Headlines

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is working on a new aid package worth as much as €9.6 billion ($9.6 billion) to help families and businesses through the end of the year without widening the country’s deficit, Bloomberg News reported. The support being devised by the new premier, whose right-wing government was sworn in this week, will show initial continuity with the fiscal prudence of predecessor Mario Draghi before she then probably needs to resort to more borrowing in 2023.

The Bank of Canada announced a smaller-than-expected interest rate hike on Wednesday and made clear more increases were still needed, even as it forecast the economy could soon slip into a slight recession, Reuters reported. The central bank increased its policy rate by half a percentage point to 3.75%, a 14-year high but coming up short on calls for another 75 basis points move. It has lifted rates by 350 basis points since March, one of its fastest tightening cycles ever.

Australian inflation raced to a 32-year high last quarter as the cost of home building and gas surged, a shock result that stoked pressure for a return to more aggressive rate hikes by the country's central bank, Reuters reported. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Wednesday showed the consumer price index (CPI) jumped 1.8% in the September quarter, topping market forecasts of 1.6%. The annual rate shot up to 7.3%, from 6.1%, the highest since 1990 and almost three times the pace of wage growth.

The World Bank on Wednesday said that it expects energy prices to decline by 11% in 2023 after this year's 60% surge following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, although slower global growth and COVID restrictions in China could lead to a deeper fall, Bloomberg News reported. The bank in its latest Commodity Markets Outlook projected a Brent crude average price of $92 a barrel in 2023, easing to $80 in 2024 but well above the five-year average of $60.

Major Chinese state-owned banks sold U.S. dollars in both onshore and offshore markets in late trade on Tuesday to prop up the weakening yuan, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. Such dollar selling comes as the Chinese currency is facing mounting downside pressure, with the onshore yuan hitting the weakest level since December 2007 and the value of yuan against currencies of its major trading partners at a five-month low. The selling of dollars by state banks in early U.S.

While Greece's economy is growing at nearly twice the euro zone rate this year thanks to a robust rebound in tourism, young people are increasingly being priced out of the property market due to the energy crisis and inflation, soaring rents and a scarce supply of small flats, Reuters reported. Rising rents and unaffordability of housing is a problem across many industrialised economies, but in Greece it is particularly acute as living standards and household wealth have already been crippled by the debt crisis that began in 2009 and the years of austerity that followed.

Makers of metals, chemicals and gasses said on Tuesday that the outlook for the final months of the year had worsened as concerns intensify that a surge in energy and raw material costs will shrink Europe's heavy industry, Reuters reported. French industrial gases company Air Liquide flagged slowing demand from some customers in Europe while Swedish steel maker SSAB said it will cut capacity in the fourth quarter as demand in Europe slows. It already cut construction-related volumes in the quarter to end-September.

On a market that seems to thrive as the courier firms capitalise on the rise of online commerce particularly coming from second-tier cities, independent courier firm Nemo Express entered insolvency at its request on October 21, shortly after one of the shareholders - operating leasing company Capital Fleet Services - pulled out, Profit.ro reported, according to Romania-Insider.com. Capital Fleet is also the largest on a list of some 25 creditors.

Ukraine's external financing needs will be around $3 billion a month through 2023 in a best-case scenario, but could rise as high as $5 billion if Russian bombing becomes "even more dramatic," IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said, Reuters reported. The International Monetary Fund is working with Ukrainian authorities to help define and implement the country's macroeconomic policies and what will be required to become a member of the European Union, as well as produce reliable financial projections, Georgieva told a conference in Berlin on Tuesday.

Banks in the euro zone would be required to provide 'instant payments' in the single currency 24/7 under draft European Union rules seen by Reuters. The EU wants to modernise payments so that money can be transferred from one account to another in seconds, at any time of the day or night, compared with existing card payments and direct deposits which can take up to several business days. The new rules form part of the bloc's policy of "fostering the development of competitive home-grown and pan-European market-based payments solutions" in a region where U.S.