Dressed in green vests and with new safety rules to comply with, workers raced to complete developments earmarked for Alphabet Inc.’s Google, just days after a navy coronavirus testing ship nearby left.

Construction resumed even as the virus throws up a new challenge for the wider Irish model: how does an economy almost uniquely dependent on U.S. firms cope with a brake on global investment? Companies like Twitter, Google and Pfizer helped revive the country after the nation’s real estate bust, while overseas cash poured in to help build the offices and apartments which host the firms and their workers.

The flow of that money into Ireland is slowing, according to Rick Larkin, director of construction company Twinlite, which has built around 3,000 homes and has another 1,200 in the pipeline.

“The big worry is around financing,” said Larkin. “While banks here have been doing some, limited, lending for construction, it’s mostly been U.S. financiers and hedge funds. As their funding dries up, funding in Ireland dries up. What happens in New York and elsewhere feeds through to Dublin.”

Ireland is one of the most open countries in the world in economic terms, according to the KOF Globalisation Index, having built its economic strategy on a low corporate tax rate and a plentiful supply of well-educated, English-speaking workers.

The U.S. has a deficit in its goods trade with Ireland of about $19.6 billion so far this year, outstripped only by its deficits with China and Mexico, figures released on Thursday showed. Ireland’s economy grew 1.2% for the first quarter of 2020, in part boosted by exports, the nation’s statistics agency said on Friday.

Acting as a bridge between the U.S. and Europe, Ireland won the most foreign investment projects in Europe on a per capita basis in 2019, advisory firm EY said last week.

Dublin’s office vacancy rate has dropped to about 5%, and U.S. firms now employ directly or indirectly about one in five workers in Ireland. Google, Facebook and Twitter have more than 12,000 workers in the city between them.

Now, with most employees working remotely, their offices lie virtually empty. Ireland is facing the worst recession in its history, according to the Economic Social and Research Institute, outstripping even the 2008 crisis, when a real estate crash almost bankrupted the nation.

“People froze and went in war mode” once the lockdown hit, said Kevin Nowlan, chief executive of Hibernia REIT, whose clients including Twitter. “Everything went into pause.”

Ultimately, Nowlan says, workers will push to return to offices, and CBRE Group Inc. has forecast a revival in the market in the second half of the year.

“In the long term, full-time home working just isn’t an option for most people,” said Nowlan. “We like change, we like variety, we want some fun, especially the younger, more dynamic crew.”

The IDA, responsible for attracting companies to Ireland, expects new investment in 2020 and 2021 to be hurt, but says the economy has previously proved its resilience in bouncing back.

Marlet Property Group, which is completing a development close to the River Liffey partly earmarked for Google, said its project is proceeding as planned. At least 80% of Irish foreign investment projects are expected to be maintained, according to EY.

Yet, although the virus is the immediate threat, Ireland also faces longer-term challenges. President Donald Trump has vowed to bring drug firms back to the U.S from countries such as Ireland, while changes to international tax law may hurt tech companies based there.

And in a covid-19 era, winning new investment might prove tricky. For now, that’s almost impossible: even if a U.S. executive is able to travel, quarantine requirements means a two-day trip to scout a site could take weeks.

Meanwhile, offices continue to go up. About 340,000 square meters (3.7 million square feet) of new offices are expected to completed in Dublin between 2020 and 2021, according to broker CBRE. About 45% has been pre-let, while some of the rest is under negotiation, Marie Hunt, executive director for research at CBRE’s Irish arm, said.

Some are taking an imaginative approach, with Twinlite’s new development including apartments with home offices attached.

“We are lucky in that we have secured financing on our new projects, but it’s going to be more difficult and expensive,” said Rick Larkin.

“I wouldn’t want to be building offices now. Will demand evaporate for rental properties? No, I don’t believe it will,” he said. “But maybe we’ll will have to charge a little bit less.”

Next month, as the U.K. retail industry inches its way back to business in the age of coronavirus, a mall a couple of miles away in a less glamorous part of the city will get a new tenant.

Harrods will showcase discounted stock during the iconic British department store’s summer sale in a space that can help cope with covid-19 social distancing. Rather than uniformed doormen opening taxi doors, there’s a massive, multilevel parking garage and a train station.

From the glitz of Harrods down to your average strip-mall chain, retailers are adapting to get cash registers busy again as Britain opens up a corner of the economy it depends on more than other large European countries.

The pandemic has taken a particularly heavy toll on the proverbial nation of shopkeepers. The industry provides jobs for more than 3 million people with almost 400 billion pounds ($504 billion) of sales in 2019 equivalent to about 5% of gross domestic product. Consumer spending as a proportion of the economy is higher than in France and Germany, including for clothing and footwear.

