Author Archive: Jeremy Parkinson
WTO: Global crisis to hurt trade for up to 2 years
Global trade will face lingering protectionism for up to two years, as the job market reels from the global financial crisis, World Trade Organisation Director-General Pascal Lamy said recently. “We are not out of the woods in coping with this protectionist tensions,” Lamy told reporters in the Chilean capital Santiago during a visit. “We on […]
BOJ may revise up CPI forecast but deflation to drag
The Bank of Japan could say this month that consumer prices will stop falling next fiscal year, sources say, but analysts said it would keep its easing bias as a full-fledged escape from deflation is still a distant goal. That would mark an upgrade to the BOJ’s current price forecast for the year to March […]
Greece deal slashes contagion risk -UniCredit CEO
Eurozone finance ministers approved a 30 billion euro emergency aid plan for debt-plagued Greece on April 11. Together with at least 10 billion euros expected from the IMF in the first year, it could add up to the biggest multilateral financial rescue ever attempted. “This has been a very important intervention,” Alessandro Profumo, the head […]
Kenya Treasury says no borrowing for extra $543m
“Borrowing for this year is even closed. There will be no more borrowing,” Geoffrey Mwau, economic secretary at the Finance Ministry, told reporters. Treasury wants an additional 27.62 billion shillings for recurrent expenditure and another 14.39 billion shillings for development programmes. The budget factored in domestic borrowing of 109.5 billion shillings but the government increased […]
Brain drain, low investment hamper African science
Africa’s contribution to the global body of scientific research is very small and does little to benefit its own populations, according to a report from Thomson Reuters. Like India and China, Africa suffers from a “haemorrhage of talent”, the report said, with many of its best brains leaving to study abroad and failing to return. […]
Gulf values to catch up with emerging markets
Though foreign investors have slowly started coming back to the region, there still exists a 40-50 percent discount between the Middle East markets and that of the emerging economies, mainly the BRIC nations, said Zin Bekkali. “BRIC is still beautiful, the fundamentals are similar to the region but it has got expensive now. So that […]
China state firms hand in plans to exit property sector
China’s agency overseeing big state-owned businesses has received plans from 78 state companies spelling out how they intend to sell out of the nation’s heady property market, according to sources. The China Securities Journal also reported that the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) was compiling a general plan to achieve the divestment, intended […]
World Bank set to approve S Africa utility loan
The World Bank is set to approve a controversial $3.75bn loan to help South African state utility Eskom develop a coal-fired power plant despite objections from the US and environmental groups. Eskom has argued it has no immediate alternative but to develop the 4,800-megawatt Medupi coal-fired plant in the northern Limpopo region to ease chronic […]
World Bank lending hits record $100bn
The World Bank stepped up lending in July 2008 at the request of member countries as demand from developing countries increased in the face of a worsening world recession and sharp drop in global trade. The bulk of the lending since the onset of the crisis in 2008, about $60.3bn, was to middle-income countries, which […]
Volcker: Taxes likely to rise eventually to tame deficit
The US should consider raising taxes to help bring deficits under control and may need to consider a European-style value-added tax, White House adviser Paul Volcker has announced. Volcker, answering a question from the audience at a New York Historical Society event, said the value-added tax “was not as toxic an idea” as it has […]
