Headlines

Thousands of small and medium-sized Cuban businesses will be allowed to incorporate in the coming months, in one of the most important economic reforms taken by the island's Communist government since it nationalized all enterprises in the 1960s, Reuters reported. The reform, details of which came to light this week, will permit small and medium-sized businesses for the first time since 1968, putting an end to the legal limbo in which many have existed for years in the Soviet-style economy.

Argentina’s central bank is making it harder for investors to buy dollars as the already draconian capital controls fail to stop the gap between the official and parallel exchange rates from widening, Bloomberg News reported. Regulators are tightening the screws on operations where investors buy assets in pesos and sell them abroad in dollars to obtain foreign currency. The measures, aimed at money laundering and tax evasion, were announced late Thursday. It’s the latest set of controls to prevent dollars flowing out of Argentina’s crippled economy.

When Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi returns from his brief summer break one of the thorniest items on his "to do" list will be finally fixing the woes of the world's oldest bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), Reuters reported. The Tuscan lender's decline has tarnished Draghi's record ever since 2008 when, as Bank of Italy chief, he approved its purchase of rival Antonveneta at an inflated price that analysts say contributed to its financial meltdown.

Over six months after Laurentian entered insolvency proceedings, the Sudbury, Ont., university has published a draft framework for claims to be submitted by faculty, staff and employees affected by restructuring — but one of the parties says the details aren't finalized and negotiations are ongoing, CBC reported. All parties are due before a judge next on Tuesday for a discussion on the compensation methodology.

Indonesia's trade surplus is expected to show an expansion in July after the government imposed mobility restrictions to control a spike in COVID-19 cases, squeezing exports and imports, a Reuters poll showed on Friday. Southeast Asia's biggest economy has been enjoying an export boom on the back of high commodity prices, allowing for a trade surplus every month since May of 2020. The median forecast of 10 analysts in the poll was for a July trade surplus of $2.27 billion, up from the previous month's $1.32 billion.

China is halting private equity funds from raising money to invest in residential property developments, turning off the spigot on one of the last stable funding resorts for the struggling sector, Bloomberg News reported. The government-endorsed Asset Management Association of China, or AMAC, has verbally informed private equity firms it would no longer be accepting the required registrations to set up funds to invest in projects. Applications that have already been made would also be denied, while existing funds wouldn’t be affected.

Thousands of small and medium Kuwaiti businesses could go to the wall after being walloped by the pandemic, potentially torpedoing a private sector central to the country's efforts to remake its unorthodox and oil-pumped economy, Reuters reported. The government, which spends more than half of its annual budget on the salaries of Kuwaitis who mostly work in state jobs, has encouraged citizens to set up their own businesses over the past decade in an effort to engineer a private sector.

Britain's economy grew by a faster-than-expected 1.0% in June, the first full month of indoor service for many hospitality firms, and also helped by the healthcare sector due to a rise in routine medical checkups after the pandemic, Reuters reported. But the official data showed British gross domestic product remained 2.2% smaller than it was immediately before the pandemic struck the country, a reminder of the damage done by Britain's long coronavirus lockdowns last year.

Congestion off China's top two container ports Shanghai and Ningbo is worsening following the shutdown of a container terminal in Ningbo where a COVID-19 case was detected this week, Reuters reported. Tighter restrictions to fight China's latest coronavirus outbreak are starting to hit more parts of the economy. The highly transmissable Delta variant has been detected in more than a dozen cities since late July. Forty container vessels were waiting at the outer Zhoushan anchorage on Thursday, up from 30 on Aug.

Japanese wholesale prices rose in July at their fastest annual pace in 13 years, data showed on Thursday, a sign that global commodity inflation and a weak yen were pushing up raw material import costs for a broad range of goods, Reuters reported. There is uncertainty, however, on whether companies will start to pass on the higher costs to households and prop up consumer inflation, which remains stuck around zero due to weak consumption, unlike in other advanced nations, analysts say.