The Irish Independent reports that thousands of passengers at Dublin Airport faced minor delays after seven air traffic controllers rang in sick yesterday -- just hours before their union goes to the Labour Court.

Talks begin this morning aimed at averting Thursday's work stoppage that would effectively shut down Irish airspace for 24 hours.

Only eight of 15 air traffic controllers rostered to work showed up for duty yesterday -- leading to restrictions on planes taking off and landing and subsequent flight delays.

"Due to unusually high levels of illness among air traffic controllers and the unwillingness of other controllers to cover those absences, the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA), in the interest of safety, has had to restrict services operating into and out of Dublin Airport today. Delays can be expected throughout the day as a result,"the IAA said yesterday.

No flights were cancelled as a result but passengers were told they could expect delays of up to 90 minutes yesterday, although in most cases delays were less than 10 minutes, said a spokeswoman for Dublin Airport Authority.

Restriction

"There's been no substantial impact on our operations,"she said. However, a "flow restriction" was put in place during the peak times of 7pm and 9pm last night leading to further delays.

Despite the dispute between the IAA and air traffic controllers who are members of the IMPACT trade union, neither side said the inordinate number of illnesses yesterday was the result of 'blue flu'.

"We have no reason to believe it's not genuine,"the IAA said.

IMPACT spokesman Niall Shanahan also denied that the spate of illnesses was linked to the dispute, noting "the notion of blue flu would be counterproductive to our talks at the Labour Court".

However, the union will be arguing today that serious shortages of air traffic controllers is the central issue behind the dispute -- an issue the IAA denies is a problem.

IMPACT will tell the court that what it believes is the IAA's "heavy reliance on overtime" should not be part of a long-term staffing solution.

The talks, chaired by Kevin Duffy, are aimed at averting what the union says will be an official overtime ban by controllers, starting tomorrow and culminating in a 24-hour work stoppage on Thursday

This would ground all flights at the country's three main airports. IMPACT says one of its demands is a complete ban on overtime in favour of a standby call-in scheme.

The Irish Independent also reports that oil and Gas will this week reveal details of its gas development plans and is expected to confirm industry speculation that it will lead the bidding for the Irish gas business of US company Marathon.

The operator of the Kinsale Head and Ballycotton gas fields, Marathon said last week that a review of its business could lead to a decision to sell its interests in this country, stating that if it dopes decide to sell a deal could be completed later this year.

Apart from the Kinsale Head field assets, Marathon holds an 18.5pc stake in the Corrib field and a similar stake in two offshore exploration licences, the frontier license 3/94 to the north of Corrib and the deepwater license 1/05, located south of Corrib.

While company chief Paul Griffiths refused to comment on reports of his firms interest in the Marathon assets, he has made no secret of his ambitious plans to build a viable gas business in the Celtic Sea.

Over the past two years Island has drilled four successful wells in the Celtic Sea area, a programme which culminated in the award to consultants Pegasus International of a contract to study options for the development of its Old Head of Kinsale and Schull gas fields.

Island said it is also looking at the potential to use one of its three gas fields, possibly the West Seven Heads field, as a gas storage facility or as a potential, short-term, national strategic gas reserve.

Access to Marathon's Celtic Sea gas infrastructure is key to the company's ambition to build a viable gas business. Buying those assets, preferably as part of a joint venture or consortium, would ensure a continuance of Marathon's policy of allowing third-party access to its infrastructure.

Unusual

Kinsale and the associated gas infrastructure is 100pc owned by Marathon, an unusual situation for the offshore industry, where consortiums are the norm. By forming a consortium to effect any deal, Island also spreads the risk, a major factor for a small exploration company.

It would also involve a departure from the current Island business model, a slimmed down venture with only a handful of employees. Taking on the Marathon business would see a expansion of this workforce as it would involve taking on Marathon's 61 employees.

With Marathon's Kinsale field nearing the end of its commercial life, the US company has prepared part of the reservoir for use as a storage facility. Gas can be injected into the reservoir at periods of low demand and produced when required.

Among the potential consortium or joint venture partners is the state-owned gas company, Bord Gais, which has already expressed an interest in buying the Marathon assets.

Joining a consortium would also overcome the state company's lack of experience in the offshore exploration and development industry as it could rely on partner expertise.

