China's financial regulator advised the country’s largest lenders to temporarily suspend new loans to five refineries recently sanctioned by the US over their ties to Iranian oil, Bloomberg News reported. The National Financial Regulatory Administration (NFRA) asked banks to review their exposure and business dealings with firms, including Hengli Petrochemical (Dalian) Refinery, one of China’s largest private refiners, while awaiting further guidance. For now, banks have been guided not to extend new yuan-denominated credit, though they have also been told not to call in existing loans.

The ​Iran war has seen major central banks put interest rates on hold in April and stymied ‌an easing push in emerging economies as policymakers face inflation pressures and volatile markets, Reuters reported. Six of the central banks overseeing the 10 most heavily traded currencies left rates unchanged last month: the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, but also Canada, New Zealand and Japan. Central banks in ​Switzerland, Australia, Sweden and Norway held no rate-setting meetings.

Shipping companies said on Monday that President Trump’s offer to provide them safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz fell short of the sort of arrangements that would persuade them to make the trip, the New York Times reported. Mr. Trump said on Sunday that the United States would “guide” commercial vessels through the strait, which Iran has effectively closed since the war in the Persian Gulf started two months ago. But the president provided few details on how the program, Project Freedom, would work.

Rising oil and natural gas prices from the war in Iran are beginning to weigh on the Chinese economy, further slowing already anemic consumer spending and hurting critical export sectors, the New York Times reported. Car sales fell in March and plunged further in April. Restaurants and hotels are seeing fewer customers as households turn cautious. In southern China, thousands of toy factory workers protested last week after their employer collapsed under rising plastic costs and ongoing tariffs in the United States.

The Iran war will push more than 15,000 additional companies into insolvency worldwide over the next two years, with Asia absorbing more than half the hit, Allianz Trade has warned in a sharp upgrade to its Middle East risk outlook, InsuranceBusinessMag.com reported. The trade credit insurer now sees global business failures rising 6% in 2026, a fifth straight annual increase, before plateauing at elevated levels in 2027. On its own reckoning, the conflict adds 7,000 cases next year and a further 7,900 in 2027 above what the insurer had assumed pre-crisis.

Central banks may need to inflict much more economic pain to control inflation fueled by a long Middle East ‌war than they did to control the spike in prices after the pandemic, ‌the International Monetary Fund's chief economist said, Reuters reported. When Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 drove oil prices above $100 a ​barrel, an already overheated post-COVID economy meant small increases in interest rates went a long way to cool demand, IMF Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas said in an interview on Tuesday.

Iran’s demand that oil tankers pay transit tolls in cryptocurrency for passing through the Strait of Hormuz has cast a new light on the country’s $7.8 billion crypto economy and the role digital currencies play for regimes operating outside the mainstream financial system, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Iran war is darkening the outlook for the world economy — whether or not a fragile ceasefire holds, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned on Thursday, the Associated Press reported. Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said that the fund will downgrade its forecast for the world economy next week. “Had it not been for this shock, we would have been upgrading global growth,” Georgieva said in remarks before next week's IMF-World Bank spring meetings.

Iran told mediators it would limit the number of ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz to around a dozen a day and charge tolls under the cease-fire struck by President Trump, showing Tehran plans to tighten its grip on the world’s most important energy-shipping lane, the Wall Street Journal reported. Ships that pass will have to coordinate with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful paramilitary group that has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union, Arab mediators said.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that imports from countries supplying Iran with military weapons will face immediate 50 per cent tariffs with no exemptions, announcing the threatened duty in a social media post just hours after agreeing to a two-week ceasefire with Tehran, Reuters reported.