Aurelia Butler

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will travel to New Delhi to participate in the G20 leaders summit from Sept. 7-10, making her fourth visit to India in 10 months, the Treasury Department said on Thursday.Yellen intends to focus at the summit on strengthening the global economy and supporting low- and middle-income countries by advancing efforts on debt restructurings, the evolution of multilateral development banks (MDBs) and building International Monetary Fund trust fund resources, the Treasury said.She will “continue to build momentum” for her drive to evolve the World Bank and other multilateral lenders to boost financing capacity to aid developing countries’ clean energy transitions, tackle pandemics, fragility and conflict, it said.The Treasury estimates that the lenders collectively can unlock $200 billion in new financing over a decade with balance sheet measures now being implemented or under discussion.The Treasury said Yellen also will rally America’s G20 allies to maintain economic support for Ukraine and increase costs on Russia over Moscow’s continuing war in Ukraine. This includes supporting the G7-led price cap on Russian oil exports and efforts to strengthen global food security in the face of restrictions on Ukrainian grain exports.At the same time, the Treasury said Yellen will work to deepen U.S. bilateral ties with India, a country she first described last November as a prime “friend-shoring” destination and alternative to China for U.S. investment and supply chains. Treasury’s statement did not mention specific bilateral meetings.On the sidelines of last year’s G20 Summit in Indonesia, Yellen met with the People’s Bank of China’s then-governor Yi Gang in first of several face-to-face meetings with senior Chinese officials in recent months to ease rocky U.S.-China ties, culminating in her visit to Beijing in July. More

The proposal forecast that the central government – comprising the Treasury, central bank, and social security – would end next year with a primary surplus of 2.8 billion reais ($565.7 million), adhering to the official goal of a zero deficit. The figure would imply a significant turnaround from the government’s projected primary deficit of 145.4 billion reais for this year. Its feasibility is viewed with skepticism within the market, primarily due to its substantial dependence on initiatives whose capacity to generate revenue remains uncertain or that pend approval from Congress, where the government of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva lacks a consolidated majority.This package of measures includes Congress-approved changes to tax trial regulations that raise the bar for companies to successfully contest their tax bills, but also involves other bills that are currently pending votes, such as the regulation of sports betting, along with proposed taxation adjustments for closed-end and offshore investment funds.Finance Minister Fernando Haddad expressed confidence in the government’s fiscal pursuits in a press conference earlier on Thursday, citing the recently dispatched revenue-boosting initiatives. He highlighted a fresh proposed bill aimed at formalizing a court ruling dictating that corporate tax discounts granted by states can no longer be used to reduce companies’ taxable income for federal revenue purposes.Earlier on Thursday, the government also sent to Congress another bill within the package to boost revenue by prohibiting the shareholder payment instrument “interest on equity” (JCP) from being deducted from companies’ corporate tax obligations, starting in January 2024. The budget proposal was founded on the government’s projections of 2.3% growth in GDP and an inflation rate of 3.3% for 2024.However, private economists surveyed weekly by the central bank hold a more pessimistic outlook, estimating the economy will expand by 1.33% next year and the inflation rate will reach 3.87%.($1 = 4.9493 reais) More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Delta Air Lines said on Thursday that it has updated the radio altimeters in its in-service airplane fleet to address potential 5G C-Band interference.Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned in June that airlines could face operational constraints in bad weather if they had not updated airplanes ahead of a July 1 deadline. Delta had approximately 190 aircraft yet to be outfitted before the July 1 deadline, including all of its Airbus A220 fleet.Delta said all planes in service have now been updated while a few aircraft are out of service for planned maintenance and will be equipped with 5G-compliant radio altimeters as they return to service. Delta said there was “no notable operational impact between July 1 and this week when the work was completed.”Concerns that 5G service could interfere with airplane altimeters, which give data on a plane’s height above the ground and are crucial for bad-weather landing, led to brief disruptions at some U.S. airports last year as international carriers canceled some flights.Last year, Verizon (NYSE:VZ) and AT&T (NYSE:T) voluntarily agreed to delay some C-Band 5G use until July as air carriers worked to retrofit airplane altimeters.Reuters first reported in March that major U.S. wireless carriers agreed to some voluntary actions to address aviation safety concerns but also allow them to increase power levels to get to full C-Band use on July 1.Buttigieg told Reuters in an interview on July 20 that the transition to make airlines 5G-compliant went better than expected, with minimal disruptions.Buttigieg said that while airlines were largely prepared, the effort “took a lot of pressure.” He added: “It took multiple moments where we had to really just make sure they could read our body language that we really were serious … I don’t think the airlines believed us early on.”As of late June, more than 80% of the domestic fleet serving U.S. airports had been updated, Buttigieg wrote to major airlines, but he noted “a significant number of aircraft still awaiting retrofit, including many operated by foreign air carriers. This means on bad-weather, low-visibility days in particular, there could be increased delays and cancellations.” More

(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets from Stephen Culp, financial markets journalist.Asian stocks could start September with a choppy session on Friday, as crucial U.S. economic data showed monthly inflation on the wane, a second take on China manufacturing PMI expected to show modest improvement and the U.S. employment report on tap.As investors turn the page to a fresh new month, any hint that central bank leaders could be nearing the end of a tightening cycle, thereby avoiding a potential global economic downturn, is likely to feed appetite risk.Following in the wake of downbeat data, which showed China factory activity notched a fifth consecutive month in contraction territory, any upward surprise to the Caixin manufacturing PMI figure – expected to improve slightly to 49.3, less than a point below the contraction/expansion dividing line – could lure buyers back to Chinese equities markets.Concern about sluggish demand in China has weighed on investor sentiment of late, with the blue-chip CSI 300 index in August clocking its largest monthly percentage decline since last October, and the Shanghai SE Composite suffering its steepest percentage drop since September 2022.China’s real estate woes mount, with the nation’s largest private property developer Country Garden warning of default risk after posting a $6.7 billion net loss in the first half of the year.But September could offer a fresh start.Recent policy decisions and other steps taken by Beijing and Chinese firms to jump start investor sentiment and support local markets has had an effect. Chinese stocks this week posted back-to-back gains of 1% or more for the first time since January.Here are key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Friday:- South Korea – import/export growth, PMI (August)- China – Caixin manufacturing PMI (August)- Australia – owner-occupied housing financing (July) More