Russian outfit Gazprom is another potential bidder, having already stated that it would consider acquisitions in the Irish energy sector. Marathon's Corrib partners, Shell and Statoil are other potential bidders

Island believes it can bring two of its gas fields onstream during 2009 and consultants Pegasus have started working on possible front-end engineering studies to establish how gas from the fields should be produced.

An application for a Petroleum Lease covering the two gas fields, together with a plan of development, will be submitted to the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources for approval.

The Irish Times reports that a businessman who worked as a sales manager in Kendar, the property business owned by missing solicitor Michael Lynn, has received a payment in recent weeks into his Dublin bank account through a Panamanian company.

Anthony Cantwell, a manager in Mr Lynn's property company, Kendar Holdings, was working in the company's offices in Dublin when the business ceased trading last autumn following the closure of Mr Lynn's law practice and the freezing of his assets and bank accounts by the High Court.

Mr Cantwell received the payment of €3,395 on January 30th through an account in AIB on Grafton Street in Dublin, according to bank records. The payment was made through an entity called Trade Exim Group SA, which shares an address in the Global Plaza Tower in Panama City with a money transfer company called Knight Finance. The company says on its website that its priority is "to maintain confidentiality of our clients. As no one else, we understand the importance of bank secrecy."

Mr Lynn's assets and accounts as well as those of his property development company, Kendar Holdings, were frozen on October 15th last year by the High Court amid concerns about his property dealings and borrowings from Irish financial institutions. The Law Society had found a substantial deficit in the client account of Mr Lynn's practice and a free flow of funds between his practice and property business.

Mr Cantwell received payments totalling more than €6,200 from Kendar in September and early October, according to bank records. He received two payments totalling €8,000 from Kendar Portugal in the month following the freezing of the accounts of the parent company, Kendar Holdings, in Dublin. He received no further payments until the money transfer from the Panamanian company last month.

An Irish mobile phone previously used by Mr Cantwell has been disconnected. He could not be reached for comment. It was reported in December that Mr Cantwell was working on Kendar's operations in eastern Europe. The company was developing property in Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria, and was planning to expand its operations into Poland and Romania when Mr Lynn's assets were frozen.

A large volume of Kendar documents, seen by The Irish Times, reveals further detail on the scale of Mr Lynn's property interests. One document shows that, in early 2007, Mr Lynn was planning to buy properties in Croatia, Brazil, Canada and the Dominican Republic. It is not clear if he completed these purchases as he did not list properties in these countries in an affidavit he filed with the High Court on November 19th last year.

In the affidavit, he listed 148 properties in nine countries, including Portugal, Hungary, Slovakia, China and the US. The affidavit is the only detailed document he filed in the various cases against him before he failed to appear for two days of cross-examination in the High Court in December. He has not been seen in Ireland since.

Accountant Nuno Paulino, who is now in charge of Kendar's property development project in the village of Cabanas on the Algarve, said he saw Mr Lynn in Portugal last month.

According to the Kendar document, Mr Lynn was due to pay deposits on two properties in the Black Mountain Lodge resort in Alberta, Canada, worth €284,895 and €239,444. He was also due to complete the purchase of six properties worth more than €2 million in Croatia in 2009. A property in the Dominican Republic valued at €856,437 is also listed on the document.

A seaside property and four plots of land in Brazil, with purchase prices of €361,518 and €325,366 respectively, were also listed in the document but no dates of sale completion were included. Kendar said in another document, a draft business plan written in late 2006, that the company may develop a property speculation arm in Brazil because it was a Portuguese-speaking country and the company was already doing business in Portugal. "Initial meetings have already taken place and a follow-up visit is planned for first quatter [ sic]," said the company in the draft plan.

In a proposal written by Kendar seeking bank financing of €28 million for the second phase of its project in Cabanas, the company said Mr Lynn would "like to live in Portugal permanently as he sees Portugal as one of the most important areas for his future business expansion". The proposal estimated Mr Lynn's net worth at €38 million and estimated that Kendar's projects in Portugal, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Poland would have a final sales value of €297.7 million.

The company said the first phase of the Cabanas project had sales of €14.6 million and estimated the second phase would bring in €52 million. Portuguese bank Millennium BCP agreed to provide a loan of €26 million to Kendar last summer.

Another Kendar document shows that the company had received €929,000 from investors in the second phase of the Cabanas project as of December 15th, 2006. A separate document shows that Kendar received €4.1 million from investors for properties in Hungary.

