes artistic director) is going to make up his own mind and we’re going to make up our own mind. It just so happens that we agree.”

When Frémaux announced the lineup of this year’s festival, he lamented the almost nonexistent presence of Hollywood’s major studios. “When the studios are less present in Cannes, they are less present full stop,” he said.

While studio releases like Warner Bros.’ “One Battle After Another” and Universal’s upcoming “The Odyssey” can be major Oscar players, a wide swath of the most original movies of the past decade have been released by specialty labels like Neon and A24.

Both have risen to prominence at international film festivals like Cannes and at the Oscars by focusing on filmmakers, not IP.

“It’s not rocket science and there’s nothing secret about it,” says Quinn. “It’s pursuing the directors and films we want to be a part of.”

Quinn had worked at Samuel Goldwyn Films and Magnolia Pictures before, in 2011, launching Radius, a boutique label with Harvey Weinstein. Though, at Neon, Quinn expected A24 to be his chief competition, he found himself often bidding against Netflix, on movies like Neon’s first acquisition, the Margot Robbie-led “I, Tonya” and Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.”

“We did not outbid them but we out-passioned them,” says Quinn.

Neon does produce films (like the upcoming “I Love Boosters”), but it largely sticks to distributing movies in North America, often with awards campaigns attached to their releases. It has boarded its Palme d’Or winners — “It Was Just an Accident,” “Anora,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Triangle of Sadness,” “Titane” and “Parasite” — in a variety of ways.

Some were acquired in Cannes. Some, like “Parasite,” Neon boarded at the script stage. Quinn signed up for the body horror freak-out “Titane” even though the script made no sense to him. He just believed in its writer-director Julia Ducournau. In that way, Neon is the ultimate anti-algorithm studio.

And yet faith in filmmakers and good taste have carried Neon to the greatest heights of Hollywood. Both “Parasite” and “Anora” won best picture at the Academy Awards after winning the Palme. Neon nearly swept the best international Oscar category last March, with four of the five nominees: the winning “Sentimental Value,” “Sirāt,” “The Secret Agent” and “It Was Just an Accident.”

“Parasite” famously became the first non-English-language film to win best picture — a triumph for the “1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles,” as Bong Joon Ho noted in his acceptance speech.

Neon, majority owned by Dan Friedkin’s 30West, is far from competing with studio blockbusters at the box office. (Its biggest ticket seller thus far was Osgood Perkins’ “Longlegs,” with $75 million.) But Neon has proved there’s a larger audience than many would have expected for daring, often international cinema.

They are, Quinn says, “agnostic” about where its titles come from, and the company’s small size means they can give each movie a bespoke rollout. And by the end of the year, Neon will gather its releases into a DVD box set, even though many voters don’t have DVD players anymore.

“Audiences are desperate, desperate for creativity,” Quinn says. “Films are not packaged goods. The idea that this art form that is so subjective is treated as a P & L (profit and loss statement), I don’t know how you can make good creative decisions when you’re dealing with billions of debt looming at your door.”

Neon’s slate in Cannes is typically wide-ranging. Also up for the Palme is Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu’s “Fjord,” with Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve; Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Sheep in the Box”; and “The Unknown,” by “Anatomy of a Fall” cowriter Arthur Harari. It also has Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Her Private Hell”; Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri’s “Clarissa” and William and David Greaves’ already lauded documentary, “Once Upon a Time in Harlem.”

Some of the movies that escaped Neon’s grasp still irk Quinn. He missed out on Kore-eda’s “Shoplifters,” the Palme winner in 2018.

“The idea that we would have won seven Palmes in a row is completely outlandish,” Quinn says. “But that’s a huge regret.”

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BERLIN, May 11 (Reuters) – Volkswagen’s U.S. brand Scout was designed from the start to pursue a potential stock market listing or to allow strategic investors to take a stake, its CEO Scott Keogh told daily Handelsblatt, as it explores new funding options.

