Headlines

Mexico’s programs and subsidies to tame inflation will cost the country almost 575 billion pesos ($28 billion) this year as the government tries to cap inflation that has spiked to the highest in over 21 years, Bloomberg News reported. Finance Minister Rogelio Ramirez de la O said Tuesday that the wide-ranging government programs used to contain price gains include gasoline and residential electricity subsidies for a total of 503 billion pesos on top of fertilizer handouts, measures to guarantee food supply and freezing highway tolls.

German retail sales fell at the largest annual rate since records began in 1994, highlighting the scale of the economic challenges facing the eurozone’s largest economy, the Financial Times reported. Retail sales volumes dropped 8.8 per cent in June compared with the same month last year, data from Destatis, the German office for national statistics, showed on Monday.

Maersk raised its 2022 profit guidance for a second time on Tuesday after beating quarterly revenue expectations as congested global supply chains that have boosted freight rates persist longer than expected, Reuters reported. The shipping industry has seen record profits in recent quarters due to a surge in consumer demand and pandemic-related logjams holding up containers in key ports in China, Europe and the United States. "Congestion in global supply chains leading to higher freight rates has continued longer than initially anticipated," Maersk said in a statement.

Australia’s central bank gave itself wriggle room to adjust the pace of interest-rate increases if the economic outlook deteriorates after delivering the sharpest policy tightening in a generation, Bloomberg News reported. “The board expects to take further steps in the process of normalizing monetary conditions over the months ahead, but it is not on a pre-set path,” Governor Philip Lowe said after hiking by 50 basis-points for a third straight month to 1.85%.

Economists downgraded their forecasts for Hong Kong’s economy, predicting it could contract for the third time in four years, after data Monday showed growth is being weighed down by Covid restrictions and a slump in trade, Bloomberg News reported. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. expects gross domestic product to decline 0.5% in 2022, down from an earlier prediction of 0.3% growth. Bloomberg Economics now sees GDP shrinking 0.6% compared with a previous projection of 0.7% expansion.

India’s trade deficit ballooned to a record high in July, as elevated commodity prices and a weak rupee inflated the country’s import bill, Bloomberg News reported. The gap between exports and imports widened to $31.02 billion in July, from $26.18 billion in June, B.V.R Subrahmanyam, India’s trade secretary, told reporters at a briefing in New Delhi Tuesday, citing preliminary data. The trade deficit in June was a record before the latest numbers were released. Imports jumped 43.59% in July from a year ago, while exports dropped 0.76%.

Embattled property developer China Evergrande Group said one of its units has been told to honor a $1.1 billion guarantee, revealing yet another large financial obligation that wasn’t previously disclosed, the Wall Street Journal reported. Evergrande, in a regulatory filing on Sunday, said one of its subsidiaries in China had provided counter guarantees to an unnamed entity by pledging its shares in Shengjing Bank Co., a regional lender based in the city of Shenyang, the capital of northeastern Liaoning province.

The Bank of England says it will act forcefully if needed to stop the surge in inflation from turning into a long-term problem, meaning it could deliver a rare half-percentage point interest rate rise as soon as this week, Reuters reported. Here are some of the things that Governor Andrew Bailey and his colleagues will be looking as they assess the persistence of inflation pressures ahead of their next scheduled monetary policy announcement at 1100 GMT on Thursday. Measures of inflation expectations and prices charged by companies have slowed recently but core pay has risen.

A deal to sell a majority stake in Thailand’s largest crypto exchange to the nation’s oldest bank remains stuck in due diligence more than eight months after the plan was unveiled, according to the platform’s co-founder, Bloomberg News reported. The proposal with SCB X Pcl that helped propel Bitkub Online Co. into a so-called unicorn has yet to be wrapped up, according to Jirayut Srupsrisopa, chief executive officer of Bitkub Capital Group Holdings.

New Economy Minister Sergio Massa is preparing a set of measures to address one of Argentina’s key problems: a chronic shortage of dollars that has caused the U.S. currency to soar in parallel exchange markets, Bloomberg News reported. Massa, who was named by President Alberto Fernandez last week as the head of an expanded and empowered economy ministry, is expected to unveil incentives to exporters as well as policies to attract more foreign investment and to capture additional tourism revenue, according to people with knowledge of the plan.