According to the 2006 draft business plan, Kendar said one of its strengths was that it had"a visionary owner [Mr Lynn] who is prepared to take bold decisions and to act on the facts presented to him".

The Irish Times also reports that workers at Bombardier's Belfast plant may lose out despite the aircraft manufacturer's decision to proceed with its CSeries regional jet later this year.

The Canadian group has revived plans for the 110-130 seat jet following interest from Qatar Airways, Lufthansa and International Lease Finance, the world's largest aircraft leasing firm. It is also in discussions with US airlines that will soon need to replace large fleets of ageing MD-80 and DC-9 aircraft, including Northwest and Delta, which are in merger talks.

Pierre Beaudoin, chief operating officer of Bombardier's aerospace unit, has said he wants firm orders for 50-100 planes before deciding to build the CSeries.

However, Mr Beaudoin also cast doubt on whether production of the aircraft's wings would go, as originally intended, to the group's Belfast plant, the former Shorts aircraft operation. Bombardier said it was reviewing an earlier decision to build the aircraft's wings at its plant in Belfast and the rest of the plane in Montreal.

The relative strength of the Canadian dollar and sterling may prompt Bombardier to switch to potentially cheaper US sites, Mr Beaudoin said. "We have to be competitive and make the best choice for Bombardier shareholders," he said.

Building in the US would give Bombardier a "natural hedge" because the planes are priced in US dollars. The CSeries, which could enter service in 2013, would be as much as 20 per cent more fuel-efficient than current aircraft of similar size, Bombardier said.

With Airbus and Boeing focused on developing much larger aircraft over the next few years, Bombardier expressed confidence that the CSeries would capture half of the projected market in 100-149-seat aircraft over the next 20 years - around 5,900 aircraft, which would see the company producing around 220 of the jets a year. Bombardier expects to split the approximate C$3.2 billion (€2.1 billion) cost of the project equally between Bombardier, its suppliers and the Canadian and British governments.

Mr Beaudoin said the amount provided by the UK and Canadian governments "will be in line with what ends up being done in those countries".

The Irish Examiner reports that Aer Lingus and SIPTU last night hammered out a last-minute agreement to stop strike action grounding 20,000 passengers today.

However, 80,000 more face travel chaos after a fresh war of words last night erupted between air traffic controllers and the Irish Aviation Authority just hours before they meet in the Labour Court.

Aer Lingus and SIPTU, which represents ground crew, agreed a deal which will see the airline saving €9.9 million of the €10.2m it hoped to secure from ground staff in shift and overtime arrangements under its Programme for Continuous Improvement cost-cutting agenda.

The union will ballot its members on the agreement over the next two weeks but as long as a few remaining loose ends do not spiral out of control, it looks almost certain they will vote in favour.

At various times during the weekend there were occasions when the talks looked likely to break down just as they have throughout the past 14 months and passengers did not know until the last minute whether their flights would take off today.

However, Kevin Foley of the Labour Relations Commission appeared to find detente where others failed and both sides emerged to say that a deal had been brokered shortly before 9pm.

Meanwhile, such bonhomie has not materialised between air traffic controllers and the Irish Aviation Authority.

If the Labour Court fails to find common ground over staff shortages this morning, strike action will ground 80,000 passengers on Thursday.

The controllers’ union IMPACT will today present a 14-page list of demands that must, it maintains, be substantially addressed by the authority to stop all three of the country’s main airports grinding to a halt.

While the document from IMPACT is detailed, its requirements from the authority are relatively straightforward — start an immediate and concerted recruitment campaign to address the current shortage of controllers and implement an agreed system of overtime and standby in the interim.

IMPACT said that if 30 controllers were added to the system immediately it would address the short-term need.

IMPACT has already announced a ban on all overtime by controllers from tomorrow.

However, last night the authority issued a strongly worded statement in which it said there is no shortage of controllers and accusing the union of only being interested in financial gain for its existing members.

It said in talks to date “90%” had been about demands for overtime, while call-in rates and staff shortages had accounted for a mere 10%.

The Financial Times reports that freight derivative volumes have soared this year as banks and hedge funds have turned to a market that has not been affected by the credit crunch or economic slowdown.

