Aurelia Butler

“Incoming data don’t point to a material risk of stagflation,” Lagarde said in an interview with Phileleftheros published by the ECB on its website. Lagarde said growth in the euro area could be as low as 2.3% in a severe scenario due to the war in 2022, however in all scenarios inflation is expected to decrease and settle at levels around the bank’s 2% target in 2024. More

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – The African Development Bank (AfDB) is aiming to raise $1 billion to rapidly ramp up agricultural production in Africa and stave off a potential food crisis brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, its president told Reuters on Friday.But the war, which has sent commodities prices soaring, is also an opportunity for the continent to position itself as a natural gas supplier for Europe and a refuge for investors fleeing Russia.During the coronavirus pandemic, Africa has not seen infection rates and deaths on the same levels as many more developed regions. Its economies, however, have been battered and its rebound has proven sluggish. Like much of the world, African nations are staring at rapidly rising consumer prices, with the war in Ukraine endangering global wheat and corn supplies and sending fuel prices soaring.”Already, coming out of COVID we have 24 million people that are falling further into extreme poverty, and that’s going to worsen the situation,” Akinwumi Adesina said in an interview.To avoid a food crisis, he said the AfDB was planning to launch an emergency food production plan that would focus on rapidly boosting wheat, maize, rice and soybean output on the continent.”The plan is to produce roughly 30 million metric tonnes of food and to get technology into the hands of 20 million farmers. So you’re looking at big scale with small-holder farmers,” he said.The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had already voiced its support to help implement the plan, which will produce food staples worth $12 billion, Adesina said.The bank plans to raise $1 billion needed to fund the initiative from various emergency support facilities, concessional financing and from the IMF’s proposed $50 billion resilient sustainability fund.”When COVID struck, we were not ready. But this time, we’re fully ready,” he said.ALTERNATIVE TO RUSSIAWhile Adesina decried the war’s impact on Ukraine and its people, he recognised that the conflict and the geopolitical shifts it has sparked could play to Africa’s favour in some areas.”The biggest challenge Europe has is securing its energy supply,” he said. “Europe needs to look, and it’s looking, for alternative supplies of gas. Africa can be that place.”Africa boasts a host of major oil and gas producers, including Algeria, Nigeria and Angola. And new offshore gas discoveries – the viability of which had been questioned due to the global shift to renewables – could now become critical to Europe’s energy security as it weans itself off Russian supplies. France’s TotalEnergies along with US firm Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) and Portugal’s Galp are currently developing projects to exploit Mozambique’s estimated 100 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves and make it a major liquefied natural gas player.Africa is meanwhile ready to welcome investors currently pulling out of Russia, Adesina said. “There are a lot of investors that are going to be diversifying out of Russia, of course … That’s a real opportunity, I think, for Africa at this point in time.” More

“In view of the changed situation, I’m open to prioritising the available funds,” Lindner told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper.The minister who leads the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) added that what is needed are “investments in infrastructure, energy and competitiveness, but not more state consumption and postponed reforms”.In an unprecedented move to prevent economic fragmentation due to the pandemic, EU countries agreed in 2020 to jointly borrow 800 billion euros ($878 billion) to spend on rebuilding their economies to be greener and more digitised.The EU will discuss in a few weeks whether it needs to jointly borrow more money in response to the challenges created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, European Economic Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said on Tuesday. L5N2VP2ZB]France is leading calls for new EU debt, while Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and other countries oppose such new borrowing now, arguing that the economic impact of the war in Ukraine is still unclear and that only 74 billion euros of the fund has been disbursed so far.($1 = 0.9107 euros) More

“Next Tuesday they will start their mission in Lebanon,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the Doha Forum in Qatar.”Hopefully … by the end of two weeks we will see the light,” Mikati said.The Lebanese pound has lost more than 90% of its value since 2019, when the financial system collapsed, plunging the majority of Lebanese into poverty, according to UN agencies.Reforms demanded by donors to provide assistance to Lebanon include steps to tackle widespread corruption, tax dodging and government deficits – the root causes of the meltdown.”We don’t have an option, it is an obligatory path to negotiate with the IMF and to achieve an agreement,” he added. More