Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida unveiled on Monday the pillars of a new economic stimulus package to be compiled next month to help households ease the pain of price hikes and boost wages. Kishida will instruct his cabinet on Tuesday to put together the package and swiftly set up an extra budget to fund it, he said. It will include measures to protect people from cost-push inflation, back sustainable wage and income growth, promote domestic investment to spur growth, reform to overcome dwindling populations, and encourage infrastructure investment. With the ...

Drawing a deep breath. Germany’s most prominent leading indicator, the Ifo index, almost stopped its downward trend but dropped for the fifth month in a row as the August number was revised upwards. The Ifo index came in at 85.7, from 85.8 in August. This is one of the weakest Ifo index readings of the last five years. While the current assessment component continued its recent downward trend, expectations improved somewhat. What today’s reading shows is that the economic picture has not changed. The Chinese economy is still not gaining ...

British retailers reported a smaller annual fall in sales for September than during the previous month and expect a modest improvement in the months ahead, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said on Monday. The CBI’s September monthly retail sales survey – conducted between Aug. 25 and Sept. 13 – showed the headline balance rebound to a three-month high of -14 from August’s more than two year low of -44. “There are some elements of optimism in our survey with retailers expecting the recent fall in sales to continue to ...

Singapore’s key consumer price gauge rose 3.4% in August, almost matching economists’ forecasts, and easing compared with July’s figures due to lower inflation for services, food, retail and other goods, official data showed on Monday. The core inflation rate – which excludes private road transport and accommodation costs – climbed 3.4% year-on-year in August, almost in line with a forecast in a Reuters poll of economists of 3.5%, and lower than the 3.8% seen in July. “Global supply chain frictions have largely eased, and food commodity prices remain below year-ago ...

The Swiss National Bank is done with interest rate hikes, according to the vast majority of economists polled by Reuters, despite mooting the prospect of further increases last week when it surprised markets by leaving borrowing costs unchanged. On Sept. 21 the SNB held its policy interest rate unchanged at 1.75%, noting inflation – at 1.6% in August and within the central bank’s target range of 0-2% – had ebbed lower, but said further tightening could not be ruled out. Economists thought this was unlikely. An overwhelming 24 of 26 ...

From cinemas to restaurants, China’s service sector has bounced back this year from a pandemic-induced downturn and is playing a greater role in sustaining the economy’s broader recovery. The country’s service production index rose 6.8 percent year-on-year in August, increasing from 5.7 percent in the previous month, said the National Bureau of Statistics. Retail sales in services surged 19.4 percent year-on-year in the first eight months. “The development of the services sector has emerged as an important bright spot in economic performance this year,” NBS spokesman Fu Linghui said. As ...

Greece’s bank rescue fund HFSF said on Monday it has initiated the process to sell a 1.4% it holds in Eurobank. Interested investors can submit offers from Sept 25 to Oct 6, it said, adding that Eurobank had already submitted an offer on Sept. 22 for a targeted share buyback. Eurobank won shareholder approval in July to buy back the stake. During the country’s financial crisis which broke out in 2010, the state-controlled HFSF acquired stakes in Greece’s four largest banks in turn for injecting about 50 billion euros to ...

It’s a now-familiar dance: Federal Reserve officials signal to the world that interest rates are not dropping anytime soon. Financial markets respond with bets to the contrary. That dynamic, which has played out repeatedly over the course of a U.S. central bank policy tightening regime that began 18 months ago, was back on full display last week. Forecasts published on Wednesday by the U.S. central bank showed that a majority of its policymakers see the Fed’s benchmark overnight interest rate ending this year at 5.6%, which implies one more interest ...

The upcoming India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor will become the basis of world trade for hundreds of years to come, and history will remember that this corridor was initiated on Indian soil, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Sunday. “You must be aware that when India was very prosperous, the Silk Route was a part of the discourse in our country and in the world. This Silk Route was a major medium of business and trade,” he said during his address in the 105th Episode of ‘Mann Ki Baat’. “Now in ...

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Through the lens of foreign pundits, we take a look at 10 years of the BRI – how it achieves win-win cooperation between China and participating countries of the BRI and how it has given the people of these countries a sense of fulfillment. Being the western end of the ancient Silk Roads, Spain has long historical connections with China. Xulio Rios (Rios), a Spanish scholar on China and emeritus advisor ...

The European Union has no intention of cutting ties with China even as the bloc takes steps to lower economic dependencies and de-risk, but China “could do a lot” to help reduce the perception of risk, the EU trade chief said on Monday. The EU has long complained about a lack of level playing field in China and the politicisation of the business environment. Concern turned to wariness after Beijing’s move to strengthen ties with Moscow despite the war in Ukraine. Europe’s economic ties with China are deep, but China ...

Lawmakers over the weekend expressed few signs of movement on a budget resolution that would keep the U.S. government funded for the remainder of the fiscal year, and the clock is ticking. Current spending laws are due to expire on Sept. 30. That means if Congress does not reach an agreement before 12:01 a.m. on Oct. 1, the government will shut down. House Republicans on Thursday sent the chamber into recess, delaying further developments in the negotiations. “I don’t know what to think,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin Sunday ...

France’s long-term plans to cut debt and deficit are built on optimistic economic assumptions and lack ambition when compared to other EU countries, the country’s fiscal watchdog said on Monday. In preparation for the 2024 budget bill to be presented on Wednesday, the government cut its 2024 growth forecast to 1.4% from 1.6% earlier this month, but otherwise largely left its long-term budget planning forecasts unchanged. After reviewing the updated forecasts, the High Council for Public Finances said the 1.35% average growth expected by the government over the 2023-2027 period ...

JP Morgan’s move add India to its widely tracked emerging market debt index will have far-reaching economic benefits for the country, financial experts say. The move is anticipated to bring down the cost of borrowing for the government, support the Indian rupee and bond markets, improve the country’s credit rating, and help boost economic growth in Asia’s third-largest economy, as billions of dollars of foreign investment are projected to flow into the country, they say. JP Morgan, the largest bank in the US, last week said that India’s local bonds ...

Inflation staying stuck above the Fed’s 2% target remains a greater risk than tight central bank policy slowing the economy more than needed to bring the pace of price increases under control, Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee said on Monday. “The risk of inflation staying higher than where we want it is the bigger risk,” Goolsbee said in comments on CNBC. “We have got to get inflation back down to target…We ought to have 100% commitment.” Goolsbee said the Fed would need to “play by ear” whether any further rate ...