China’s top leaders will chart the country’s economic course for 2021-2025 at a key meeting starting on Monday, seeking to balance growth and reforms to avoid stagnation amid an uncertain global outlook and deepening tensions with the United States. President Xi Jinping and members of the Central Committee, the largest of the ruling Communist Party’s elite decision-making bodies, will meet on Oct. 26-29 behind closed doors to lay out the 14th five-year plan, a blueprint for economic and social development. The plan and its execution will be crucial for China ...

China’s third-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) growth was 4.9%, slightly lower than the market expectation. According to some Chinese economists, the less-than-expected growth rate could not reflect whether the economy was strong or weak. ‘The growth rate cannot fully explain the challenges the Chinese economy is facing,’ Li Xunlei, vice-chairman of China Chief Economist Forum and chief economist of Zhongtai Securities, wrote in his recent article . ‘The focus should be on the economic structure.’ There is no doubt that China’s economy has done well during the global epidemic as ...

Weekly data on the U.S. recovery remained tepid as the coronavirus pandemic continued a fall surge across much of the United States. Estimates of retail foot traffic from Safegraph here and Unacast here, based on cell phone data gathered by the company, both turned higher over the past week. But visits to restaurants fell, according to data from reservations site OpenTable here, and employment estimates from time management firms Homebase joinhomebase.com/data and UKG here both declined. Chmura www.chmuraecon.com/blog Economics estimates showed job openings at about three fourths of their predicted ...

Industry body PHDCCI expects India’s GDP to contract by 7.9 per cent in the current financial year and grow by 7.7 per cent in 2021-22, assessing that the worst is over and the economy is on the verge of a slow recovery. The chamber, however, stated that unemployment remains a key challenge to be addressed by the government. The PHDCCI drew the conclusions based on its analysis of 25 high-frequency economic indicators which point out that there has been a pickup in business normalization. However, the unemployment rate still remains ...

Investors are gauging whether a rally in bond yields to their highest in months can run further, as markets increasingly price in chances that a fiscal stimulus deal is signed in Washington regardless of who wins the Nov. 3 election. Benchmark 10-year Treasury yields, which move inversely to bond prices, rose to 0.8682% Friday morning, the highest since early June when the U.S. economy began to reemerge from widespread lockdowns to halt the spread of the coronavirus. Past rallies in Treasury yields have wilted over the years, as the Federal ...

Britain and Japan formally signed a trade agreement on Friday, marking Britain’s first big post-Brexit deal on trade, as it continues to struggle to agree on a deal with its closest trading partners in the European Union. Britain formally left the EU in January and it has focused on negotiating new trade pacts with countries around the world as its status-quo transition period ends on Dec. 31. “How fitting it is to be in the land of the rising sun to welcome in the dawn of a new era of ...

With the year of 2020 drawing to an end under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, China is preparing for its new Five-Year Plan for 2021-2025, its 14th blueprint to guide the world’s second largest economy in the next five years. What is a ‘Five-Year Plan’? The Five-Year Plans (FYPs), also known as five-year plans for economic and social development, are a set of social and economic development initiatives that map out the country’s strategies and goals for growth in a five-year period. For each FYP, the Central Committee of ...

Standard and Poor’s on Friday revised Italy’s sovereign outlook to stable from negative, offering some unexpected good news for the euro zone’s third largest economy, and affirmed its long- and short-term credit rating at “BBB/A-2”. The ratings agency said Italy’s outlook balances the negative consequences of the coronavirus pandemic on public finances against the extraordinary policy response by the European Central Bank. Despite surging debt and a deep recession, Italy’s borrowing costs are at record lows, thanks to the ECB’s huge bond-buying program aimed at supporting the euro zone economy. ...

The governor of Iran’s central bank has announced plans to increase the use of oil-for-goods agreements between Iran and other countries, official news agency IRNA reported Saturday. “The use of barter exchanges of oil for basic goods essential for the country will be expanded, along with current trade methods, to increase the volume of foreign trade and for a better usage of domestic production facilities,” said Abdolnaser Hemmati on Friday through social media. The central bank and the secondary market have supplied foreign currency with an approximate value of 18.5 ...

The world’s tech giants are stepping up to reskill workers for the new economy. While some sectors are facing heavy unemployment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, technology has thrived. Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook all saw an increase in revenue in the first six months of 2020 year-on-year. But, the International Labour Organization has estimated total working-hour losses in the second quarter of 2020, relative to the fourth quarter of 2019, are now 17.3%, or 495 million full-time equivalent jobs. And the tech giants wants to help. The need ...

Anglo-Dutch consumer goods company Unilever said its India business did well during the July-September quarter as pick-up in economic activity after a strict lockdown helped the company with sales of hygiene and food and refreshment products. On Thursday, Unilever said underlying sales rose 4.4% year-on-year as it reported strong than expected growth in the third quarter. Sales in emerging markets rose 5.3% compared to the previous year, while in developed markets they rose 3.1%, according to a news report by Reuters. Its India unit, Hindustan Unilever Ltd, announced its September ...

Due to the impact of the global health crisis on our economy, countless businesses are laying people off, yet in the same breath are asking their remaining staff to “trust them” and work even harder. These companies are failing to see that their fate and ability to survive in this climate is determined by those very employees who have been left openly vulnerable and awash with a fear of being disposable. During my quest for personal clarity, I discovered author and speaker Simon Sinek. His TedTalk “How great leaders inspire ...

Japan’s factory output likely grew for a fourth straight month in September thanks to a recovery in external demand as economic activity gradually picked up, a Reuters poll found on Friday. But retail sales likely fell for the seventh straight month last month, suggesting a patch recovery as the pandemic hammered the broader economy. Industrial output is forecast to have risen 3.2% in September from the previous month, the poll of 16 economists showed on Friday, but the pace of increase has been slowing down from a record 8.7% jump ...

Ireland’s foreign minister said on Friday he believed Britain and the European Union could reach a trade deal now the talks were back on track, but added the issues of fair competition and fisheries hampering an accord were “still very much there”. “When we got a deal done this time last year, a lot of people were predicting that there would be a no-deal Brexit. We’re seeing history repeat itself now,” Simon Coveney, who played a key role in last year’s divorce treaty, told national broadcaster RTE. “I think a ...

The world needs to be prepared for a “long slog ahead” as global markets attempt to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, with central banks only able “to do so much,” said Randall Kroszner, former governor of the US Federal Reserve in an exclusive interview with Yahoo Finance UK. Market expectations need to be adjusted, he added, characterising the recovery as being sharp down, then partially up followed by a “long slog” before global economic activity returns to pre-COVID-19 levels. The virus is “going to have a long term impact on ...