• Scout was deliberately set up as a stand-alone entity, Keogh said. Outside capital was “an option that is on the table”, Keogh said in the interview with the German business newspaper

• Keogh pointed to U.S. investment funds focused on what he called the country’s “industrial renaissance”, without naming specific investors

• Volkswagen wants to use Scout to increase its small U.S. market share, but internal doubts have grown over launching a new electric unit at a time of weakening demand, Handelsblatt said

• Keogh said that the bet on robust trucks and SUVs with so‑called range extenders had paid off, adding that 87% of more than 170,000 pre-orders were for that drive type, according to the paper

• Production of a new Audi model on Scout’s flexible platform was also possible, Keogh told the paper

(Reporting by Kirsti KnolleEditing by Ludwig Burger)

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By Jody Godoy

May 11 (Reuters) – The Trump administration should screen cutting-edge artificial intelligence models for security threats before they are publicly released and withhold lucrative government contracts from those that fail review, an advocacy group told U.S. officials on Monday.

The White House is grappling with the implications of Anthropic’s Mythos, which could make complex cyberattacks easier and quicker to execute, posing national security risks. 

Americans for Responsible Innovation urged the Trump administration to develop methods to vet upcoming frontier models from larger developers for cyberattack and weapons development capabilities. 

Companies should have to pass the review to be eligible for government contracts, the group said in a letter to administration officials.

The U.S. Center ‌for AI Standards and Innovation already reviews some AI models through voluntary agreements with OpenAI, Anthropic, and, more recently, Google, Microsoft and xAI. 

CAISI should take the lead on developing mandatory requirements, and Congress should create a permanent enforcement office within the U.S. Department of Commerce to enforce the requirements, the group said.

The proposed requirements would apply to companies that spend $100 million or more a year on compute to train frontier models, or that make at least $500 million in revenue annually from AI products and services.

California has a similar threshold for safety reporting requirements enacted last year. 

(Reporting by Jody Godoy in New YorkEditing by Rod Nickel)

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Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, said Sunday its first quarter profit jumped 25% as it shifted some oil exports to a pipeline to avoid the Strait of Hormuz, which has been disrupted by the Iran war.

Aramco President and CEO Amin Nasser said the company’s East-West Pipeline, which runs across Saudi Arabia from its Eastern oil fields to the Red Sea, is now operating at its maximum capacity of 7 million barrels of oil per day. Nasser said the pipeline is “helping to mitigate the impact of a global energy shock and providing relief to customers.”

Still, that’s only a fraction of Aramco’s typical production. Aramco produced 11.1 million barrels of oil per day in the fourth quarter of 2025, for example.

Before the war, 20% of the world’s traded oil typically flowed through the strait every day, as well as large supplies of natural gas, fertilizer and other petroleum products. Iran effectively seized control of the critical waterway after the U.S. and Israel attacked it on Feb. 28. A U.S. naval blockade imposed last month also complicates its use.

“Recent events have clearly demonstrated the vital contribution of oil and gas to energy security and the global economy, and are a stark reminder that reliable energy supply is critical,” Nasser said in a statement. “Despite these headwinds, Aramco remains focused on its strategic priorities and is leveraging both its domestic infrastructure and its global network to navigate disruption.”

Dhahran, Saudi Arabia-based Aramco reported a profit of $32.5 billion for the quarter ending March 31, up 25% from the same period a year ago.

On Friday, the price for a barrel of Brent crude oil rose 1.2% to settle at $101.29 following an exchange of fire with U.S. forces that disabled two Iranian oil tankers. That’s below its heights above $119 during the war, but it’s still much more expensive than its roughly $70 level from late February before the fighting began.

State-owned Aramco reported a 12% decline in annual profits in 2025.

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MILAN, May 10 (Reuters) – Italian fashion house Giorgio Armani is considering selling a 15% stake in three equal parts following the designer’s death, potentially bringing in three buyers he had selected as shareholders, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

Armani, who died at 91 last September, had named French luxury group LVMH and two commercial partners–beauty products maker L’Oreal and EssilorLuxottica–as preferred buyers for the company.

