The Bank of England has concluded its tightening cycle and will likely keep the Bank Rate at 5.25% until at least July, a Reuters poll of economists showed, although a significant minority said it would hike rates again this year. Last week, the Bank surprised markets by not raising rates, sending sterling GBP= to a six-month low, but signalled rates would remain higher for longer. The Monetary Policy Committee was split and voted 5-4 in favour of holding, amid a slowing economy and an unexpected fall in inflation, which it ...

Developing countries stand to benefit from implementing economic reforms that will boost their output, while reducing carbon emissions without sacrificing growth and jobs, the International Monetary Fund has said. New policies on management, business regulation and trade can boost output by 4 per cent in two years and up to 8 per cent in four years, and support decarbonisation efforts, the fund said in a report on Monday. “Economy-wide reforms give policymakers the tools to foster growth and prepare for the green transition,” the Washington-based lender said. “The gains from ...

The Bank of Japan may hold off on ending negative interest rates until around April next year to gauge whether wage gains will broaden enough to keep inflation sustainably at its 2% target, former central bank policymaker Makoto Sakurai told Reuters. With inflation exceeding 2% for more than a year, markets are rife with speculation the BOJ will raise short-term interest rates from the current -0.1% as early as the end of this year. Ending negative interest rates likely won’t hurt the economy much as inflation-adjusted real borrowing costs will ...

The bilateral trade between China and the European Union now amounts to more than $820 billion annually. China remains the EU’s largest trading partner, while the EU is China’s second-largest trading partner. That they see eye to eye with each other on such key issues as trade liberalization and share the goal of safeguarding the rules-based multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its core makes them natural partners. Yet the development of this interdependent relationship has not been smooth-sailing in recent years, hampered by disputes over such ...

The Turkish central bank’s net international reserves rose by more than $6 billion last week to about $24 billion, four bankers said on Tuesday, resuming an uptrend since the government adopted a more orthodox monetary policy following May elections. The rebuilding of the central bank’s currency buffer is seen as a gauge of authorities’ willingness to ease controls on the lira, which has tumbled 28% since President Tayyip Erdogan was re-elected. The bank’s reserves slumped to minus $5.7 billion in early June, their lowest since data publication began in 2002, ...

Germany’s economy will grow more slowly than previously expected next year due to a lack of positive momentum towards the end of this year, the IMK institute said in its forecast on Tuesday. The experts at the trade unions-affiliated institute predicted 0.7% growth for Europe’s largest economy in 2024, significantly more pessimistic than its spring forecast of 1.2% growth and more cautious than other German economic institutes such as Ifo, which is expecting growth of 1.4%. For 2023, the IMK expects the economy to contract by 0.5%. “The German economy, ...

Thai exports unexpectedly rose for the first time in 11 months in August amid weak global demand, and the ministry said on Tuesday that shipments should be “good” in the final quarter of the year because of year-end orders. Customs-based exports, a key driver of Thailand’s economy, rose 2.6% in August from a year earlier, compared with analysts’ median forecast for a 4% decline in a Reuters poll. Exports climbed 9.7% from July. “The growth was supported by improved signals from the global manufacturing sector compared to the previous month, ...

Goldman Sachs and HSBC are among a group of five banks adopting a common global approach to disclosing clients’ stock positions, a move which participants say could help cut costs and bolster transparency. The group, which also includes Barclays, BNP Paribas (OTC:) and one other bank, is working on a tool to minimise the risks of under-reporting, particularly when investors make so-called short bets or build stakes using derivatives, two sources told Reuters. Regulators require investors to report the securities they hold when certain thresholds are breached, which requires complex, ...

Ukraine’s gross domestic product grew by 19.5% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2023, signaling the economy’s successful adaptation to wartime conditions following last year’s collapse. The result is higher than the Economy Ministry’s forecasted results and “indicates that the economy is adapting to the war,” Economy Minister Yuliya Svyridenko said in a statement published online. “Importantly, the vast majority of economic activities demonstrated positive trends,” she said. Actual GDP growth compared to the previous quarter of this year equates to 0.8%, adjusted for seasonal factors. Russia’s war against Ukraine ...

Italy’s government plans to raise its 2024 budget deficit target to between 4.1% and 4.3% of gross domestic product (GDP), up from the 3.7% goal set in April, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday. The fiscal gap next year is, however, seen below 4% of GDP under current trends. That allows leeway worth several billion euros which will help Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to fund measures in the upcoming 2024 budget. Among her top priorities, Meloni intends to earmark more than 9 billion euros ($9.5 billion) to ...

China and the European Union have agreed to work against decoupling and put in place an export control dialogue mechanism, as part of efforts to safeguard resilient and stable industrial and supply chains, Vice-Premier He Lifeng said on Monday. He made the remark at a joint news conference after co-chairing the 10th China-EU High-level Economic and Trade Dialogue with European Commission Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis in Beijing. China is willing to expand imports from the EU and hopes it will remove restrictions on exports of high-tech products to China, the ...

Five economic institutes are predicting gross domestic product in Germany to contract by 0.6% in 2023, two sources told Reuters on Tuesday. For 2024, the institutes – four German and one Austrian – forecast GDP growth of 1.3% GDP growth, according to the sources. Inflation is expected to be at 6.1% this year and fall to 2.6% next year, the sources said. The so-called Joint Economic Forecasts are to be presented in Berlin on Thursday. The economics ministry usually updates its forecasts incorporating the results of the Joint Economic Forecasts. ...

A “soft landing” for the U.S. economy is more likely than not, Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari said on Tuesday, but there is also a 40% chance that the Fed will need to raise interest rates “meaningfully” to beat inflation. Under the more likely scenario — Kashkari pegged the probability at about 60% — the Fed “potentially” raises rates one more quarter of a percentage point and then holds borrowing costs steady “long enough to bring inflation back to target in a reasonable period of time,” he said ...

Surging oil prices have become the new concern for central banks, aggravating the current trilemma: how to balance slowing economies, still too-high inflation and the delayed impact of unprecedented rate hikes. Interestingly, the answer to this conundrum differs between major central banks. Looking ahead, the recent surge in oil prices will make things even more complicated as it will both worsen the economic slowdown but also push up inflation (or at least reduce the disinflationary trend). Balancing growth and inflation will become even harder and future interest rate decisions will ...

The European Central Bank’s record high deposit rate could help cut inflation to 2%, ECB President Christine Lagarde said, repeating the bank’s guidance that neither promises nor rules out further rate hikes. Policymakers have provided different interpretations of this guidance over the past week, with one extreme arguing that the next move is likely to be a rate cut while the other side saying that the chance of another hike could be close to 50%. “We consider that our policy rates have reached levels that, maintained for a sufficiently long ...