Headlines

China's cabinet issued rules on Tuesday to promote private businesses, including incentives for financial institutions to lend to them, in its latest move to support an economy facing multiple headwinds, Reuters reported. The rules aim to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of private businesses and expand employment, China's cabinet said in a notice published on its website. "Private businessmen are important market players, playing an important role in booming the economy and increasing employment." The Tuesday rules also banned abusive charges to the self-employed.
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Egypt will develop a new currency indicator partly to wean people off the idea that the Egyptian pound should be pegged to the U.S. dollar, the new central bank governor said on Sunday, Reuters reported. Hassan Abdalla, appointed in August, told an economic conference that the central bank was also working to introduce currency hedging and had already finished futures contracts as it revamps its currency trading system. The indicator would be based on a basket of several currencies and possibly gold, he said.
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BitOasis, a Middle East-focused cryptocurrency exchange based in the United Arab Emirates, said on Tuesday it had signed an agreement with Mastercard to launch payment cards linked to cryptocurrencies, they said in a joint statement, Reuters reported. The cards will allow BitOasis customers in the Middle East and North Africa to make purchases at points of sale or online, "thereby adding consumer protection - such as provisions for dispute resolution and refunds - which doesn't exist today when paying with a digital asset," the companies said.
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Italy is considering adjusting the way it evaluates the primary dealers responsible for trading its debt in order to incentivise them to trade at tighter bid-ask spreads, its debt management cheif said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Davide Iacovoni, director general of public debt at the economy and finance ministry, said that there were a number of things Italy was doing to improve liquidity in its debt markets, including repo market action and liability management.
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Private capital investors expect to increase their volume of dealmaking globally in the coming months, widening the chasm with moribund public markets, Bloomberg News reported. Two-thirds of 30 investment firms surveyed by UK investment bank Numis Securities Ltd. see an increase in the number of private companies raising capital in the next six months, according to Rachel Stott, an associate director on the bank’s growth capital solutions team. Respondents included Softbank Group Corp., Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst.
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Brazil's consumer prices returned to positive territory in the month to mid-October after two consecutive drops, government statistics agency IBGE said on Tuesday, ahead of a key central bank policy-setting meeting, Reuters reported. The IPCA-15 consumer price index came in ahead of expectations with a 0.16% increase, but economists do not expect the central bank to resume interest rate hikes at its meeting on Wednesday. In September, the Copom monetary policy committee chose to keep interest rates unchanged at 13.75%, pausing an aggressive monetary tightening cycle even as U.S.
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Former Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who warned that Liz Truss’ economic plans for Britain were a “fairy tale,” won the contest to succeed her as prime minister on Monday, taking over the world’s sixth-biggest economy at a time of deep financial and political turbulence, the Wall Street Journal reported. Mr. Sunak will formally enter Downing Street after his only remaining rival for the job, former defense minister Penny Mordaunt, said on Twitter she would drop out of the contest. “Rishi has my full support,” she wrote. Mr.
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Mexican annual inflation slowed more than expected in the first half of October but remained far above the central bank's target rate, data from national statistics agency INEGI showed on Monday, Reuters reported. Headline inflation in Latin America's second-largest economy inched down to 8.53% from 8.64% in the second half of September. "With the measures we're taking we are seeing a slowdown in inflation," President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told a news conference, pointing to a pact with retailers to contain prices of key food staples.
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Vietnam's central bank on Monday said it would raise its policy rates by 100 basis points, the second increase in a month, in what it said was an effort to head off inflation risks, maintain stability and protect its banking system, Reuters reported. Effective Tuesday, the refinancing rate will be increased to 6.0% and the discount rate to 4.5%, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) said in a statement.
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China’s economy expanded more strongly than expected in the third quarter as the country bounced back modestly from crippling Covid lockdowns in the spring, though challenges remain as leader Xi Jinping consolidates control over the political apparatus for another five years, the Wall Street Journal reported. China’s gross domestic product grew by 3.9% in the three months ended Sept. 30 from a year earlier, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said Monday in a data release that was unexpectedly delayed as Communist Party leaders gathered for a key meeting in Beijing.
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