Freight forward contracts, which allow shipowners and operators to lock in prices in advance, grew 150 per cent over the past year as market volatility and a sharp rise in shipping costs created opportunities for speculation and made hedging vital.

Michael Gaylard, strategic director at the Freight Investor Services, one of the market's leading brokers, said:"Banks and hedge funds have helped drive this market as they now make up a large slice of the volumes."

Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Macquarie Bank, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and hedge funds GMI and Akuila Okeanos have set up freight derivatives desks in the past year.

Interest in the field has grown as the credit crisis has in effect closed other markets, such as asset-backed securities, forcing banks and funds to look for other ways to make profits.

Citigroup, which established its desk in the summer around the height of the credit crisis, said demand from shipowners and investors wanting to use the product for speculation and hedging was a big factor behind its decision to enter the market.

According to the Freight Investor Services, the market is now worth $125bn, up from $50bn at the same time in 2007. Banks and hedge funds account for 40 per cent of this value compared with only 15 per cent in the middle of last year.

The price of renting a ship to transport raw materials such as iron ore or coal has risen from $30,000 a day in 2004 to more than $100,000 today, although costs have fallen from the highs seen in November.

Costs have been driven higher by demand for ships from emerging markets, such as China and India, which need to import raw materials to drive their expanding economies.

The market has also become more volatile as bad weather in Asia and Australia has closed ports, while energy shortages in South Africa and infrastructure problems in Russia have led to shipping delays, creating uncertainty over future prices.

Bankers and brokers predict the derivatives market will continue expanding at a fast pace, with some forecasting that it will grow larger than the underlying physical market in freight, which is worth $150bn, by the end of the year.

The FT also reports that US exchanges such as Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange are becoming a more popular venue for technology companies planning to float, with Chinese companies in particular choosing to list there instead of in London.

The latest figures for IPOs indicate that the Nasdaq and NYSE strategy of opening representative offices in China is paying off.

The London Stock Exchange and the Alternative Investment Market had just 14 technology floats in 2007 compared with 24 the previous year, according to new research published on Monday by Ernst & Young.

Meanwhile, the number of technology floats on Nasdaq and NYSE rose to 55 from 34 in 2006. Chinese technology companies account for much of the difference.

London and New Yorkexchanges each hosted three Chinese technology floats in 2006. In 2007, however, there were 11 Chinese technology initial public offerings on Nasdaq and NYSE but none in London.

The LSE announced plans last month to open a Beijing office.

China has seen rapid growth in the number of technology companies seeking public listings, from 19 in 2006 to 35 in 2007, with aggregate value rising $1.1bn to almost $4.4bn. There is a perception of greater interest in technology businesses in the US than in the UK.

"There is a deeper pool of capital for technology in the US and more experience of technology companies,"said one London banker. "UK institutions tend to be stodgy and conservative on tech investments."

John Hughman, senior technology analyst at Ernst & Young, said: "US investors are more willing to accept the risk of a Chinese technology IPO than UK investors."

Domestic UK technology companies also appear to have become more reluctant to enter the market. Only nine such businesses floated in 2007 compared with 14 the previous year. The aggregate value of the floats fell more than 78 per cent to $424.8m, from nearly $2bn the previous year. A number of planned UK floats were pulled in the second half of last year, partly due to market volatility. This was in contrast to the US, where the number of technology IPOs increased to 41, with an aggregate value of $5.8bn in 2007, compared with 29, with a combined value of $4.15bn, the previous year.

The New York Times reports that HSH Nordbank, a state-controlled German bank, said Sunday that it planned to sue the Swiss bank UBSover a portfolio of complex debt products, which it contends that UBS improperly sold and mismanaged.

HSH Nordbank, based in Hamburg, said it wanted to recover “significant losses” from a $500 million portfolio of collateralized debt obligations linked to the American mortgage market, which the German bank bought from UBS in 2002. HSH said it would file the claim against UBS by the end of February in New York, under whose state laws the original deal was fashioned. A UBS spokesman, Dominik von Arx, declined to comment.

Some investors have started to file legal claims against financial institutions in an effort to recover losses from the subprime mortgage crisis. Massachusetts’s top securities regulator, for example, accused Merrill Lynch this month of defrauding the city of Springfield with investments linked to subprime mortgages.

Large financial services firms sold billions of dollars’ worth of complex debt products, which are now losing value.

