Weekly Review - May 5, 2007

This post is part of of a series of weekly posts that will summarize the highlights of the past week, and point out important announcements that can be expected in the upcoming weeks.

After last week's public holidays announcements roller coaster, this past week was rather quiet, due to most countries and their governments being on holidays for a good part of the week.

• Most of Europe and South America was on holiday on May 1st, and in many cases also on Monday April 30, and in the case of Poland, also on Thursday, May 3.
• China was observing public holidays all week.
• Japan was off for most of the week (except May 1 and 2).
• Most of South-East Asia, not only celebrated May Day, but in most cases also celebrated Buddha's Birthday on May 2.

Sri Lanka lost against Australia, in the finals of the ICC Cricket World Cup on Saturday, April 28, and therefore no additional special holiday was declared, as had happened in 1996, the last time Sri Lanka won the ICC Cricket World Cup.

Belgium: The week continued to see negative reactions to the April 24 announcement that May 2, 2008, would be a special one-off public holiday in Belgium, to compensate the fact that, in 2008, both the May Day public Holiday and Ascension occur on the same date. But so far, there is no indication that the government will change its mind.

China: As the May Day Golden Week (May 1-7, 2007) public holiday begins, and chaos mounts as 160 million Chinese travel all at once, the China Daily reports that there are renewed calls to reform the Golden Weeks system, introduced in 1999. In our post of March 2, we reported on proposals to cut back the Labour Day, Chinese New Year and National Day, golden week public holidays, and replace these lost days with more traditional holidays, such as Quingming.

Outlook For The Next Few Weeks

Liberia: On Friday, April 27, 2007, the United Nations lifted the 2001 ban against Liberian exports of diamonds (BBC News). This is a strong vote of confidence in Liberia's President, Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf, who took office in January 2006, and was the first woman to be elected president of an African country. This is also a potential saving measure for Liberia's economy which suffers from 85% unemployment. It is conceivable that a one-time public holiday will be declared in the coming days or weeks to mark the occasion.

Puerto Rico: Over the last few years, there have are regular calls by the business community to reduce the number of public holidays in Puerto Rico, in particular for civil servants, but so far nothing ever happened. However, El Nuevo Día reports that a recent conference was held between business, government and academia on the subject, and that changes may finally be on the horizon.

Barbados is considering also moving public holidays that fall on a Saturday to the next Monday (currently, only public holidays that fall on a Sunday are moved to the next Monday). Source: The Barbados Advocate.