Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, a key reformer in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, is leaving office in what could be a major blow to a crackdown on graft and tax evasion. Indrawati, 47, was named managing director of the World Bank Group, a sign of the growing clout of emerging economies but also reflecting […]

The Bank of Japan has said it needs to do more to foster economic growth and renewed its commitment to ultra-loose monetary policy even as it forecast consumer prices would start rising again sooner than earlier thought. As expected, the central bank refrained from new action at its policy meeting and kept its benchmark rate […]

Goldman Sachs Group Inc Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein told American television recently that he retains the support of the board as well as support from clients since the SEC accused the powerful but embattled bank of fraud earlier in April. Blankfein, after testifying for more than three hours before the Senate’s permanent investigations subcommittee, maintained […]

Taiwan and China aim to sign a landmark free trade-style agreement by June aimed at bringing the political rivals closer while opening the often-isolated island’s $390bn economy to trade pacts around the world. The economic cooperation framework (ECFA) agreement between economic powerhouse China and export-reliant Taiwan would conclude two years of trade and transit talks […]

US firms working in China are more concerned about regulatory and policy issues than about pushing China to revalue its currency, the head of the American Chamber of Commerce said in Beijing recently. American businesses are encountering new obstacles to market access as China’s growing economy leads them to expand deeper into inland provinces, AmCham […]

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou asked for the activation of an EU/IMF aid package on April 23 aimed at pulling the nation out of a debt crisis. “It is a national and imperative need to officially ask our partners in the EU for the activation of the support mechanism we jointly created,” Papandreou said in […]

New Zealand is growing more strongly than expected but the recovery is still patchy and the government will face high deficits and borrowing for several years yet, Finance Minister Bill English said in a speech recently. He said the economy had emerged from the global slowdown and domestic recession in better shape than many other […]

General Motors Co has completed repayments totaling $5.8bn to the US and Canadian governments for loans that helped fund the US automaker’s bailout last year, the company has announced. GM, which emerged from bankruptcy in July 2009, had pledged to repay the balance of loans from the US Treasury and Export Development Canada “in full […]

Italy’s Banco Popolare expects 2010 results to be in line with forecasts while possible sales of non-strategic assets could boost its capital ratios, its chief executive said recently. In La Stampa daily, Pier Francesco Saviotti also ruled out any merger with Italian cooperative bank peer Ubi Banca, speculation which regularly surfaces, and said there had […]

Global trade will face lingering protectionism for up to two years, as the job market reels from the global financial crisis, World Trade Organisation Director-General Pascal Lamy said recently. “We are not out of the woods in coping with this protectionist tensions,” Lamy told reporters in the Chilean capital Santiago during a visit. “We on […]

The Bank of Japan could say this month that consumer prices will stop falling next fiscal year, sources say, but analysts said it would keep its easing bias as a full-fledged escape from deflation is still a distant goal. That would mark an upgrade to the BOJ’s current price forecast for the year to March […]

Africa’s contribution to the global body of scientific research is very small and does little to benefit its own populations, according to a report from Thomson Reuters. Like India and China, Africa suffers from a “haemorrhage of talent”, the report said, with many of its best brains leaving to study abroad and failing to return. […]

China’s agency overseeing big state-owned businesses has received plans from 78 state companies spelling out how they intend to sell out of the nation’s heady property market, according to sources. The China Securities Journal also reported that the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) was compiling a general plan to achieve the divestment, intended […]

The World Bank is set to approve a controversial $3.75bn loan to help South African state utility Eskom develop a coal-fired power plant despite objections from the US and environmental groups. Eskom has argued it has no immediate alternative but to develop the 4,800-megawatt Medupi coal-fired plant in the northern Limpopo region to ease chronic […]

The US should consider raising taxes to help bring deficits under control and may need to consider a European-style value-added tax, White House adviser Paul Volcker has announced. Volcker, answering a question from the audience at a New York Historical Society event, said the value-added tax “was not as toxic an idea” as it has […]