High energy prices and high inflation are hitting Sweden's businesses hard. With energy price subsidies for these consumers delayed, the government is now extending existing tax deferral schemes implemented during the pandemic to ease the pressure. Swedish Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson and Energy and Business Minister Ebba Busch announced the scheme on Dec. 29. “Many, many companies are now struggling with their liquidity,” Svantesson said.
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Resources Per Country
- Albania
- Austria
- Belarus
- Belgium
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
- Croatia
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Gibraltar
- Greece
- Guernsey
- Hungary
- Iceland
- Ireland
- Isle of Man
- Italy
- Jersey
- Kosovo
- Latvia
- Liechtenstein
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Macedonia
- Malta
- Moldova
- Monaco
- Montenegro
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Russia
- San Marino
- Serbia
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom
- Vatican City
German inflation slowed more than anticipated in December after the government paid some households’ gas bills for the month, offering a temporary respite in the country’s cost-of-living crisis, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer-price growth at 9.6% was the weakest since August. Economists anticipated 10.2%, according to the median of 20 forecasts. The decline to single digits in the main rate masks an increase in food costs across Germany at the end of 2022, aggravating a squeeze on the poorest families and stoking the risk of a wage-price spiral.
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German unemployment fell in December, Labour Office figures showed on Tuesday, with the labour market overall being only moderately affected by the war in Ukraine last year, Reuters reported. The Federal Labour Office said the number of people out of work decreased by 13,000 in seasonally adjusted terms to 2.52 million. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected that figure to rise by 15,000. The seasonally adjusted jobless rate remained stable at 5.5%.
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The number of people registering as jobless in Spain fell slightly in December from a month earlier, ending 2022 at a 15-year low, data from the Labour Ministry showed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The number of jobless fell by 1.52%, or by 43,727 people, leaving 2.84 million people out of work. It is the lowest rate since 2007, when 2.2 million were out of work. "This data shows that labour protection measures are working," Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz said in a post on Twitter.
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Spanish retail sales fell 0.6% in November from a year earlier on a seasonally and calendar-adjusted basis, after rising 1.0% in October, the National Statistics Institute (INE) said on Thursday, Reuters reported. As shoppers grapple with the rising cost of living exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, food sales in Spain recorded an annual decrease of 3.6% in November, INE said. Meanwhile, sales of other goods grew 0.5% year-on-year.
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The Russian rouble pared losses to gain on Thursday after slumping to an eight-month low against the dollar in early trade, struggling under the weight of expectations that sanctions on Russian oil and gas may limit export revenues, Reuters reported. Despite recovering ground in another volatile session, the rouble has still lost more than 13% to the dollar since a Western price cap on Russian oil exports came into force on Dec. 5. By 0957 GMT, the rouble was 0.8% stronger against the dollar at 71.64 , having earlier touched 72.9175, its weakest since April 27.
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Ministers are urging the chancellor to provide £300m of taxpayers' money to avert the closure of British Steel’s two blast furnaces – a move that would trigger the loss of thousands of industrial jobs in northern England. Sky News has learnt that Grant Shapps, the business secretary, and Michael Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wrote to Jeremy Hunt this month to warn that the demise of British Steel could cost the government up to £1bn in decommissioning and other liabilities.
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A Swiss court has granted a six-month “stay of bankruptcy” to the operating company for the never-opened Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was built to bring Russian gas to Germany but put on ice shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, ABC News reported. The company's stay was extended from Jan. 10 through July 10 by a regional court in the Swiss canton (state) of Zug, according to a notice published Wednesday in the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce. Nord Stream 2 AG, a subsidiary of Russia’s Gazprom, is based in Zug.
Crypto miner Argo Blockchain said on Wednesday it will sell its mining facility Helios for $65 million and refinance a new asset-backed loan as it seeks to avoid bankruptcy, sending its London-listed shares soaring, Reuters reported. Argo, which earlier this month warned that it might have to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection due to insufficient cash, said the deals will allow the company to continue its operations.
The head of Russia's state-controlled airline Aeroflot called on the Russian government to "balance the interests" of Russian and foreign airlines in order to support the domestic aviation sector, in an interview with Russian news site RBC published on Wednesday, Reuters reported. In the interview, Aeroflot CEO Sergei Alexandrovsky said it is "important that the state balances the interests of Russian and international carriers.