Headlines

Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced new tax benefits for Pemex as the beleaguered state oil company seeks to reverse long-term production declines and reduce debt, Bloomberg News reported. Petroleos Mexicanos will get an additional 14% credit stimulus to apply to the taxes it pays on hydrocarbons capped at 73.3 billion pesos ($3.6 billion) for this year, according to a presidential decree. The new benefit comes in addition to previous measures that reduced Pemex’s profit-sharing duty from 65%, to 58% in 2020 and 54% in 2021, respectively.

German brewers have been forced to throw away unsold beer and have asked the government for financial aid as the coronavirus lockdown reduces demand, they said on Monday, Reuters reported. German pubs, hotels and restaurants have been closed since November in the country’s second lockdown following the first one earlier last year. The brewers called on the German government to give beer breweries aid under the country’s programmes to help industry recover from the impact of the coronavirus crisis. Germany’s government has given financial aid to pubs and bars but not breweries.

Petrobras shares plunged 21% on Monday, wiping out 70 billion reais ($12.7 billion) in market value, as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro again slammed its pricing policies after he replaced the state-controlled oil company’s market-friendly CEO with a retired army general, Reuters reported. The selloff, following a series of analyst downgrades, deepened after Bolsonaro said the company’s fuel policy was only pleasing to financial markets and select groups in Brazil and should be changed as part of an effort to lower gasoline and diesel prices.

Borrowers with higher debt burdens than the current Central Bank of Ireland’s rules allow are more likely to have sought payment breaks during the current crisis, the Irish Central Bank’s deputy governor Sharon Donnery has said, according to a Irish Times report. This was proof that the regulator’s mortgage lending rules had helped the financial sector “absorb rather than amplify the shock of the pandemic”, she said. The Central Bank’s rules curtail consumers to borrowing within strict loan-to-value (LTV) and loan-to-income (LTI) limits.

Airlines say they've already seen a surge in bookings, following the Prime Minister's announcement of the road map out of lockdown, BBC.com reported. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that a global travel taskforce would put forward a report on how to return to international travel on 12 April. The government would then make a decision on removing restrictions on international travel. However, this would not happen until 17 May at the earliest. Tui reported that they had had their best day of bookings in over a month, with strong interest in Greece, Spain and Turkey for the summer.