“Our claims against UBS will show that the manner in which the investments were sold to HSH Nordbank and UBS’s subsequent management of the assets were clearly contrary to our interests,” said Bernhard Blohm, head of communications at HSH Nordbank.

HSH Nordbank claims that the investment was supposed to be “conservatively managed by UBS according to prudent investment objectives” but that UBS “appears to have condoned actions which benefited only itself, at the expense of its clients.”

The bank said it had repeatedly tried to speak to UBS’s senior management about its concerns but was left with no option but to start legal proceedings.

Banks have rarely compensated clients for losses on their investments, because of concern about setting off a wave of similar claims or lawsuits.

Over the last decade, German banks like HSH Nordbank piled on complex debt products to diversify their holdings and bolster income at a time when revenue growth in their home market was slowing.

The products were initially deemed to be low in risk by ratings agencies, but their ratings changed when it appeared last year that many of them were linked to subprime loans in the United States that have gone bad.

UBS senior managers will face shareholders this week at an extraordinary meeting in Switzerland to discuss record write-downs at the bank because of its exposure to the global credit crisis through C.D.O.’s and other securities.

Also on the agenda is the sale of a stake in the bank to sovereign funds in Singapore and the Middle East. UBS was among the financial institutions hardest hit by the credit crisis; it has so far written down more than $18 billion.

But HSH Nordbank has been affected by the recent market turmoil beyond the portfolio it bought from UBS. This month, it provided financing to cover its 3.3 billion euro ($4.8 billion) structured investment vehicle, an investment instrument that uses short-term debt to invest in higher-yielding securities, to prevent a fire sale of the assets.

HSH Nordbank is the result of the merger in 2003 of Hamburgische Landesbank and Landesbank Schleswig-Holstein. It has 4,600 employees and total assets of 205 billion euros ($304 billion), according to its Web site. The city of Hamburg is its largest shareholder, owning 35.8 percent of the bank.

The NYT in a report from Amman, the capital of Jordan, says that even as it enriches Arab rulers, the recent oil-price boom is helping to fuel an extraordinary rise in the cost of food and other basic goods that is squeezing this region’s middle class and setting off strikes, demonstrations and occasional riots from Moroccoto the Persian Gulf.

Here in Jordan, the cost of maintaining fuel subsidies amid the surge in prices forced the government to remove almost all the subsidies this month, sending the price of some fuels up 76 percent overnight. In a devastating domino effect, the cost of basic foods like eggs, potatoes and cucumbers doubled or more.

In Saudi Arabia, where inflation had been virtually zero for a decade, it recently reached an official level of 6.5 percent, though unofficial estimates put it much higher. Public protests and boycotts have followed, and 19 prominent clerics posted an unusual statement on the Internet in December warning of a crisis that would cause “theft, cheating, armed robbery and resentment between rich and poor.”

The inflation has many causes, from rising global demand for commodities to the monetary constraints of currencies pegged to the weakening American dollar. But one cause is the skyrocketing price of oil itself, which has quadrupled since 2002. It is helping push many ordinary people toward poverty even as it stimulates a new surge of economic growth in the gulf.

“Now we have to choose: we either eat or stay warm. We can’t do both,” said Abdul Rahman Abdul Raheem, who works at a clothing shop in a mall in Amman and once dreamed of sending his children to private school. “We’re not really middle class anymore; we’re at the poverty level.”

Some governments have tried to soften the impact of high prices by increasing wages or subsidies on foods. Jordan, for instance, has raised the wages of public-sector employees earning less than 300 dinars ($423) a month by 50 dinars ($70). For those earning more than 300 dinars, the raise was 45 dinars, or $64. But that compensates for only a fraction of the price increases, and most people who work in the private sector get no such relief.

The fact that the inflation is coinciding with new oil wealth has fed perceptions of corruption and economic injustice, some analysts say.

“About two-thirds of Jordanians now believe there is widespread corruption in the public and private sector,”said Mohammed al-Masri, the public opinion director at the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. “The middle class is less and less able to afford what they used to, and more and more suspicious.”

In a few places the price increases have led to violence. In Yemen, prices for bread and other foods have nearly doubled in the past four months, setting off a string of demonstrations and riots in which at least a dozen people were killed. In Morocco, 34 people were sentenced to prison on Wednesday for participating in riots over food prices, the Moroccan state news service reported. Even tightly controlled Jordan has had nonviolent demonstrations and strikes.