Essential retailers, such as supermarkets, pharmacies, hardware and pet stores, have stayed open and enjoyed rising sales, while all other shops had to close their doors in March as on much of the continent.

Companies will need to “recalibrate their brains” to determine new operational models, said Ewan Venters, chief executive officer of Fortnum & Mason, another high-end British food and homewares retailer. “Ultimately in business it is all about providing confidence,” he said. “If confidence is back then consumption will increase, which will lead to positive sales.”

Fortnum’s food hall on London’s Piccadilly has already opened back up after implementing safety measures. They include changing the layout of store displays, installing plexiglass screens at pay points, training staff on how to manage social distancing and offering them visors and face masks.

Even before the pandemic, retailers were struggling with high rents and property taxes and a structural shift in consumer behavior. British shoppers buy more of their goods online than anywhere else in Europe.

Debenhams, a department store chain, is in administration-a type of U.K. insolvency process-and fashion retailer French Connection has warned it could run out of money in a few months without a cash injection or a significant improvement in sales. Most retailers have drawn down their revolving credit facilities and taken advantage of government support such as a staff furlough program.

Many European countries have already allowed most retailers to reopen. Department stores in Paris did it in steps, with Le Bon Marche on the Left Bank welcoming shoppers on May 11 and Printemps Haussmann and Galeries Lafayette eventually following by the end of the month.

The U.K. government is only now cautiously beginning to ease the lockdown restrictions after the country recorded more deaths than anywhere else in Europe. Since the start of this week, car showrooms and outdoor retailers in England, such as garden centers, have reopened and the rest can do so on June 15.

In addition to setting strict hygiene guidelines, many European countries have set a fixed number of customers allowed per square meter of retail space, and the U.K. is expected to follow suit.

Primark, Britain’s largest clothing chain, will put staff on doors with “clickers” to count customers entering and leaving. There will also be “sneeze screens” at checkouts, new systems to line up for payment, and “marshals” who can intervene if areas are becoming too crowded.

Associated British Foods, which owns Primark, has already opened 111 of its stores in nine European countries, including Germany, France, Spain and Italy, using these measures, said John Bason, its finance director.

Flexibility from retailers and governments will be key, according to Bason. He cited Austria as an example, which increased the number of people allowed per square meter. “We are all having to find our way in this,” he said.

Balancing safety requirements with the traditional shopping experience is certainly the most significant challenge for Harrods. It has small outlets in department stores worldwide and some airports and a soon-to-be started beauty store spin-off, yet its business is focused firmly on about one million square feet of space in London’s Knightsbridge.

Owned by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund for the past decade, the store is famed for selling everything and anything, from tea to artwork and furniture. At one stage, it even had an exotic pet department that sold “Gertie,” a pet elephant to Ronald Reagan before he became president.

Next month, though, Harrods will open a new standalone store in the Westfield shopping center in Shepherd’s Bush, a part of west London that is still classified as one of the capital’s most deprived locations. The aim is to take some of the pressure off its historic hub.

As one of the world’s largest shops and a major tourist attraction, Harrods typically attracts 15 million shoppers a year to a building that originally was designed for 19th century standards.

The building, with its terracotta exterior and grand dome, was built in 1883 and has multiple entry points and a warren of underground tunnels. There are 16 escalators within the buildings, multiple stairwells, and-in normal times-a bustling food hall, restaurants, and many interactive experiences, particularly in its toy department. The building also has protected status, meaning any significant alterations cannot happen without approval from the local authority.

Harrods said a senior leadership team has been meeting daily to come up with a plan to create designated entry and exit points and install signage, sneeze screens, and “sophisticated and independent software to monitor footfall” to ensure strict limited capacity is maintained across the store.

Staff have been trained on how to manage social distancing within the store and sanitization stations have been set up throughout the building. Its cafes, wellness clinic and beauty salons will remain closed for the time being. It’s also not clear when the many personalized services that Harrods offers-from gift wrapping and bed linen customization to its “discreet” invitation-only personal shopping for its richest customers-will resume.

Harrods had never needed to close its doors before covid-19, said Michael Ward, its managing director. The business is now looking at every aspect of its current operations and “thinking differently to enable growth, while protecting customers and employees,” he said.

The disbursement during the period was Bt2.259 trillion, accounting for 70.61 per cent of the total budget of Bt3.2 trillion. This exceeded the targeted of 69.33 per cent by 1.28 percentage point, the department deputy director-general, Wilawan Payanoi, said.

Of the total, Bt338.861 billion is state investment, and Bt1.914 trillion was regular expenditure.

