Headlines

Peru's economy grew 4.55% year on year in October, the government statistics agency INEI said on Wednesday, as the world's second-largest copper producer saw a slowdown in growth after the economy recovered to pre-pandemic levels, Reuters reported. The growth level is the lowest since March and in line with a forecast from the central bank, which said on Friday that economic growth was likely to have lost steam and grow between 4% and 6%. INEI added that Peru's economy had grown 15.99% in the first ten months of the year.

The signs of Turkey’s disastrous economy are all around. Long lines snake outside discounted bread kiosks. The prices of medicine, milk and toilet paper are soaring. Some gas stations have closed after exhausting their stock. Angry outbursts have erupted on the streets. “Unemployment, high living costs, price increases, and bills are breaking our backs,” the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions said last month.

With winter just beginning, European natural gas prices have once again reached record highs, as worries grow over potential supply disruptions because of tensions over Ukraine or from cold weather, the New York Times reported. “We are literally at the mercy of the weather for the next month or two,” said Henning Gloystein, an analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk firm. On Europe’s main trading hub for natural gas, the TTF in the Netherlands, futures are trading at their highest levels in more than a decade and are roughly eight times their value of a year ago.

Bulgaria's lawmakers voted on Wednesday to shield households from surging energy costs by freezing their electricity and heating prices at current levels in the European Union's poorest state, a move slammed by power distribution companies, Reuters reported. In the past, rising prices have sparked protests in the Balkan country, where poor households often struggle to pay winter bills. Bulgaria's independent energy regulator had been discussing raising electricity prices by an average of 11.5% and heating prices by up to 30% for households from Jan.

The Bank of Canada will likely need to lower rates to their effective lower bound (ELB) more often in the future and will therefore have to use alternative stimulus to a greater extent to tackle shocks, Governor Tiff Macklem said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Macklem, in a virtual speech to a business audience, said the low global interest rate environment meant the bank would have to rely on tools like forward guidance and quantitative easing more often going forward. "A lower neutral interest rate means we are likely to need to use these policy tools more often in the future.

Global debt surged to $226 trillion last year, its biggest one-year jump since World War Two, and will be put at risk if global interest rates rise faster than expected and growth falters, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. In a blog posting , IMF officials said the COVID-19 pandemic caused debt to hit 256% of global GDP in 2020, an increase of 28 percentage points. Government borrowing accounted for slightly over half of the $28 trillion increase, but private debt among non-financial corporations and households also hit new highs.

India on Wednesday approved a 13-billion-rupee ($170 million) plan to promote domestic RuPay debit cards and low-value digital transactions to boost their use in marginalised populations, in a move that could challenge the clout of rivals like Visa and Mastercard, Reuters reported. Under the plan, the government will pay banks a percentage of the value of transactions done via RuPay debit cards and low-value direct interbank transactions for a year, backdated to begin in April 2021, a government statement said.

Major British airlines on Monday called on the government to remove testing rules for vaccinated passengers and provide economic support for the battered sector, as new travel rules were imposed to fight off the Omicron coronavirus variant, Reuters reported. Britain currently requires all inbound travellers to take a pre-departure COVID-19 test and another test on arrival in England, despite their vaccination status, dealing a blow to airlines trying to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Delta Air Lines Inc. will invest $1.2 billion in partner carriers Virgin Atlantic, Aeromexico and Latam Airlines as the U.S. airline positions itself to capitalize on a rebound in international travel, Bloomberg News reported. Delta aims to build a 20% equity stake in Grupo Aeromexico SAB and a 10% position in Latam Airlines Group SA, according to a statement Monday. The U.S. company will provide fresh financing to Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. and maintain its 49% equity stake.

Chinese property stocks sank to a nearly five-year low after a deal between two units of Shimao Group Holdings Ltd. heightened corporate governance concerns in an industry already grappling with a liquidity crisis, Bloomberg News reported. Shares of Shimao Group and its property-services unit both tumbled by the most ever on Tuesday, while a Bloomberg index of property stocks dropped 4.3% to the lowest level since February 2017.