Headlines

China's central bank made the biggest daily cash injection into the banking system via open market operations in nearly three months on Monday, to ease pressure from rising cash demand towards the end of the first half of the year, Reuters reported. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) injected 100 billion yuan ($14.95 billion) worth of seven-day reverse repos, the biggest daily injection via the liquidity tool since March 31. The central bank said the operation was to keep "half year-end liquidity stable," according to an online statement.

From Sydney to Washington to Zurich, major central banks have stepped up the pace of interest-rate increases in recent weeks, reflecting concerns that inflation isn’t retreating as expected, the Wall Street Journal reported. The world’s central banks must raise interest rates sharply, even if it significantly hurts growth, the institution known as the central banks’ central bank warned on Sunday. If they don’t, the world risks a 1970s-style inflationary spiral, the Bank for International Settlements said in its annual report.

Costa Rica has told the International Monetary Fund (IMF) it is interested in obtaining a nearly $700 million loan to invest in infrastructure from a newly created fund, the Central Bank said, Reuters reported. Costa Rican authorities told the IMF that the country aims to be the first to secure financing from the IMF's Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST), announced in April, the Central Bank told Reuters on Friday.

Zimbabwe’s central bank raised interest rates to a record and the government officially reintroduced the US dollar as legal currency to rein in surging inflation and stabilize the nation’s tumbling exchange rate, Bloomberg News reported. The monetary policy committee more than doubled the key rate to 200% from 80%, Governor John Mangudya said in a statement on Monday. That brings the cumulative increase this year to 14,000 basis points -- the most globally. “The monetary policy committee expressed great concern on the recent rise in inflation,” Mangudya said.

France’s public finances have reached an “alert level” amid rising interest rates, surging inflation and dwindling growth, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said, Bloomberg News reported. The candid warning comes as President Emmanuel Macron’s government seeks to negotiate a revised 2022 budget with opposition parties after he lost his majority at the National Assembly in elections earlier this month. “Not everything is possible, quite simply because we have reached an alert level for public finances,” Le Maire said on BFM TV Monday.

Turkey stepped up efforts to bolster the lira and cool lending with a surprise measure that bans loans to companies deemed to be flush with foreign-exchange cash, sending the domestic currency on its biggest rally this year, Bloomberg News reported. The country’s banking regulator is restricting commercial lira loans to corporate borrowers if they hold more than 15 million liras ($890,000) in foreign-currencies and if the amount exceeds 10% of total assets or annual sales. The authority, known as BDDK, announced the decision on Friday.

Struggling Japanese auto parts supplier Marelli Holdings said Friday it has filed with Tokyo District Court for a simplified bankruptcy protection procedure under Japan’s civil rehabilitation law, the Japan Times reported. Marelli, based in the city of Saitama, is saddled with liabilities totaling ¥1.133 trillion, which makes it the second largest failure of a Japanese manufacturer since World War II only to now-defunct Takata, which left ¥1.5 trillion, according to Tokyo Shoko Research.

The European Central Bank will take the required steps to tame undesirably high inflation, President Christine Lagarde told European leaders on Friday, Bloomberg News reported. Attending a summit of European Union leaders in Brussels, she explained how the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is weighing on the euro area’s growth because of high energy costs, uncertainty and supply bottlenecks.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government will press ahead on Monday with legislation to scrap rules on post-Brexit trade with Northern Ireland, setting up further clashes with the European Union, Reuters reported. The legislation, which would unilaterally replace parts of the post-Brexit deal that was agreed in 2020 by Britain and the EU, is due to be sent back to parliament's lower house for a so-called second reading.

South Africa’s government and national airline are being sued by a little-known investment firm, which wants the sale of a majority stake in the carrier scrapped and re-run due to a lack of transparency, Bloomberg News reported. This year’s acquisition of 51% of South African Airways by the Takatso Consortium -- made up of a local jet-leasing company and a private-equity firm -- for just $3 was “unlawful and constitutionally invalid,” according to documents filed at the High Court in Cape Town by Toto Investment Holdings Pty Ltd.