Aurelia Butler

Greece has received three international bailouts from the euro zone and the IMF worth 280 billion euros ($307.19 billion) since 2010. It emerged from its latest bailout in 2018 and has relied on the debt markets to cover its borrowing needs since.”Greece concluded today the repayment of its debts to the IMF,” Finance Minister Christos Staikouras said in a statement. After previous early repayments to the IMF, Greece owed 1.9 billion euros in loans due by 2024, the last batch of a total of 28 billion euros the Fund provided between 2010 and 2014.The move allows Athens to reduce its debt servicing costs because IMF loans are more expensive than its debt to EU institutions. By paying off the IMF early, Greece is saving 230 million euros, Staikouras said.Last week, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) said it agreed to allow Greece to pay back the IMF without a proportional early reimbursement of its loans to EU authorities. ($1 = 0.9115 euros) More

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) -Energy consultant Adriano Pires has backed out of the Brazilian government’s nomination for him to take the helm at Petrobras, the country’s Mines and Energy Ministry said on Monday, in the latest blow to succession plans at the state-run oil company.”It was clear to me that I could not reconcile my consulting work with the exercise of Petrobras’ command,” Pires wrote in a letter published by the ministry on its website. Pires’ decision to turn down the chief executive job came a day after soccer magnate Rodolfo Landim declined a nomination to chair the board of Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as the company is formally known.Pires had been tapped by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to take over as the top executive of Petrobras on March 28, following disagreements between the far-right leader and current CEO Joaquim Silva e Luna over the company’s fuel pricing policy.The government will now need to find suitable replacements for the two top spots at Petrobras just days before the company’s April 13 annual shareholders’ meeting.Pires’ decision to back out from the CEO job was reported earlier on Monday by Brazil’s O Globo newspaper. Preferred shares in Petrobras fell 1% after the O Globo article was published, but later recouped their losses.Pires’ nomination had been facing internal compliance-related hurdles at Petrobras, as his consultancy, Rio de Janeiro-based CBIE, advises companies that do business with Petrobras, two sources with knowledge of the matter had previously told Reuters.An internal compliance committee had also recommended against Landim’s becoming the next chairman on conflict-of-interest grounds, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private internal deliberations.Reached for comment, Landim said that he decided to withdraw from the board nomination in order to dedicate all his energy to Flamengo, the Rio de Janeiro soccer club he leads.In a note to clients, analysts at Brazil’s Itau BBA maintained their “outperform” rating on Petrobras shares given what they described as strong fundamentals, but said uncertainty at the top would create negative noise.”This uncertainty regarding the nominees to the chairman and CEO positions, arising so soon before the company’s next general shareholders’ meeting, will likely trigger some volatility in the stock this week,” the analysts wrote. More

The Wall Street bank’s economists have compiled a gauge of U.S. labor that they say better tracks wage gains — which are key to inflationary pressures — than other measures. They add the total number of employees and the number of job openings to estimate labor demand. For supply, they count the labor force, or people in work and those looking for positions.The latest reading of the gap shows an excess of 5.3 million in labor demand versus supply of workers — “the most overheated level of the postwar period both in absolute terms and relative to the population,” Jan Hatzius, Goldman’s chief economist, wrote in a note Monday. Much of the continued strong employment growth that’s likely in coming months will come from people who are currently outside the labor force — something that will help ease this jobs-to-workers gap, Hatzius wrote. That will happen as Americans living off of savings work down their stockpiles, he said.“The bad news, however, is that this is probably not sufficient,” Hatzius wrote. “In order to reduce wage pressure to levels at least broadly consistent with the Fed’s inflation target, we estimate that the gap needs to shrink by at least one-half.”Fed policy makers target 2% inflation, and the most recent reading for the central bank’s preferred core gauge was 5.4%. As for wages, Friday’s March jobs report showed a 6.7% annual advance for production and non-supervisory employees, the biggest since 1982 after excluding spring 2020 distortions from the pandemic shutdown.Given the magnitude of tightness, Hatzius warned of three potential consequences:Hatzius also noted that, historically, there has never been a loosening in the job market on the order of 0.6% of the labor force — “a share that would correspond to about 1 million at present” — that wasn’t connected with a recession.Similarly worrying, the U.S. unemployment rate — at 3.6% currently, practically its pre-pandemic level — has never risen more than 0.35 percentage point over three months without a recession.Despite the alarming record, Hatzius takes heart from the fact that the sample size is small, at just 12 U.S. recessions since the end of World War II. He also said that episodes in other big economies showed moderate labor-market deterioration can occur without economic slumps.Also encouraging: there are few signs of the kind of financial imbalances among American households and companies that were seen in the run-up to the 2001 and 2007-09 slumps.Still, “the broader point is that once the labor market has overshot full employment, the path to a soft landing becomes narrow,” Hatzius concluded.Read More: Fed’s Best Hope Increasingly Looks Like a ‘Semi-Hard’ Landing©2022 Bloomberg L.P. More

The number of A350s grounded by the airline in the dispute over exposed and damaged lightning protection has reached 23, bringing the value of compensation sought by the carrier to slightly over $1 billion, they said.Neither company had any immediate comment.The two sides have wrangled for more than a year over accelerated surface damage that the airline says raises questions over the safety of the planes, with Qatar’s regulator grounding jets as the problem appears.Airbus, backed by its own regulator, has denied any safety problems and responded to Qatar’s refusal to take any more A350s until the problem is resolved by revoking deals for undelivered A350s, one by one, and axing a separate contract for A321neos.Qatar will on Thursday ask a UK judge to extend a temporary order freezing the decision to cancel the A321neo order pending a final hearing on the A350 case, expected later this year.Bloomberg News reported earlier that Airbus planned to delay a planned increase in A350 production because of the combined impact of the Ukraine war and the Qatar dispute. More

OTTAWA (Reuters) – A record number of Canadian businesses are facing capacity pressures amid intense labor shortages and ongoing supply chain difficulties, with many expecting significant wage and input price growth, a regular Bank of Canada survey said on Monday.The central bank’s Business Outlook Survey Indicator dipped in the first quarter from a record high the previous quarter, but remained far above pre-pandemic levels. The survey was conducted before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”The number of firms reporting capacity pressures related to labor or supply chain challenges is at a record high,” the survey said.”Because of persistent capacity pressures and strong demand, firms expect significant growth in wages, input prices and output prices. Plans to increase investment spending and add staff continue to be widespread.”Inflation expectations for the next two years continued to increase, with 70% of firms now expecting inflation to be above the Bank of Canada’s 1-3% control range over the next two years.Canada’s inflation hit 5.7% in February, a 30-year high and the 11th straight month above 3%.Economists said higher inflation expectations bolster the case for the Bank of Canada to hike interest rates by 50 basis points at its decision next week.”If we still needed to cement the case for a half point rate hike in April, the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook survey provided it, at least in terms of inflation expectations,” said Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at CIBC Capital Markets, in a note.A separate survey of consumer expectations found the general public also anticipates inflation above target for the next two years, before easing. It noted long-term inflation expectations remain well anchored.Money markets estimate a 70% chance the Bank of Canada will go ahead with the larger increase on April 13. A deputy said last month the central bank was ready to act “forcefully” to rein in inflation.The Bank of Canada also did a separate online survey on the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special operation,” on Canadian firms. About half said they expect to be affected, mostly due to higher commodity prices and increased supply chain woes. Several firms, notably those tied to energy and other commodities, expect higher sales. The Canadian dollar rose 0.3% to 1.2480 to the greenback, or 80.13 U.S. cents. More