Headlines

The European Union is trying to speed up efforts to deepen its relationship with Egypt and help the country address the growing fallout from the Israel-Hamas conflict on its border, Bloomberg News reported. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is planning to visit Cairo soon to advance efforts to support Egypt’s economic development and cushion the impact of the ongoing crisis, people familiar with the matter said.

Office workers are not the only ones grumbling about the unattractiveness of Qianhai, a special economic zone where Chinese dreams of global financial might and economic prosperity that once seemed inevitable are now darkened by half-empty skyscrapers and shopping malls as well as barely used motorways, Reuters reported. This Shenzhen appendix opened for business more than a decade ago after an initial investment of $45 billion, with state media calling it mainland China's own Hong Kong: a future international tech and finance hub; a testbed for liberalising markets and information access.

Germany’s top court struck down a key element of the government’s plans to address climate change and transform the economy, dealing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition a major setback that throws its budget policy into disarray, Bloomberg News reported. The Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the shifting of €60 billion ($65.2 billion) earmarked to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic into an off-budget fund violated German constitutional law.

Some of the major banks in the world expect global economic growth to slow further in 2024, squeezed by elevated interest rates, higher energy prices and a slowdown in the world's two largest economies, Reuters reported. The global economy is forecast to grow 2.9% this year, a Reuters poll showed, with next year's growth seen slowing to 2.6%. Most economists expect the global economy to avoid a recession, but have flagged possibilities of "mild recessions" in Europe and the UK.

It was one of very few economies to get a boost from the Covid-19 pandemic. That unusual dividend is now unraveling, in a fresh blow to Europe’s already weakened growth outlook, the Wall Street Journal reported. Home to large U.S. technology and pharmaceutical companies that saw their sales boom during the pandemic, tiny Ireland recorded annual growth of 10.5% on average between 2020 and 2022 while other economies contracted under the effect of lockdowns. No other country grew as fast during this time apart from smaller Guyana, which enjoyed an oil boom.

Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund reached a much-awaited preliminary agreement Wednesday for the release of $700 million from a $3 billion bailout fund approved by the international lender in July, the Associated Press reported. The standby credit fund is meant to save cash-strapped Pakistan from default. The two sides reached the staff-level agreement during talks in Islamabad, a statement from the IMF said. Pakistan's government also confirmed the deal and and hailed it.

Zambia's official creditors including China rejected a deal the country struck with its international bondholders because they believed its "base case" scenario did not deliver debt relief comparable to what they offered in a separate deal, two sources familiar with the talks said, Reuters reported. Official creditors said the agreement in principle, which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also rejected, did not comply with "Comparability of Treatment", said the sources, who declined to be identified as the discussions are private.

Singapore awarded a batch of in-principle license approvals to stablecoin issuers, intensifying the competition among Asian financial hubs for a slice of a key crypto segment with a market value of $127 billion, Bloomberg News reported. The approvals for Paxos Digital Singapore Pte and StraitsX open up a pathway for issuing such tokens under regulatory oversight. Stablecoins are typically pegged 1-1 to major currencies and backed by reserves like cash and bonds.

Canadian home sales fell in October by the most in 16 months as higher borrowing costs continued to keep buyers on the sidelines, data from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) showed on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Canadian home sales fell 5.6% in October from September, the fourth straight month of declines and the biggest since June 2022. On an annual basis, without adjustment for seasonal variation, sales were up 0.9%. "We're only in November, but it appears many would-be home buyers have already gone into hibernation," Larry Cerqua, Chair of CREA, said in a statement.

Inflation in Britain slowed last month, bringing the rate to its lowest level in two years, in a welcome easing of stubborn price pressures, the New York Times reported. Consumer prices rose 4.6 percent in October from a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday, down from 6.7 percent in the previous month. Last year, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made wholesale energy prices soar, but price caps on bills in Britain meant that households felt these increases with a lag. The same has been true as wholesale prices have dropped this year.