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For households trying to balance their budget each month, the fact that European countries are incurring trillion-euro debts is dizzying, the New York Times reported. In France alone, the national debt has topped 2.7 trillion euros ($3.2 trillion) and will soon exceed 120 percent of the economy. But governments are far from worried about piling up debt right now, as rock-bottom interest rates empower them to spare no expense to shield their economies from the pandemic. Billions of euros are being deployed to nationalize payrolls, suppress bankruptcies and avoid mass unemployment.
Ryanair on Wednesday lost its fight against the state aid granted to rivals including Air France and Sweden’s SAS after a top European court said such schemes were not discriminatory amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters reported. The judgment from the Luxembourg-based General Court is the first to deal with aid measures cleared by the European Commission under easier rules aimed at helping European Union governments prop up companies hit by the health crisis. The court said the French and Swedish schemes were in line with the bloc’s rules.
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Mexican airline Aeromexico, which is undergoing a chapter 11 restructuring process, on Tuesday posted a loss in the fourth quarter of last year, taking yet another hit from the coronavirus pandemic’s drain on global tourism, Reuters reported. The company reported a net loss of 9.72 billion pesos ($487 million) in the October to December period, with passenger capacity down nearly 48% from the same quarter a year earlier. It also reported losses in the first three quarters of 2020, including a slimmer loss of $130 million in the prior period.
South Africa’s High Court ruled that Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. can recover 10 billion rand ($681 million) from consumers, enabling the state power utility to raise electricity tariffs by 16%, Bloomberg News reported. The ruling comes after Eskom and the National Energy Regulator of South Africa reached an agreement on the matter, the regulator said in an emailed statement Tuesday. It comes as Nersa appeals a ruling in July 2020 that enables Eskom to boost revenue by 69 billion rand over the next three years.
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Canada’s annual inflation rate accelerated more than expected in January, data from Statistics Canada showed on Wednesday, and could continue to rise in coming months compared with the low levels reached a year ago during the first COVID-19 lockdowns, Reuters reported. Canada’s inflation rate accelerated to 1.0% in January on higher durable good and gasoline prices, up from a year-on-year increase of 0.7% in December, and beating analyst expectations of 0.9%.
British inflation edged up in January as locked-down consumers paid more for food and sellers of furniture and other household goods offered smaller-than-usual New Year discounts to people seeking to spruce up their homes, the Irish Times reported. The annual 0.7 per cent increase in consumer prices is expected to gather speed in the coming months – pushed up by the end of an emergency tax break and possibly the impact of Brexit – and might go above the Bank of England’s 2.0 per cent target this year.
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Italy’s new prime minister, Mario Draghi, appealed on Wednesday for unity and sacrifice as the country pushes forward with vaccinations and seeks to seize on a $240 billion European relief package to overhaul the economy and address persistent inequalities, the New York Times reported. In his first speech as head of government, Mr. Draghi addressed the Italian Senate for an hour through a white mask before a confidence vote for a broad unity government that he is assured to win.
A 70-year-old New Zealand planemaker has had its Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) certificates suspended after declaring it’s now insolvent, Australian Aviation reported. Pacific Aerospace, which employs 100 people in Hamilton on the North Island, manufactures aircraft popular for skydiving and the aerial application of fertiliser.
South African Airways (SAA) has received a further 5 billion rand ($346 million) from the Department of Public Enterprises to help make severance payments to laid-off staff as part of its rescue plan, administrators of the plan said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. SAA entered a local form of bankruptcy protection in December 2019 after roughly a decade of financial losses, with its fortunes worsening after the COVID-19 pandemic grounded flights. The government committed to providing 10.5 billion rand to bailout the airline in October’s mid-term budget.
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Ryanair’s fight against state aid for airlines will put loosened EU rules to the test on Wednesday when the bloc’s second-highest court decides on support offered to Air France and SAS, Reuters reported. Under European Commission state aid rules loosened since the start of the pandemic, EU countries have offered more than 3 trillion euros ($3.65 trillion) in aid to companies in various sectors across the 27-member bloc. In its first judgments on those rules, the Luxembourg-based General Court will assess a French scheme allowing airlines to defer certain aeronautical taxes.
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