By Reuters Staff
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FILE PHOTO: Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Esther George addresses the National Association for Business Economics in Denver, Colorado, U.S. October 6, 2019. REUTERS/Ann Saphir
(Reuters) - Kansas City Fed President Esther George, asked Thursday if rising fuel prices could create the false impression that inflation is rising, said she is watching wage trends more closely for signs of persistent inflation.
“You don’t dismiss it,” George said during a virtual discussion. “But it also is not something I think you will find the Fed reacting to immediately.”
Reporting by Jonnelle Marte
The U.S.'s improving growth outlook and rising market bond yields are not pushing the Federal Reserve to consider paring back the bond purchases it is conducting each month to boost the economic recovery, St. Louis Federal Reserve president James Bullard said on Thursday.
By Reuters Staff
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WASHINGTON, Feb 25 (Reuters) - The World Bank has halted payments to projects in Myanmar on withdrawal requests made after a Feb. 1 coup by the country’s military, the bank said in a letter to Myanmar’s finance ministry seen by Reuters on Thursday.
A World Bank spokesman verified the letter, from World Bank Myanmar country director Mariam Sherman to the Myanmar Ministry of Planning, Finance and Industry, which said that the bank would make payments to Myanmar project suppliers, contractors and consultants for withdrawal applications made prior to that date. (Reporting by David Lawder and Poppy McPherson Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
The European Central Bank will fight any big increase in real or inflation-adjusted interest rates as it could choke off the bloc's economic recovery, ECB board member Isabel Schnabel told Latvian news agency LETA.
By Reuters Staff
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ABUJA, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Nigeria’s Zenith Bank is aiming for a pretax profit of 270 billion naira ($709 million) this year, up 5.5% from a year earlier, the bank said on Thursday.
The top tier lender made a 255.9 billion naira pretax profit in 2020, narrowly beating its guidance.
Zenith said it was aiming for 10% loan growth this year, down from 18.6% in 2020 after a currency depreciation at the end of last year helped boost the value of loans priced in naira.
Nigeria exited recession in the fourth quarter despite a full-year contraction in 2020. The country devalued the currency last year in an attempt to align multiple quoted currency rates. But the naira has continued to weaken.