Headlines

The pace of job creation is slowing in Canada, hammered by the sharp rise in interest rates, but that is yet to hold back companies from hiring as they face a tight labour market that has pushed the unemployment rate to a record low, Reuters reported. Statistics Canada is set to release its latest jobs data on Friday, and a Reuters poll forecast employment in July to rise by a net 20,000 jobs, with the unemployment rate ticking up to 5% from 4.9% after 43,200 jobs were lost in June.

Sri Lanka’s new president said Wednesday that his government is preparing a national policy roadmap for the next 25 years that aims to cut public debt and turn the country into a competitive export economy as it seeks a way out of its worst economic disaster, the Associated Press reported. President Ranil Wickremesinghe in his speech to Parliament said Sri Lanka needs long-term solutions and a strong foundation to stop a recurrence of economic crises.

The International Monetary Fund said it would work with Bangladesh to design a loan program request in coming months that meets the country's economic and social dynamics and has "safeguards" in the event of a further deterioration in economic conditions, Reuters reported. In a revised statement of support for Bangladesh's request for a loan from the new IMF Resilience and Sustainability Trust, the Fund said that work on an RST loan will proceed as the new trust is being made operational.

European banks are hoping the boost to their businesses from higher interest rates will be long-lasting as they navigate the economic fallout of war, soaring inflation, and a looming energy crisis, Reuters reported. The German lender Commerzbank on Wednesday reported a bigger-than-expected second-quarter net profit that it said was especially helped by higher interest rates.

The three-month London interbank offered rate for dollars climbed to a nearly 14-year high as traders brace for steady interest-rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, backing away from speculation the central bank will ease up as the economy shows signs of cooling, Bloomberg News reported. The Libor rate rose for the fourth straight session, climbing roughly 2.5 basis points to 2.83%, the highest since November 2008. The spread of Libor over overnight index swaps was slightly narrower at around 17.3 basis points.

Mexico's COVID-battered aviation sector has benefitted from a robust reactivation of travel, but analysts fear its takeoff could be soon shaken by recession in the United States, Reuters reported. Profits of air terminal operators in Mexico's most important tourist destinations grew strongly last quarter, thanks to solid traffic numbers for both domestic and international passengers. "Aviation has had a surprising recovery," said Pablo Casas, director of the National Institute of Aeronautical Legal Research (INIJA).

With inflation hurtling toward triple digits and, economists say, just a policy mistake or two away from setting the stage for hyperinflation, Argentina's central bank is desperately trying to avert a peso devaluation that would only trigger another wave of price hikes, Bloomberg News reported. Each day, the bank dispatches its traders to sell dollars and buy pesos that no one wants. On average, they’re burning through $60 million a day. For now, that’s kept the peso mostly steady in the primary foreign-exchange market.

China’s steel industry is entering a precarious new era as a worsening property crisis imperils demand and Beijing’s construction-led growth model looks increasingly untenable. Almost a third of China’s steel mills could go into bankruptcy in a squeeze that’s likely to last five years, Li Ganpo, founder and chairman of Hebei Jingye Steel Group, warned at a private company meeting in June. “The whole sector is losing money and I can’t see a turning point for now,” he said, according to a transcript of the gathering seen by Bloomberg News.

Chinese investors roughly doubled the number of applications they made last year seeking U.S. regulatory clearance for proposed stakes in American companies, according to a report the government plans to release on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The Treasury Department report seen by Reuters shows that Chinese investors filed 44 so-called "covered notices" seeking greenlights for their deals in U.S. President Joe Biden's first year in office compared to 17 such filings in 2020.

Asia crypto exchange Zipmex Pte plans to allow users to withdraw some tokens from their trading accounts, Bloomberg News reported. The exchange set a timeline for withdrawals of Solana’s SOL, Ripple’s XRP and Cardano’s ADA, from Zipmex’s Z Wallet. Larger coins including Bitcoin and Ether remain locked up, the company said in a statement.