Headlines

President Christine Lagarde reiterated that the European Central Bank intends to raise borrowing costs by another half-point next month, Bloomberg News reported. “In view of the underlying inflation pressures we intend to raise interest rates by another 50 basis points at our next meeting in March,” Lagarde told European Union lawmakers in Strasbourg. “We will then evaluate the subsequent path of our monetary policy,” she said Wednesday evening. Despite three months of moderating inflation, ECB officials are hammering home the message that the battle with soaring prices is not yet won.

Peru's economy slowed down for the second month in a row, missing forecasts for the last month of 2022, figures from the national statistics institute showed on Wednesday, as the country faces a wave of social unrest that began early December, Reuters reported. The Andean nation's gross domestic product (GDP) rose 0.86% year-on-year in the month, while economists expected a 1.25% expansion, according to the median forecast in a Reuters poll. Protests have rocked the world's No. 2 copper producing country, since the December 7 removal and arrest of former President Pedro Castillo.

Colombia’s steep growth slowdown late last year combined with large data revisions showed its economy is weaker than initially thought, posing a challenge for policymakers who are still grappling with the fastest inflation in over two decades, Bloomberg News reported. Gross domestic product expanded 2.9% in the fourth quarter from the previous year and 0.7% from the prior quarter, the statistics agency said Wednesday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expected year-on-year growth of 3.8%.

Credit Suisse Group AG is exiting distressed debt and special-situations trading, as part of its broader exit from risky and capital-intensive businesses, Bloomberg News reported. The bank is selling a book of assets including bond and loan positions related to distressed companies, with a market value of about $250 million, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Final commitments from bidders are due this week after the portfolio was put up for sale in December.

World Bank President David Malpass will step down at the end of June after more than four years leading the multilateral development bank "to pursue new challenges," Malpass and the bank said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. It was not immediately clear why Malpass, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, would depart with less than a year before the end of a five-year term. "Having made much progress, and after a good deal of thought, I’ve decided to pursue new challenges," Malpass said in a statement.

China must stop taking positions that block debt relief to some of the world’s poorest nations and be willing to take losses on its loans to them, India said in its capacity as the current Group of 20 leader, Bloomberg News reported. “China needs to come out openly and say what their debt is and how to settle it,” said Amitabh Kant, the sherpa for India during its presidency of the G20 this year. “It can’t be that the International Monetary Fund takes a haircut and it goes to settle Chinese debt. How is that possible?

Brazil’s largest publicly-traded banks have set aside 9.3 billion reais ($1.8 billion) for potential losses tied to the collapse of retailer Americanas SA, which is adding to an increasingly complicated credit environment in the South American nation, Bloomberg News reported. While banks didn’t specifically name the retailer as the company responsible for higher provisions in their earnings statements, the impact of the firm’s sudden downfall after uncovering 20 billion reais in accounting “inconsistencies” last month is clear to see in fourth-quarter results.

Argentina’s inflation sped up more than expected in January as price controls prove ineffective, further complicating the government’s strategy ahead of presidential elections later this year, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices rose 98.8% from a year earlier, more than the 98.6% median forecast from economists in a Bloomberg survey. Prices gained 6% from December, the second straight month of faster increases, according to government data published Tuesday. Higher costs of recreation, housing and communication propelled increases in January on a monthly basis.

The International Monetary Fund's strategy director on Tuesday said the goal of a new sovereign debt panel of creditors and borrowers due to meet on Friday is to try to reach understandings on common standards, principles and definitions for how to restructure distressed country debts, Reuters reported. Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, director of the IMF's Strategy, Policy and Review Department, told reporters that the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable does not intend to discuss country-specific debt restructuring issues, but to address some of the broader impediments that have been delaying such relief.

European Union finance ministers started talks on Tuesday on reforming the EU's fiscal rules to adjust them to post-pandemic realities of high debt and large investment needs, with a view to a deal in March, Reuters reported. Some EU diplomats say an agreement might take longer, however, because of opposition from Germany and other northern European countries to European Commission proposals to negotiate individual debt reduction paths with each government, rather than have a single rule for all, as now.