Ahmadinejad says new budget less dependent on oil
Ahmadinejad, who faces opposition protests seven months after his re-election, also said Iran “will have good news over production of 20 percent enriched fuel in February”. “This news will make the Iranian nation and other independent nations happy,” he told reporters in parliament after presenting the budget to parliament. Critics accuse Ahmadinejad of squandering the […]
Obama threatens fight with banks on new risk rules
President Obama threatened to fight Wall Street banks on Thursday with new proposals to limit financial risk taking, sending stocks and the dollar tumbling. “If these folks want a fight, it’s a fight I’m ready to have,” he told reporters at the White House, flanked by his top economic advisers and lawmakers. “We should no […]
China’s future inflation is a present headache
Chinese inflation remains tame, but prices have been creeping up in the past few months and policymakers may not only have to step up their rhetoric but also the pace of monetary tightening to prevent Wang’s fears from becoming a reality. “I really worry that prices may rise more quickly in the future, especially for […]
US airlines top estimates, outlook hits shares
Continental projected a drop in its unit revenue for January, surprising investors who expected revenue per available seat mile (RASM) numbers to improve as it has been doing in the last few months. The projections were driven by a slow recovery of business traffic and stronger-than-expected leisure demand in December, executives said. “We are seeing […]
Kenya fiscal stimulus may still be needed
There are signs the global economy is rebounding but Kenya should keep assessing its economic performance before reducing or removing its fiscal stimulus, the World Bank’s country director said recently. Kenya put in about one percent of its GDP as fiscal stimulus in its 2009/10 budget after suffering the triple shocks of post-election violence, drought […]
China tries to curb lending and avoid overheating
Chinese authorities ordered some big banks to curb lending for the rest of January, intensifying their efforts to prevent the world’s third-largest economy from overheating. The news weighed down stocks in Asia and Europe and oil fell towards $78 a barrel on fears that demand in China, the world economy’s main source of growth, may […]
Japan Inc set to file for bankruptcy
Japan Airlines Corp is set to file for one of the country’s largest ever bankruptcies on Tuesday, marking the failure of the former state-owned carrier that once symbolised Japan Inc’s international aspirations. JAL, Asia’s largest airline by revenues, will remain in the skies under a state-backed restructuring plan as it tries to free itself from […]
Uganda awaits formal oilfield deal from firms
Uganda’s oil minister said Kampala was waiting for documents about the sale of Heritage Oil’s assets, and stressed that neither Heritage nor partner Tullow Oil had consulted the government on the deals. Tullow has exercised a right to buy Ugandan oil fields from Heritage, potentially derailing ambitions to expand in Africa by Italy’s Eni, which […]
UN to launch Haiti appeal for $550m
Thousands of people injured in Tuesday’s massive earthquake in the Caribbean country spent another night waiting for help, many lying on sidewalks, as their despair turned to anger. A spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said 17 search and rescue teams were deployed in the capital Port-au-Prince, with six […]
Car makers may face tougher CO2 curbs
The 27-country bloc has set manufacturers a goal of cutting emissions from new cars by around 15 percent by 2015, after a lengthy battle that pitted environmentalists against auto-making nations France, Germany and Italy. “It can be important to try and review – did we go far enough at the time? Because this is a […]
