Mexico’s economy will expand 2% to 3% in 2025 with a fiscal deficit equivalent to 2.5% of gross domestic product, according to a government estimate published Wednesday, Bloomberg reported. Inflation will slow to 3.8% by the end of 2024 and 3.3% by year-end 2025, from the current 4.4%, according to the preliminary numbers for the draft budget from Mexico’s Finance Ministry. Growth is forecast at 2.5% to 3.5% this year, above the average estimate by economists.
Resources Per Country
- Anguilla
- Bahamas
- Barbados
- Belize
- Bermuda
- British Virgin Islands
- Canada
- Cayman Islands
- Costa Rica
- Cuba
- Dominica
- Dominican Republic
- El Salvador
- Grenada
- Guadeloupe
- Guatemala
- Haiti
- Honduras
- Jamaica
- Mexico
- Montserrat
- Netherlands Antilles
- Nicaragua
- Panama
- Puerto Rico
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Trinidad and Tobago
- Turks and Caicos Islands
- United States
- United States Virgin Islands
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The Bank of Canada (BoC) on Tuesday said businesses urgently needed to boost investment to increase productivity, saying this would help insulate the economy against the threat of inflation, Reuters reported. “I'm saying that it's an emergency — it's time to break the glass," Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Rogers told a business audience in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia.
The Canadian province of Ontario on Tuesday forecast its budget deficit would more than triple in the upcoming fiscal year as economic growth stalls and it spends more on housing and roads, as well as measures to ease the cost of living, Reuters reported. Ontario, Canada's most populous province and home to Toronto, its largest city, said its deficit would widen to C$9.8 billion ($7.2 billion), or 0.9% of gross domestic product, in 2024-25, from an estimated C$3 billion in the current fiscal year, which ends on March 31.
Canada's banking regulator is limiting the number of highly leveraged loans in banks' residential mortgage portfolios, which have ballooned alongside house prices to make Canadian borrowers among the most indebted in the world, the Globe and Mail reported on Friday, according to Reuters. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OFSI) has told lenders they will have to limit loans to borrowers with mortgages greater than 4.5 times their annual income, the newspaper reported, citing two sources familiar with the matter.
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Mexico’s central bank cut interest rates for the first time since 2021 in a split decision, finally joining a regional trend for monetary easing as inflation slows, Bloomberg News reported. The bank cut its key rate a quarter point to 11% on Thursday, as forecast by 26 of 29 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Deputy governor Irene Espinosa voted to leave the rate unchanged, while the other four board members all backed the reduction, the bank said in its policy statement.
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Scandinavian airline SAS said yesterday that a U.S. Bankruptcy Court had approved its chapter 11 reorganization plan, Reuters reported. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Wiles approved SAS AB’s bankruptcy restructuring at a court hearing in Manhattan, clearing the airline to move ahead with a restructuring that includes a $1.2 billion investment from a consortium of bidders, including the Danish government. The deal will provide up to $325 million in value to the airline’s junior creditors through a combination of cash and equity in the reorganized company.
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Canada saw a steep rise in insolvencies in 2023, particularly in Q4 and in Ontario and Quebec, and small businesses bore much of the brunt, according to a report from Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, CanadianLawyerMag.com reported. Rising by 41.4 percent compared to 2020 and 30.7 percent higher than 2019, the firm said its analysis of business openings, closings, and repayment requirements of government-subsidized loans indicated that smaller businesses largely drove rising filing rates.
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Canada's inflation rate surprisingly cooled in February to its slowest pace since June, and closely-watched core inflation measures eased to more than two-year lows, data showed on Tuesday, prompting investors to increase their bets for a June rate cut, Reuters reported. Annual headline inflation cooled to 2.8% last month, beating analyst expectations for a 3.1% rise, and below 2.9% increase in January. On the month, the consumer price index rose 0.3%, less than a forecast 0.6% rise, Statistics Canada said.
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The profits were multiplying at a dizzying clip: 50%, 100%, then suddenly almost 200%. Even for long-time veterans at Attestor Ltd., a boutique London firm that specializes in trading distressed assets, this had the makings of a score to remember, Bloomberg News reported. The trade — targeting the remains of Sam Bankman-Fried’s once-vast cryptocurrency empire — became a popular one in distressed investing circles last year.
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An underachieving comedy festival in England and attempts by Facebook and YouTube to compete with the increasingly popular TikTok are among the factors that led revenue to plummet at the Just for Laughs festival parent company last year, a Quebec Superior Court filing suggests, the Canadian Press reported. The report on Thursday from insolvency trustee PwC, formerly known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, lists the circumstances that left Groupe Juste pour rire inc. unable to pay its debts.
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