Headlines

Portugal's government said on Sunday its EU and IMF lenders had concluded work on the latest bailout review, indicating there were no outstanding obstacles for Lisbon to receive the next 2 billion euro tranche of the rescue package, Reuters reported. The review, which had been practically sealed in March, hit a snag early last month when the constitutional court threw out some of this year's austerity measures. But the government presented a plan to compensate for those, along with wider deficit reduction steps until 2015 worth 4.8 billion euros.

Dubai Group, an investment company owned by Dubai's ruler, has agreed to a $10 billion debt restructuring with its main bank creditors after three years of talks, potentially lifting a cloud of uncertainty that has engulfed the emirate since the financial crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported. If it goes through as expected, the restructuring will be a major step in the broader reorganization of Dubai's government companies in the wake of the financial crisis, analysts say.

Slovenia pledged to sell 15 state firms and raise VAT on Thursday in a desperate bid to avoid an international bailout, but gave little detail and delayed the spending cuts investors say are needed to stabilise its finances, Reuters reported. The much-anticipated package offered no timeframe for the sell-off of state firms including the country's second largest bank, its biggest telecoms operator and the national airline. Nor did it say how much they were worth. It also said cuts to the public sector wage bill would have to await the outcome of negotiations with unions.

Canadians keep getting new credit cards. And, despite all the worries about record-high household debt, they keep paying them off, The Wall Street Journal Real Time Canada blog reported. Overall consumer credit, excluding mortgages, has grown robustly in the years since 2009, but delinquency and default rates have remained at low levels, according to credit-card data released Thursday by credit rater Equifax and Moody's Analytics.

Extra efforts to engage with the unemployed to get them back to work are required, according to the EU/IMF troika after its latest visit to Ireland, the Irish Times reported. The troika also says that strict implementation of this year’s budget is essential to keep the country on track to exit the bailout. In a statement today on its tenth review of the implementation of the bailout programme the troika said significant progress had been made but remaining challenges required continuing policy efforts.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is to announce next month his much-anticipated strategy for economic growth, has quietly put aside plans to overhaul a rigid labor system that is blamed for many of the woes facing once-dominant Japanese corporations, The Wall Street Journal reported. Mr. Abe touts the growth program as indispensable to turning recent improvements in the economy into sustainable growth, and says that part of this effort must involve changing entrenched labor practices.

Bailed-out Portugal added to the unemployment woes of southern Europe on Thursday as the country's jobless rate hit a startling 18% of the working population, The Guardian reported. The first quarter figures from the national statistics institute revealed that youth unemployment had soared even higher, with 43% of the under 25s who are not studying now unable to find work. "It is a dramatic and brutal increase," said Helena Pinto, a deputy for the Left Bloc party, who also pointed to a leap in emigration by people desperate to find work.

Mexico's government proposed a sweeping overhaul of the banking sector Wednesday to make credit cheaper and more available, a move desperately needed in a country where bank loans represent less than 20 percent of GDP - one-tenth the level seen in the United States, the Associated Press reported. The plan would encourage banks to compete and lend more, create incentives for mid-size companies to list shares on the stock market, and modify bankruptcy laws to make it easier for lenders to seize debtors' assets.

Hungary should bring in personal insolvency legislation to help to deal with bad debts left over from the country's property boom, a senior official from Hungary's central bank said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. "For non-performing (loans) at the moment there is no efficient programme in place," Marton Nagy, managing director at the National Bank of Hungary, said at a business conference. He said there was no mechanism currently to deal with borrowers' entire debt.

Global youth unemployment is set to continue growing over the next five years, putting a generation at risk of lasting damage to their earnings potential and job prospects throughout their lives, the International Labour Organisation has warned, the Financial Times reported. The UN agency said in a report released on Wednesday that it expected the worldwide youth jobless rate to increase from 12.4 per cent last year to 12.8 per cent by 2018.