The move is in line with the government’s policy urging state agencies to accelerate spending, aiming to shore up the flagging economy.

He advised investors to follow the consideration of tourism stimulus measures, the Covid-19 situation both domestic and overseas, the US Federal Reserve’s meeting on June 9-10, and tensions between US and China.

“For international factors, we advise following US and China’s consumer and producer price indices in May, Japan and the euro-zone’s gross domestic product in the first quarter of this year, and the euro-zone industrial production in April,” the analyst said.

On Friday (June 5), the SET Index closed at 1,435.70, up 6.91 per cent compared to the previous week’s close and the highest in more than three months. The index’s average daily transaction was Bt94.758 billion, up 21.97 per cent compared to the previous week’s close.

The index rose throughout this week on hopes of an economic recovery as several countries gradually resumed their economic activities.

Meanwhile, investors have bought many large-cap stocks, especially bank and energy stocks, while foreign investors returned for net buys in Thai stocks as well.

On Friday (June 5), SET Index rose by 24.69 points or 1.75 per cent, closing at 1,435.70, the highest in four months.

Nuttachart said that among other Asian indices, the SET rose 28.4 per cent followed by Japan’s Nikkei rising 23.2 per cent and South Korea’s KOSPI 19 per cent.

“The SET gained positive sentiment from more foreign investors returning to buy Thai stocks,” he said.

“Since the beginning of this month, foreign investors have spent more than US$189 million on Thai stocks, $237 million in Indonesia, $49 million in the Philippines, $2.249 billion in India, $1.239 billion in Taiwan and $210 million in South Korea.”

He added that SET also gained positive sentiment from the uptick rule that requires short sales to be conducted at a higher price than the previous trade, causing the short-selling value to drop below Bt1 billion per day.

“If the SET extends the uptick rule, the index may maintain a high level,” he said, adding that while the index rose sharply, the trading proportion of individual investors also rose 50 per cent.

“Stocks that pushed the index to rise were energy stocks led by PTT and PTT Exploration and Production [PTTEP], and PTT Global Chemical [PTTGC], whose price rose by 4 to 8 per cent after Opec+ decided to keep oil production low for up to three months,” he added.

Meanwhile, a stock analyst at Capital Nomura Securities said that since the end of May, foreign investors had spent up to $4.281 billion on Asian indices.

“However, the SET Index may fall as it has risen to the resistance line at 1,430 points,” the analyst said. “We advise investors to hold only 30 per cent and buy stocks that have strong basic factors every month.”

Yunyong Thaicharoen, first executive vice president of EIC, said on Friday (June 5) that the centre has revised its projection to an economic contraction of 7.3 per cent this year from its previous forecast of 5.6 per cent. He added that the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting business shutdowns have impacted the economy more severely than expected.

Tourist arrivals are expected to shrink by 75 per cent or drop to 9.8 million this year from close to 40 million last year, while the value of export in dollar terms is forecast to contract by 10.4 per cent year on year.

However, the economy is expected to bottom out in the second quarter, shrinking 12 per cent, and though contraction will continue in the third and fourth quarters it will be at a slower rate.

Businesses and households may find it tougher to repay their debts, while unemployment may hit the 3 million to 5 million mark.

The research house believes the Bank of Thailand will maintain its key policy rate at 0.5 per cent for the entire year after a recent rate cut by 25 basis points.

The baht is expected to weaken as more and more businesses resume operations after having closed temporarily for three months. The currency is expected to fluctuate between Bt31.5 and Bt32 per dollar. The current account will return to surplus at 2.4 per cent of the GDP after it hit a deficit in April, EIC said.

The centre’s assessment is similar to that of the central bank, which said recently that it was worried about currency appreciation. A strong baht may derail recovery from the crisis. The central bank has also warned that the current account surplus this year will be smaller than last year, and that the baht may reverse its course.

Thailand’s current account deficit in April was the largest in two decades, coming in at US$3.1 billion (not including gold export) and $700 million (including gold export).

Large current account surplus previously had contributed to a stronger baht.

After almost a week of wrangling, the group’s leaders Russia and Saudi Arabia clinched a tentative deal with holdout member Iraq, according to a delegate. The pair were pushing Baghdad to stop shirking its share of cuts and to compensate for past failings.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will meet by video conference on Saturday at 1 p.m. London time, followed by a conference with their OPEC+ allies two hours later, delegates said.

The agreement, once ratified, will prolong the record OPEC+ production curbs for another month until the end of July, instead of easing them as previously planned. Ministers may review later this month whether a further extension into August is warranted, a delegate said.

