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Greek public debt has significantly increased since last year reaching 193 percent of the country's GDP, the Express reported. Inflation for June was 11.6 percent, up from 10.5 percent in May last year. According to data from the Greek Statistical Service (ELSTAT), public debt increased by €13.417 billion (£11.4 bn) between Q1 2021 and Q2 2022. Public debt is now expected to exceed €357 billion (£303 bn). The worrying figure has alerted experts, who have warned that another collapse of the Greek economy could bring the whole eurozone down.
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Russia and Ukraine signed separate agreements Friday to reopen blockaded Ukrainian ports and allow grain exports to begin to flow, Axios reported. Ukraine is one of the world's top exporters of wheat, sunflower oil and other agricultural products. With those exports almost entirely blocked due to Russia's Black Sea blockade, the food crisis plaguing countries in Africa and elsewhere has deepened. The deal, which was brokered by the UN with the help of Turkey, would be in place for 120 days and can be renewed, UN officials said.
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Liberian Businessman Amos Brosius is requesting that Chief Justice Francis Korkpor make sure that his company’s US$3 million is returned by the Judiciary before Korkpor's retirement in September of this year, the Liberian Observer reported. The disputed US$3 million was placed in an escrow account at the Liberia Bank for Development and Investment (LBDI), managed by the Judiciary through the Commercial Court, after both Brosius and the Monrovia Oil Trading Company (MOTC) could not agree to the management of Ducor Petroleum Incorporated.
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Germany has finalized a plan to bail out struggling energy firm Uniper, Chancellor Olaf Scholz confirmed on Friday, Deutsche Welle reported. The wholesale gas and electricity importer is threatened with bankruptcy over skyrocketing energy prices from the Ukraine war. Scholz told a news conference in Berlin that the government will take a 30% stake in the energy firm. He added that his administration would make up to €7.7 billion ($7.8 billion) available as hybrid capital and expand a credit line to €9 billion through the state-run bank KfW.
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Taiwan’s financial exposure to Sri Lanka, which declared bankruptcy earlier this month, was NT$3 billion (US$100.28 million) as of the end of last month, with most of it in the banking and the asset-management sectors, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said in a meeting on Thursday, the Taipei Times reported. Ten local banks had loans totaling NT$350 million — NT$290 million to Sri Lankan companies and NT$60 million to the nation’s financial institutions — as of the end of last month, down 44.6 percent from a year earlier, a commission tally showed.
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Indonesia has launched a crackdown on peer-to-peer (P2P) lenders through a new regulation and capital requirements, in a move that industry sources say should help clean up a booming online lending sector beset by consumer complaints, Reuters reported. The rules, announced this month by Indonesia’s financial services authorities (OJK), set a minimum capital requirement for lenders at a 25 billion rupiah ($1.67 million), up from 1 billion rupiah previously, with an additional demand to maintain at least 12.5 billion rupiah of equity at all times. The regulation took effect on July 4.
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The European Central Bank raised interest rates Thursday for the first time in 11 years by a larger-than-expected amount, joining steps already taken by the U.S. Federal Reserve and other major central banks to target stubbornly high inflation, the Associated Press reported. The move raises new questions about whether the rush to make credit more expensive will plunge major economies into recession at the price of fighting inflation, which is forcing people to spend more on food, fuel and everything in between.
Sri Lankan lawmakers on Wednesday elected an unpopular prime minister as their new president, a choice that risked reigniting turmoil in the South Asian nation reeling from economic collapse and months of round-the-clock protests, the Associated Press reported. The crisis has already forced out one leader, and a few hundred protesters quickly gathered after the vote to express their outrage that Ranil Wickremesinghe — a six-time prime minister whom they see as part of the problematic political establishment — would stay in power.
Russian natural gas began flowing again at a reduced volume through a critical pipeline into Europe on Thursday, buying time for governments to decouple from the Kremlin’s exports amid what they expect will be an increasingly unreliable supply of energy from Moscow heading into the winter, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The number of Russian citizens who have declared bankruptcy and faced liquidation in the first half of 2022 rose by 37.8% over the same period from last year, a Russian Ministry of Economic Development report shows, the Egypt Independent reported. From January to the end of June, 121,313 Russian citizens filed for bankruptcy and had their assets liquidated to pay off debts, the report stated. Among them, the largest number of bankruptcy declarations were from Moscow at more than 6,000 individuals, followed by the region surrounding the capital, with more than 5,600.