Based on the founder’s will, the sale of an initial 15% stake in the group must take place within 12-18 months of his death.

Italian daily la Repubblica reported, without citing sources, that Armani CEO Giuseppe Marsocci is preparing a business plan as he moves to appoint two advisers to oversee the sale.

The advisers would then share Marsocci’s five-year business plan with potential investors.

Ahead of the formal launch of the process, the group was considering splitting the 15% stake in three parts, the paper said, adding this would help keep all three buyers engaged in the initial phase.

A representative for Armani said the group had no comment on the report.

(Reporting by Valentina ZaEditing by Bernadette Baum)

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LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Tired of gasoline shortages and skyrocketing prices, Simón Huanca took matters into his own hands.

The 53-year-old Indigenous artisan imported a Chinese electric car to navigate El Alto, Bolivia’s highest city, using the vehicle to transport both his family and the alpaca wool for his weaving workshop.

He also installed a dedicated charger in his own garage, mainly for convenience, but also because there are only three public charging stations serving the vast metropolitan area of El Alto and neighboring La Paz, home to more than 1.6 million people.

“Since last year, I’ve been trying to get an electric car to save on costs,” Huanca said while driving his electric off-road vehicle through a working-class neighborhood.

Huanca is one of a small but growing number of Bolivians abandoning their fossil fuel-powered cars for electric vehicles as the South American country grapples with fuel shortages and a presidential decree that ended long-standing fuel subsidies, effectively doubling the cost of gasoline.

Bolivia’s energy supply disruptions worsened in 2023 under then President Luis Arce, who maintained a state subsidy under which the country purchased fuel at international prices and sold it at half its value on the domestic market.

But Bolivia — which imports 80% of the diesel and 55% of the gasoline it consumes — gradually ran out of foreign currency to purchase fuel, and the subsidy represented an annual drain of more than $2 billion on the state.

Long lines of vehicles waiting at gas stations became a common sight.

In December — one month after taking office — President Rodrigo Paz repealed the subsidy, and energy prices nearly doubled, hitting Bolivians hard.

A few weeks later, transport operators complained that the poor quality of the gasoline was damaging their vehicles. The government alleged sabotage, and Paz said that the gasoline distributed by state-owned oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos was contaminated with gum and manganese that had remained in the storage tanks since the Arce administration.

The “junk gasoline” scandal triggered a wave of strikes and protests among transportation workers and the resignations of two high-ranking officials at the state-owned oil company.

The last straw for many Bolivians was the Iran war. Faced with the possibility of yet another rise in fuel prices, some traded in their gasoline-powered cars for electric vehicles.

“The investment exceeds $36,000, but I no longer waste valuable working hours searching for fuel or managing vehicle repairs,” said Ever Vera, a 54-year-old lawyer.

The number of electric vehicles in Bolivia climbed from 500 to 3,352 in the last five years, according to the Single Registry for Tax Administration, which compiles data on tax-paying vehicles. The most significant surge was recorded over the last two years, coinciding with the fuel crisis. They still only make up a tiny fraction of the estimated 2.6 million vehicles in the country of almost 12 million people.

The vast majority of these vehicles were imported from China, followed by the United States.

“The growth is exponential,” said Freddy Koch, an electromobility expert with the independent nonprofit organization Swisscontact. He noted that while these vehicles are being purchased by more affluent buyers, he expects them to gain broader appeal and predicts that the total number of electric vehicles could triple in as little as two to three years.

Paz also eliminated import tariffs on all types of automobiles, a move that has multiplied the number of importers competing with one another to bring these vehicles into Bolivia at a lower cost.

The rising number of electric vehicles has created new opportunities for 38-year-old electrician Marcelo Laura. A month ago, he identified a lucrative niche in the installation of residential and commercial charging stations.

“There aren’t many public charging stations,” he said. “A year ago, I thought it was practically impossible to think that people would actually be bringing in electric cars.”

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

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