Brent crude advanced as traders anticipated a tighter market in the coming months, with sentiment further buoyed by a surprise drop in the U.S. unemployment rate. The international benchmark was poised for a sixth weekly advance, rising 4.9% to $41.98 a barrel as of 2:56 p.m. in London.

“We’re reasonably optimistic on the outlook for oil in the second half of the year,” Isabelle Mateos y Lago, co-head of the official institutions group at BlackRock Inc., said in an interview with Bloomberg television. “Demand is likely to recover far more quickly than supply.”

OPEC+ is used to dramatic glitches endangering deals at the last minute, so delegates said nothing would be agreed until formal communications take place.

By accepting stricter terms, the Iraqi government risks a backlash from parliamentarians and rival political parties for acceding to foreign pressure. Still, the Oil Ministry in Baghdad said in a statement on Friday that it will comply in full with pledged OPEC+ cuts despite the country’s difficult financial circumstances.

Mexico, whose resistance to curbing output delayed the April deal, won’t cause problems this time, the delegate said. Under the terms of that accord, the Latin American country wasn’t expected to make production cuts beyond June.

Cutting production is always painful for oil-dependent states. Iraq in particular needs every penny because it’s still rebuilding its economy following decades of war, sanctions and Islamist insurgency.

But members of the 23-nation OPEC+ alliance have a lot to gain by preserving their agreement. They have helped engineer a doubling in Brent prices since April, easing pressure on their government budgets of oil-rich nations.

The accord has also revived the fortunes of major energy companies like Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell, and prompted some U.S. producers to consider restarting wells just weeks after they were idled.

The deal in April set out historic cuts of 9.7 million barrels a day, or roughly 10% of global oil supplies, to offset the unprecedented collapse in demand caused by the virus lockdowns. Then a few weeks later, Saudi Arabia and its closest allies in the Persian Gulf promised additional supply restraint of 1.2 million barrels a day in June.

Those reductions were set to ease to 7.7 million barrels a day from July 1. so failure to reach an agreement this month could have brought a flood of oil back onto the market and undermined a tentative recovery as countries start emerging from coronavirus lockdowns.

With American shale production starting to come back online, OPEC’s careful management of the demand recovery is crucial.

Saudi Arabia and Russia, who were on opposite sides of a vicious price war until a peace deal in April, are now united against those in OPEC+ who have consistently failed to shoulder their share of the burden. Moscow, a habitual laggard, has complied punctiliously with the historic accord brokered by President Donald Trump, and wants to make sure others do too.

“Reunited in leadership of OPEC+ and grimly facing many more months, if not years, of oversupply, Russia and Saudi Arabia had little to lose and much to gain by imposing concrete measures to improve compliance by the laggards, especially Iraq,” said Bob McNally, founder of consultant Rapidan Energy Group and a former White House official.

The details of the deal between OPEC+ and Iraq on compliance were still not clear on Friday, and the statement from Baghdad didn’t spell out whether they had agreed to compensate for overproduction in May.

Iraq made less than half of its assigned cutbacks last month, so compensating fully would require it to slash production by a further 24% to about 3.28 million barrels a day, according to Bloomberg calculations. That would be a tall order.

Three other nations — Angola, Kazakhstan and Nigeria — also produced above their OPEC+ quotas in May. The three pledged on Thursday to bring their output in line with the agreement.

By extending the cuts, the cartel wants the market to start drawing down the billion barrels of stockpiles that built up during the crisis. To force that to happen, OPEC+ intends to create an oil price structure called backwardation, with crude for immediate delivery priced higher than longer-term contracts, one delegate said.

Nonfarm payrolls rose by 2.5 million after a 20.7 million tumble the prior month that was the largest in records back to 1939, according to Labor Department data Friday. The jobless rate fell to 13.3% from 14.7%.

Economist forecasts had called for a decline of 7.5 million in payrolls and a jump in the unemployment rate to 19%. No one in Bloomberg’s survey had projected improvement in either figure.

Treasury yields and U.S. stock futures jumped after the surprise report, while the dollar spiked against the yen.

The unexpected improvement wasn’t limited to the U.S. figures. North of the border, Canadian employment rose 290,000 in May, compared with forecasts of a 500,000 slump, its statistics office reported Friday.

The data show a U.S. economy pulling back from the brink as states relax restrictions and businesses bring back staff, while supporting a rebound in the stock market. At the same time, the lack of an effective treatment for Covid-19 — which has already killed more than 100,000 in the U.S. — means infections may persist and possibly surge in a second wave, with the potential to further shake the labor market and extend the economic weakness.

“These improvements in the labor market reflected a limited resumption of economic activity that had been curtailed in March and April due to the coronavirus pandemic and efforts to contain it,” the Labor Department said in a statement.

