Global News

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan will take fiscal measures set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to meet its budgetary targets for the 2022-23 financial year, finance minister Ishaq Dar said on Wednesday.
The measures included reviewing subsidies in the farming and export sectors and shedding energy sector debt, he said.
The minister told a news conference in Islamabad that a "detailed discussion" had taken place with the IMF on the sidelines of a climate conference in Geneva on Monday, where the lender had emphasized a need to take the fiscal measures.

BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany urgently needs more carbon-neutral energy at affordable prices if it is to maintain its global relevance as an industrial player, the president of German autos association VDA warned on Wednesday, warning that it was already falling behind.
Hildegard Mueller, who has led the organisation since February 2020, said the energy subsidies offered so far were "not suitable or applicable".
"This is not enough ... we need more energy and consequential help for the economy," Mueller said at the association's annual news conference. "Other global regions are overtaking us."

PARIS (Reuters) - French unions and opposition parties on Wednesday said they would fight hard to try to derail a highly unpopular plan to make people work longer before receiving a pension.
President Emmanuel Macron's government, in turn, said it wasn't afraid of a nationwide call for strikes and protests on Jan. 19 and would carry on with its plan.
The French will have to work two years longer to age 64 before retiring, if the reform, announced on Tuesday, is adopted by parliament. They will also need to work longer to get a full pension.

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's 11-day-old government braced on Wednesday for more anti-democratic protests by far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro's supporters whose rampage through government threatened the country's political stability.
The government of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva bolstered security measures nationwide as flyers appeared on pro-Bolsonaro social media calling for mass demonstrations in Brazilian cities to "retake power."
"We have measures for this Wednesday to reinforce security throughout the country since pamphlets of new demonstrations have been circulated," Lula's chief of staff Rui Costa said late on Tuesday after a cabinet meeting.

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Retail sales volumes in Brazil posted in November their biggest drop in five months, government statistics agency IBGE said on Wednesday, affected by higher fuel prices and a weak Black Friday performance last year.
Brazil's retail sales fell 0.6% in November from October, IBGE reported, a deeper drop than the 0.3% one expected by economists polled by Reuters and the first negative reading since July.
The latest data came in as consumption stutters in Brazil amid a lack of credit growth, higher interest rates and rising consumer prices, research manager Cristiano Santos said in a statement.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The World Bank slashed its 2023 growth forecasts on Tuesday to levels teetering on the brink of recession for many countries as the impact of central bank rate hikes intensifies, Russia's war in Ukraine continues, and the world's major economic engines sputter.
The development lender said it expected global GDP growth of 1.7% in 2023, the slowest pace outside the 2009 and 2020 recessions since 1993. In its previous Global Economic Prospects report in June 2022, the bank had forecast 2023 global growth at 3.0%.
It forecast global growth in 2024 to pick up to 2.7% -- below the 2.9% estimate for 2022 -- and said average growth for the 2020-2024 period would be under 2% -- the slowest five-year pace since 1960.

South Korean solar energy company Qcells on Wednesday said it would invest $2.5 billion to expand its manufacturing capacity in the United States, creating as many as 2,500 jobs in Georgia.
The announcement by the solar division of conglomerate Hanwha Corp is one of the biggest corporate manufacturing commitments since the passage of U.S. President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which includes over $300 billion in subsidies to tackle climate change.
Some of those incentives are aimed at boosting domestic manufacturing of clean energy products that are currently made primarily in China, such as solar cells and panels.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A tumultuous start for the new U.S. Congress has some investors worried about what could be a prolonged battle over raising the U.S. debt ceiling later this year.
The U.S. Treasury is expected to reach its mandated $31.4 trillion borrowing limit in 2023, and Republicans see that as an opportunity to curb President Joe Biden's spending on Democratic initiatives such as climate change and new social programs.
While fights over raising the debt limit are nothing new in Washington, some investors worry the Republican party's narrow majority in Congress could give the party’s hard-liners the upper hand, making it much harder to reach a deal this time around.

Ryanair is closing its Brussels Zaventem base because of the airport's decision to increase prices from April, it said on Wednesday.
Europe's largest budget airline said the airport's decision comes at a time when most European airports are reducing prices to recover traffic lost during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Despite recent rumours, we will not be reopening our Brussels Zaventem base in summer 2023 due to Zaventem Airport's decision to increase prices by 11% for airlines and passengers from April 2023," Chief Executive Michael O'Leary said in a statement.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) -The European Central Bank must still raise interest rates "significantly" over its coming meetings to restrict growth and dampen inflation, which has been far too high, Finnish central bank chief Olli Rehn said on Wednesday.
The ECB has raised rates by a combined 2.5 percentage points since July and promised "a steady pace" of hikes over the coming months but some policymakers have started to argue that a peak in interest rates may be near given a looming recession.
"Policy rates will still have to rise significantly," Rehn, who sits on the ECB's rate-setting Governing Council, told a webinar with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "This means significant rate hikes at this winter's remaining meetings."

Asian stocks rose on Friday as investors cheered a slowdown in U.S. inflation, while the yen hit a seven-month high and Japanese bond yields broke above the central bank's target as markets challenged Tokyo's commitment to loose monetary policy.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.8% to hit a new seven-month high and was headed for a third consecutive week of gains.
Japan's Nikkei fell 1.3% and the yen, which surged 2.7% against the dollar overnight, kept going and rose about 0.2% further to 128.65 per dollar. It is up 6% in little more than three weeks since the Bank of Japan stunned markets by widening the band around its 10-year bond yield target.

ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss prosecutors should enforce laws against money-laundering more effectively as the country remains a soft touch for corporate financial corruption, an ethics group said on Friday.
The Swiss branch of Transparency International said there had been just 10 documented convictions for money laundering and related corruption, carried out in the context of companies' business transactions, under laws that came into effect in 2003.