LONDON, Feb 25 (Reuters) - World stocks clawed back towards record highs on their third day of gains on Thursday as the dollar dropped to a three-year low, after top Federal Reserve and European Central Bank officials attempted to talk down rising bond market yields.
There was a lot to keep tabs on. A renewed retail frenzy re-ignited the likes of GameStop, bets on $70 a barrel oil and a near decade-high in copper prices rallied commodity currencies - and despite all the central bank talk, bond yields were still rising.
MSCI’s world equities index, which spans 50 countries , was up 0.45% after gains in Asia and a decent morning in Europe where oil and gas stocks enjoyed a 2% jump, but things were starting to turn bumpy.
South African medical schemes may no longer need to step in to subsidise COVID-19 vaccines for the wider population after the government allocated significant funds for the vaccine rollout, executives told Reuters on Thursday.
(Adds quotes, details, background)
ABUJA, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Nigeria will draw up a supplementary budget in March to cover the cost of COVID-19 vaccinations, for which no provision was made in the 2021 finance bill adopted in December, finance minister Zainab Ahmed said on Thursday.
The government has said it plans to inoculate 40% of Nigeria’s 200 million people this year and another 30% in 2022. The country, Africa’s most populous, has been hit by a second wave of infections in recent weeks.
“There will be a supplementary budget, the first one will be in March relating to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Ahmed told reporters, without giving any indication of its size.
Turkey's central bank said on Thursday a recent adjustment in weighting of items in the inflation basket will have an upside impact on prices until mid-2021 but the impact is expected to die out towards the end of the year.
COVID-19 pandemic took toll on Russian banks VTB aims for 2021 net profit of 250-270 bln roubles (Adds background, detail)
MOSCOW, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Russia’s second-largest lender VTB on Thursday reported a 63% decline in net profit last year as the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a hike in provisions against bad debt but it said it aimed for record-high income in 2021.
State-run VTB saw its net profit shrink to 75.3 billion roubles ($1.02 billion). Before the coronavirus hit Russia’s economy, VTB had aimed to make up to 230 billion roubles in 2020.
VTB is now targeting net profit of 250-270 billion roubles in 2021, board member Dmitry Pyanov said, as the bank recovers from the pandemic hit. This year, VTB sees its retail loans growing above the market, which it expects to expand by 10%, and corporate loans to increase by 5%.