North Africa/Middle East

Israeli container shipping line Zim last week delivered some of the best results in liner industry, reporting a net profit of $7m for 2015, recovering from a $198m net loss in 2014, The Loadstar reported. The overall improved profitability was almost entirely the result of reduced costs, following its debt restructuring in 2014, which saw lenders and charterers given equity in return for renegotiated terms, and is similar to Hyundai’s current proposals.

Banks in the United Arab Emirates will suspend legal action against small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) struggling to repay debt for up to three months to prevent a surge in defaults that may jeopardise the economy, Reuters reported. The initiative, which involves businesses working with lenders to restructure their loans, is intended to give breathing space to SMEs, which contribute around 60 percent of UAE's gross domestic product.

Oil-rich Gulf governments will be forced to rely on debt markets as their fiscal deficits rise to $270bn amid an extended period of low oil prices over the next two years, Moody’s has said, the Financial Times reported. The ratings agency, which has already downgraded Bahrain and Oman, will decide at the end of May whether to adjust down the high ratings of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait, which are on a par with countries such as France and South Korea.

Egypt’s central bank devalued its currency and said it would adopt a more flexible exchange-rate policy as it seeks to ease an acute dollar shortage that is hurting the economy, sending local stocks sharply higher, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Central Bank of Egypt on Monday sold almost $200 million in an interbank auction at 8.85 Egyptian pounds per dollar, compared with the previous rate of 7.73 that it maintained for nearly five months. The move will help narrow the gap between the pound’s exchange rate of about 9.6 to the dollar last week in the black market.

Iran’s central bank is preparing to set up a “bad bank” to cleanse its financial system of a vast pile of toxic loans after studying the models used by other countries, such as Sweden, Japan and South Korea. The plans were part of an array of reform measures designed to bolster the country’s economy presented by a senior central bank official at the Financial Times’ inaugural Iran summit in London on Wednesday.

The full Knesset late Monday passed a bill in its first reading meant to completely revamp the bankruptcy scene to help bring the law on the issue into "the 21st century" as Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked has often put it, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Credit cards on the limit, huge bank borrowings and a struggle to repay loans: these are the personal debt problems of some Qataris despite the Gulf state's reputation for fabulous wealth, Reuters reported. Generous government salaries and free healthcare, funded by vast natural gas reserves in a country with only about 300,000 citizens, do not always translate into healthy bank balances for ordinary Qataris.

The head of the International Monetary Fund on Monday urged energy exporters of the Middle East to raise more taxes as governments across the region grapple with a dramatic drop in oil revenues, The Wall Street Journal reported. “These economies need to strengthen their fiscal frameworks and re-engineer their tax systems by reducing their heavy reliance on oil revenues and by boosting non-hydrocarbon sources of revenues,” Christine Lagarde said at a finance forum in the United Arab Emirates capital.

More than one-third of oil and natural-gas producers around the world are at risk of declaring bankruptcy this year, according to a new report from Deloitte, The Wall Street Journal MoneyBeat blog reported. Oil prices have plunged from more than $100 a barrel in mid-2014 to about $30 a barrel today. Yet just 35 so-called exploration and production companies filed for bankruptcy between July 2014 and the end of last year, Deloitte says. Most producers managed to stay afloat by raising cash through capital markets, asset sales and spending cuts. Those options are running out.

In pressed white robes and clutching crisp résumés, young Saudi men packed a massive hall at a university in the capital city this month to wait in long lines to pitch themselves to employers. It was one of three jobs fairs in Riyadh in two weeks, and the high attendance was fueled in part by fear among the younger generation of what a future of cheap oil will mean in a country where oil is everything, the International New York Times reported.