Headlines

Ghana expects the International Monetary Fund's board to approve a $3 billion loan by the end of the second quarter of 2023, Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta said in a presentation on Thursday, Reuters reported. The embattled West African country secured a staff-level agreement with the IMF for the $3 billion support package in December. But the Fund requires bilateral lenders to provide assurances they will restructure its debt as a condition of signing off on the loan.

Switzerland's parliament rejected on Wednesday the government's 109 billion Swiss francs ($120.82 billion) aid for Credit Suisse's merger with UBS, leaving the fallen bank's hastily arranged rescue without a largely symbolic parliamentary blessing, Reuters reported. While the upper house had approved the government's contribution to the rescue package, parliament's lower, and larger chamber, pushed back again on Wednesday. It had already rejected the proposals in a late night session on Tuesday, forcing the upper house to find a solution when it met again on Wednesday.

Ecuador is in talks with the International Monetary Fund for a credit line of as much as $1 billion after the nation was hit by an earthquake, flooding and a landslide in recent weeks, Bloomberg News reported. The government has its financing needs covered for the year, but is seeking additional support to fund disaster relief after the series of natural calamities, Finance Minister Pablo Arosemena said Wednesday, in an interview in Washington D.C. “We don’t need the money right this second,” Arosemena said.

Zimbabwe will hold talks with the US, UK and the European Union to end an impasse over $14 billion owed to external creditors as it seeks to shore up funding for development programs, Bloomberg News reported. The southern African nation has been locked out of international capital markets since defaulting on payments to the World Bank and other multilateral lenders more than two decades ago.

South Africa needs to urgently fix energy, transport and security challenges if it is to reverse souring investor sentiment, executives said on Thursday as President Cyril Ramaphosa targets 2 trillion rand ($111 billion) in new investments over the next five years, Reuters reported. Executives were speaking at the South African Investment Conference in Johannesburg, launched by Ramaphosa in 2018 as a way to boost economic activity that had been in decline for over a decade in Africa's most advanced but struggling economy.

Brazil's Finance Minister Fernando Haddad said on Thursday that the central bank has an opportunity to lower interest rates to help boost economic growth as fiscal and monetary policies are converging, Reuters reported. "I want to believe that the central bank has a window of opportunity that I hope will be taken advantage of so that Brazil can think about economic and sustainable growth," Haddad told journalists in China, where he is accompanying President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on a high-profile visit.

The Bank of Mexico's governing board struck a more dovish tone at its March 29 monetary policy meeting, with board members discussing the possibility that the bank's rate-hiking cycle may have reached its end, minutes from the meeting showed Thursday, Reuters reported. Banxico, as the Mexican central bank is known, hiked its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 11.25% at that meeting, moderating the pace of a tightening cycle that began in mid-2021.

Legal and professional services firm Ince Group Plc plans to enter administration and pursue a sale of the company, it said on Wednesday, amid cash concerns and repeated delays in reporting its financial results, Reuters reported. Ince's directors applied to London's High Court on Wednesday to appoint administrators under UK insolvency law in relation to the company and four subsidiaries, court filings show. Trading in Ince on London's Alternative Investment Market was suspended from Jan. 3 following delays in publishing the company's annual report for the year ending Mar. 31, 2022.

Switzerland’s lower house made a second symbolic vote against providing state guarantees for UBS Group AG’s takeover of Credit Suisse Group AG, reflecting a high degree of public discontent with the deal, Bloomberg News reported. The lower house voted against a compromise offered by the upper house, leading to a failure of the bill and ending parliamentary proceedings. Irrespective of the vote, parliament can’t stop the takeover negotiated last month. Lawmakers on Wednesday couldn’t agree on what restrictions should be imposed on large banks after the historic government-brokered takeover.

China is softening its stance over how to restructure billions of dollars of debt held by poor nations, offering a glimmer of progress in long-stalled talks over unlocking desperately needed aid, Bloomberg News reported. Discussions under way Wednesday in Washington during the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Spring Meetings were aimed at ending a deadlock among the biggest creditor nations on how to renegotiate poorer nations’ debt, which had become unsustainable amid surging inflation and a stronger dollar.