Federal Minister for Finance Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh has said the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan had to seek help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in view of an economic crisis that the country was facing when the PTI came into power. “Nobody wants to turn to the IMF. Prime Minister Imran Khan had to seek help from the lender due to an economic crisis. However, the economic situation of the country is improving,” the finance minister said on Sunday while talking to the media after meeting leaders ...

G20 international merchandise trade continued to rebound in the fourth quarter of 2020 (exports up 7.2% and imports up 6.8%), following the sharp falls seen in the first half of 2020, as lockdown measures affected trade globally. Although growth in the fourth quarter of 2020 was strong, it shows a reduction compared to the unprecedented expansion observed in the third quarter, when exports and imports increased by 20.6% and 16.8%, respectively. With the exception of Argentina, hampered by strikes in their wheat export supply chain, all G20 economies experienced international ...

More than half of the total value of counterfeit goods seized around the world are shipped by sea, according to a new OECD-EUIPO report. Misuse of Containerized Maritime Shipping In the Global Trade of Counterfeits says that seaborne transport accounts for more than 80% of the volume of merchandise traded between countries, and more than 70% of the total value of trade. Containerships carried 56% of the total value of seized counterfeits in 2016. The People’s Republic of China was the largest provenance economy for container shipments, making up 79% ...

The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to widen wealth gaps in Europe unless policymakers help end the health crisis globally, support economies until the pandemic is over and invest in making economies greener, the International Monetary Fund said. In a speech to a European Parliament conference on Monday, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva praised EU governments for putting more than 3 trillion euros in fiscal support for firms and households, including job-retention schemes that helped more than 54 million workers. “But the path to recovery is … uneven… because of the ...

European Union finance ministers on Tuesday backed the idea of boosting IMF funding and extending debt relief for the poorest countries to help the global fight against the COVID-19 crisis. The idea of increasing the International Monetary Fund’s resources, called Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), so that the lender of last resort can help more low-income countries appeared last year. Officials mention amounts ranging from $500 billion to $1 trillion. And last year the G20, the group of the world’s 20 biggest economies, approved a Debt Service Suspension Initiative, offering 73 ...

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Friday that G7 finance leaders were in “full alignment” on a range of issues from fiscal stimulus to aid for poor countries. Georgieva said in that the virtual meeting hosted by British finance minister Rishi Sunak was “substantive.” “Full alignment on access to vaccines, policy support until exit from the crisis, climate action, and comprehensive support for vulnerable countries,” Georgieva tweeted. Source: Reuters (Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Group of Seven finance ministers are expected on Friday to back a new allocation of the International Monetary Fund’s own currency, or Special Drawing Rights, to help low-income countries hit by the coronavirus pandemic. We explain what SDRs are, how they are used and which countries could benefit the most. WHAT ARE SPECIAL DRAWING RIGHTS? SDRs are the IMF’s reserve asset, and are exchangeable for dollars, euros, sterling, yen and Chinese yuan or renminbi. An allocation of SDRs requires approval by IMF members holding 85% of the total votes. Because ...

The OECD area unemployment rate was stable at 6.9% in December 2020, remaining 1.7 percentage points above the level observed in February 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the labour market. In December, the unemployment rate was also stable in the euro area, at 8.3% (1.1 percentage points above its February 2020 level), with falls of 0.2 percentage point or more in Belgium, Lithuania, Portugal and Slovenia and increases of 0.2 percentage point or more in Austria, Finland, Italy and Luxembourg. In the United States, where the number of people ...

The global regulatory environment for services trade became more restrictive in 2020, with new barriers compounding the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic on exporters, according to a new OECD report. OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI): Policy trends up to 2021 shows an increasing pace in the erection of new barriers to services trade across all major sectors. New restrictions are affecting services traded through a range of commercial establishments, in sectors including computer services, commercial banking and broadcasting. Global services trade fell by 24% in the third quarter of ...

Greece has filed a request to theEuropean Stability Mechanism (ESM), the euro zone’s bailoutfund, seeking its consent to pay back earlier expensive debt tothe International Monetary Fund, government officials said onWednesday. The country has received three international bailouts fromthe eurozone and the IMF worth 280 billion euros since 2010. Itemerged from its latest bailout in August 2018 and has relied onthe debt markets to cover its borrowing needs since. Greece wants to repay debt worth about 3.3 billion euros($4 billion) to the IMF this year, out of a total of ...

The Group of 20 major economies need to focus on broad-based vaccine rollouts and consider all financing options for deeply distressed countries, including an allocation of International Monetary Fund Special Drawing Rights, the IMF’s chief economist said. Gita Gopinath said in a Jan. 28 online lecture to the National Council of Applied Economic Research that additional support will be needed for poor countries who could “barely spend during this pandemic” and will fall severely behind economically. “It’s important for the international community to come through with financing, in terms of ...

The OECD Composite leading indicators (CLIs), designed to anticipate turning points in economic activity relative to trend, point to stable growth in most large OECD economies. The CLIs continue to signal stable growth in the United States, Japan and the euro area as a whole, including Germany, France and Italy. In Canada, the CLI now points to stabilising growth. The CLI for the United Kingdom still signals a slowdown. Among major emerging economies, the CLIs for the manufacturing sector of China and for India and Brazil all point to a ...

Latin American and Caribbean economic activity will not return to pre-pandemic levels of output until 2023 and GDP per capita will catch up only in 2025, later than other parts of the world, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said. Among contributing factors, the Fund listed a failure to contain new COVID-19 infections, the imposition of new coronavirus lockdowns and changes in people’s behavior. “The pandemic’s resurgence towards the end of the year threatens to thwart an uneven recovery and add to the steep social and human costs,” the IMF’s economists ...

Argentine President Alberto Fernández believes the International Monetary Fund should grant the country more “flexible” terms and warned that increasing inflation could lead his government to again hike export taxes or re-establish quotas, according to an interview on Sunday in the newspaper Página/12. Argentina has for months been in talks with the IMF to restructure the terms of a $57 billion 2018 loan sought by Fernandez´ predecessor Mauricio Macri to confront an economic crisis that has sent poverty skyrocket in one of the world´s top grains producers. Fernández said in ...

The head of the IMF on Friday urged advanced economies to provide more resources to low-income countries, warning of an emerging “Great Divergence” in global growth that could risk stability and trigger social unrest for years to come. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters that 50% of developing countries were at risk of falling further behind, which raised concerns about stability and social unrest. To avert bigger problems, she said rich countries and international institutions should chip in more. She also urged heavily indebted countries to seek ...