Inflation was also a factor — often overlooked — in some recent clashes that were seen as political or sectarian. A confrontation in Beirut between Lebanese Army soldiers and a group of Shiite protesters that left seven people dead started with demonstrations over power cuts and rising bread prices.

In Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, inflation is in the double digits, and foreign workers, who constitute a vast majority of the work force, have gone on strike in recent months because of the declining purchasing power of the money they send home. The workers are paid in currencies that are pegged to the dollar, and the value of their salaries — translated into Indian rupees and other currencies — has dropped significantly.

The Middle East’s heavy reliance on food imports has made it especially vulnerable to the global rise in commodity prices over the past year, said George T. Abed, the former governor of the Palestine Monetary Authority and a director at the Institute of International Finance, an organization based in Washington.

Corruption, inefficiency and monopolistic economies worsen the impact, as government officials or business owners artificially inflate prices or take a cut of such increases.

“For many basic products, we don’t have free market prices, we have monopoly prices,”said Samer Tawil, a former minister of national economy in Jordan. “Oil, cement, rice, meat, sugar: these are all imported almost exclusively by one importer each here. Corruption is one thing when it’s about building a road, but when it affects my food, that’s different.”

In the oil-producing gulf countries, governments that are flush with oil money can soften the blow by spending more. The United Arab Emirates increased the salaries of public sector employees by 70 percent this month; Oman raised them 43 percent. Saudi Arabia also raised wages and increased subsidies on some foods. Bahrain set up a $100 million fund to be distributed this year to people most affected by rising prices. But all this government spending has the unfortunate side effect of worsening inflation, economists say.

Countries with less oil to sell do not have the same options.

In Syria, where oil production is drying up, prices have also risen sharply. Although it has begun to liberalize its rigid socialist economy, the government has repeatedly put off plans to eliminate the subsidies that keep prices artificially low for its citizens, fearing domestic reprisals.

Even so, the inflation of the past few months has taken a toll on all but the rich.

Thou al-Fakar Hammad, an employee in the contracts office of the Syrian state oil company, has a law degree and earns just less than 15,000 Syrian pounds, or $293, a month, twice the average national wage. His salary was once more than adequate, and until recently he sent half of it to his parents.

But rising prices have changed all that, he said. Now he has taken a second job teaching Arabic on weekends to help support his wife and young child. Unable to buy a car, he takes public buses from his two-room apartment just outside Damascus to work. He can afford the better quality diapers for his son to wear only at night and resorts to cheaper ones during the day. He cannot send anything to his parents.

“I have to live day to day,”he said. “I can’t budget for everything because, should my child get sick, I’d spend a lot of what I earn on medication for him.”

At the same time, a new class of entrepreneurs, most of them with links to the government, has built gaudy mansions and helped transform Damascus, the Syrian capital, with glamorous new restaurants and cafes. That has helped fuel a perception of corruption and unfairness, analysts say. On Wednesday the state-owned newspaper Al Thawra published a poll that found that 450 of 452 Syrians believed that their state institutions were riddled with corruption.

“Many people believe that most of the government’s economic policies are adopted to suit the interests of the newly emerging Syrian aristocracy, while disregarding the interests of the poor and lower middle class,”said Marwan al-Kabalan, a political science professor at Damascus University.

The same attitudes are visible in Jordan. Even before the subsidies on fuel were removed this month, inflation had badly eroded the average family’s earning power over the past five years, said Mr. Tawil, the former economic minister. Although the official inflation rate for 2007 was 5.4 percent, government studies have shown that middle-income families are spending far more on food and consuming less, he added. Last year a survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that Amman was the most expensive Arab capital in cost of living.

Mr. Abdul Raheem, the clothing store employee in Amman, said, “No one can be in the government now and be clean.”

Meanwhile, his own life has been transformed, Mr. Abdul Raheem said. He ticked off a list of prices: potatoes have jumped to about 76 cents a pound from 32 cents. A carton of 30 eggs went to nearly $4.25 from just above $2; cucumbers rose to 58 cents a pound from about 22. All this in a matter of weeks.

“These were always the basics,” he said. “Now they’re luxuries.”

With a salary equivalent to $423 and rent at $176, paying for food and fuel exhausts his income, he said. “But we are much better off than others,” he added. “We are the average.”