The World Bank advises that Ethiopia should look for new ways to finance public infrastructure projects, according to Reuters. Public spending grew the economy over 10 percent for the 2014/15 fiscal year, but the government carried a heavy debt burden in the process. The World Bank suggests increasing taxes, boosting domestic savings, and involving the private sector as viable alternatives.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recently issued a report reviewing the Swiss economy. According to the study, while the Swiss economy has vastly outperformed most of its neighbors, it should wean itself off cheap mortgages and improve labor productivity to remain competitive.
The report also warned against a recent referendum regarding the flow of foreign workers across the Swiss borders and the scarce amount of business investment in the last several years.
The International Monetary Fund will begin using the yuan as a reserve currency. The yuan weight will be 10.92 percent, after announcing that it sees the yuan as a “freely usable” currency, allowing it to join the euro, pound, yen, and U.S. dollar in the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights basket.
According to official data, the Indian economy grew 7.4 percent year-on-year in the previous quarter, surging past China, according to AFP. This marks the third quarter in which India posted growth above 7 percent, outperforming China within each quarter. The good news raises the possibility that the central bank will keep interest rates unchanged. India showed expansion in such sectors as trade, manufacturing, finance and transportation.
As talks begin this week in Paris, strong rhetoric has already erupted in favor of policies designed to combat climate change. Six heads of state and the leadership of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) led the way with calls for support from corporations and governments. These individuals want to put a price on carbon as a means of simplifying the process for investing in cleaner technologies and ensuring a greener future.
The European Union and China have joined forces to increase currency exchanges between the two, bypassing the U.S. dollar.
The European Central Bank and People’s Bank of China began a currency swap late last week aimed at making it easier for currencies to flow between the two bilaterally. The arrangement will make it easier for European and Chinese banks to allow capital flows between one another, and theoretically improve trade and even out currency rates between the euro and the yuan.
Mining and copper production plummets as the Democratic Republic of Congo contends with a low-price commodity market, forcing authorities to cut 2015 growth anticipation from 8.4 to 7.7 percent, according to Reuters. Congo also suffered from a lacking demand from China, and Swiss firm Glencore suspended mining operations in the southeast. Congo serves as a commodity-based economy, with cobalt and copper comprising 79 percent of exports in the first part of 2015.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) has negotiated for years on a package of trade reforms that aims to reduce or eliminate barriers to world trade. Unfortunately, trade talks have reached a deadlock, and trade ministers seem unlikely to find a way to break the stalemate before they meet in Nairobi next month, according to World Trade Organization Director General Roberto Azevedo.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) handed down a ruling against the United States, finding that a program implemented decades ago in an effort to save dolphins amounts to a “technical barrier to trade.” Mexico initiated the case against the US.
The program in question, started in 1990, created a “dolphin-safe” label that could be applied to tuna to notify consumers that the product was caught in a manner designed to avoid killing dolphins. In the wild, and more particularly in the Pacific, tunas and dolphins often swim in the same areas.
President-elect Mauricio Macri won Sunday’s runoff election against Daniel Scioli on a platform of free market principles and spending cuts, according to the Los Angeles Times. His election marks the end of Kirchnerismo, which encompasses 12 years of leftist political thought helmed by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her late husband, former President Nestor Kirchner.
