The International Monetary Fund said on Sunday countries in the Middle East and Central Asia need to curb their financing requirements, as a surge in government debt, exacerbated by the pandemic, threatens recovery prospects.
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QUITO (Reuters) - Ecuadorean banker Guillermo Lasso pulled off a surprise win in Sunday’s presidential runoff against socialist economist Andres Arauz, putting the country on track to maintain open market policies rather than return to socialism.
The victory, welcome news for investors unnerved over Arauz’s promises of heavy social spending in the face of weak state finances, bucks a trend in Latin America of recent ballot box wins for the left in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile.
But Lasso, who takes office on May 24, still faces a challenging task in restarting a sluggish economy struggling after last year’s brutal coronavirus outbreak, which has spiked in recent months as vaccination efforts stalled.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street lost ground, pulling back from the prior session’s record closing highs and Treasury yields edged lower on Tuesday as investors trained their focus on the approaching earnings season and the Federal Reserve’s economic outlook.
FILE PHOTO: A Wall Street sign outside the New York Stock Exchange in New York City, New York, U.S., October 2, 2020. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo
All three major U.S. stock indexes closed in the red, led by the blue-chip Dow, which notched an all-time closing high on Monday.
“It’s a normal follow-on to a strong day,” said Matthew Keator, managing partner in the Keator Group, a wealth management firm in Lenox, Massachusetts. “The market is catching its breath from the job number and a strong day like yesterday, which reflected a high in the market.”
By Reuters Staff
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FILE PHOTO: Britain s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak attends a virtual press conference inside 10 Downing Street in central London, Britain March 3, 2021. Tolga Akmen/Pool via REUTERS
LONDON (Reuters) - A plan by Britain’s finance minister Rishi Sunak to use a two-year “super-deduction” tax break to encourage companies to invest appears to be working, according to a manufacturing survey.
Make UK said almost a quarter of the companies they survey plan to increase investment as a direct response to the policy while more than a quarter plan to bring forward their investment plans.
The incentive was also seen by almost a third of the 149 companies that were surveyed as the measure that had made the most impact in Sunak’s March annual budget speech.
GLOBAL MARKETS-Asia shares set to rise after S&P 500, Dow hit records on strong economic data
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April 6 (Reuters) - Asian equities are poised to rise on Tuesday after the S&P 500 and Dow indexes set records as a streak of strong U.S. economic data fueled optimism even as a smaller-than-expected climb in 10-year Treasury notes eased inflation concerns. Investor sentiment was buoyed by a survey from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) on Monday showing activity in the U.S. services industry reached its highest level on record in March. The data came after a jobs report on Friday beat forecasts with 916,000 added to the U.S. economy last month. “The jobs report set the stage for what we’re seeing today,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman of Great Hill Capital LLC in New York. “It’s not only that the report crushed expectations but it showed that wage inflation was subdued as people compete for labor.”