The latest figures may give a boost to President Donald Trump, who has fallen behind Democratic challenger Joe Biden in polls amid the pandemic, recession and now nationwide protests over police mistreatment of African-Americans. The numbers come amid a debate over the timing and scope of additional stimulus, with Democrats and Republicans at odds following record aid approved by Congress to cushion the downturn.

Minutes after the release, Trump tweeted: “Really Big Jobs Report!” He said he would hold a news conference at 10 a.m. in Washington to discuss the report.

One caveat noted by the U.S. Labor Department: the unemployment rate “would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported” if data were reported correctly, according to the agency’s statement. That refers to workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to other reasons, rather than unemployed on temporary layoff.

Unemployment rates declined among adult men and women, white Americans, and slightly for Hispanic and Latino Americans.

But the rate was little changed among African Americans, at 16.8%, the highest since 2010, amid the protests that have also drawn attention to economic disparities.

The Dow Jones industrial average spiked more than 2.7% after the Labor Department reported May unemployment fell to 13.3% – a far cry from the 19.5% analysts had forecast and a sharp improvement from the 14.7% set in April – as states incrementally reopened their economies after months of pandemic-fueled shutdowns and some Americans got back to work.

More than 2.5 million jobs were added to non-farm payrolls, data show. About half the gains were in restaurants and bars, a sector of the economy that has been among the hardest-hit as social distancing restrictions upended normal business.

“We may well have seen the worst of the historically horrific covid-19 related economic downturn,” Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com, said in comments emailed to The Post. “We still need to step back and remember that the unemployment rate remains higher than the peak during the financial crisis and great recession.”

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index swelled 2% at the open, while the tech-centric Nasdaq composite advanced 0.8%.

Despite protests raging on across the country over the death of George Floyd and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, investor optimism had risen after Thursday’s weekly unemployment claims also came in below estimates – although at 1.9 million the losses still show staggering damage to the economy.

Asian markets closed up and European markets were trending higher in midday trading. The rally followed the European Central Bank’s announcement on Thursday that it would add $676 billion (600 euros) to its coronavirus rescue plan, making the total package worth more than $1.5 trillion. Germany, one of Europe’s most powerful economic engines, also announced a fresh stimulus package Thursday amid rising unemployment.

“There are a number of reasons to be cautious in this market but none are clearly as compelling as the grand economic reopening and authorities everywhere pumping out cash like it’s going out of fashion,” Craig Erlam, an analyst with OANDA, wrote in commentary Friday. “This is purely a stimulus and momentum trade and it’s not running shy of either.”

Positive news is filtering through the economy. Personal incomes rose 10.5%, thanks largely to federal stimulus checks. First-time unemployment filings have leveled off. The housing market is on the rise, helped by record-low interest rates. Private payrolls shed 2.76 million jobs in May, ADP reported Wednesday, well below the 8.75 million that economists surveyed by Dow Jones had expected.

Still, the magnitude of economic damage from the pandemic suggest a V-shaped recovery is still a reach. A Monday report from the Congressional Budget Office estimated that fallout from the coronavirus crisis will shrink the size of the U.S. economy by roughly $8 trillion over the next decade. That amounts to a 3% decline in U.S. gross domestic product compared to its initial estimate.

Oil prices soared to their highest levels in three months as investors looked toward the meeting of OPEC and its allies this weekend, where the organization is expected to agree to further production cuts while the world gets back in motion. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, rose nearly 3.9% to trade at $41.54 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. oil benchmark, climbed more than 3% to trade at $38.55 per barrel.

The central bank on June 4 allowed Deepsparks Peer Lending Co to launch peer-to-peer lending between a limited number of users in its regulatory sandbox, Siritida Panomwon na Ayudhya, assistant governor at the Bank of Thailand said on Friday (June 5).

The platform matches individual lenders and borrowers and facilitates loan transfers and repayments. The digital initiative will provide an alternative way for customers to access financial services.

The Finance Ministry requires peer-to-peer lending platforms to seek permission to operate from the central bank.

Siritida said that the central bank would give priority to robust platforms that effectively managed risks, including those related to the technology used, customer privacy and responsibility towards users. Platform operators must also be aware of the debt-burden issue caused by customers who are unable to make their repayments.

The central bank will vet operators and recommend that those who meet its standards are handed licences to operate by the Finance Ministry, she added.

Consumers can check out the platform at https://www.bot.or.th/…/Pages/P2PLendingSandbox.aspx. More information about peer-to-peer lending is available at https://www.bot.or.th/…/Doc_Form/Pages/PeopleManual.aspx.