Finance & Economics | WPN World People News

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last Friday completed the first review of Georgia’s economic performance under the three-year Stand-By Arrangement (SBA). The completion of the review enables the disbursement of SDR40 million (about US$58.1 million), bringing total disbursements under the arrangement to SDR80 million (about US$116.3 million).

The European Central Bank (ECB) announced the creation of the Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB). This new entity, which replaces the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Council, will help foster the development of an integrated, innovative and competitive market for retail payments in euro in the European Union on December 19.

The European Council formally appointed the Chair, the Vice-Chair and the four other permanent members of the Single Resolution Board on December 19. This concludes a recruitment process which started in July 2014. The methodology for calculating banks' contributions to the Single Resolution Fund was also been adopted this day.

The mission held productive technical discussions with the new economic team of the Ukrainian government and with the National Bank of Ukraine in the context of the Fund-supported program, covering key issues facing the economy. We found that the Ukrainian authorities are preparing to move decisively on a broad and comprehensive agenda to stabilize and reform the economy, while coping with the difficult challenges that emerged in the last year. In this context, we advanced substantially our mutual understandings of policy priorities going forward.

The European Commission has cleared under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of part of Cegedim S.A.'s customer relationship management and strategic data business (the target) by IMS Health. The decision is conditional upon IMS' commitment to divest parts of its primary market research business and to grant third party access to the structure underlying its sales tracking data, the so-called “brick structure”.

Iceland repaid, ahead of schedule, obligations to the IMF amounting to SDR 275 million (about US$400.6 million) on December 19.

Early Estimates of Quarterly Unit Labour Costs

Seasonally adjusted data, Total economy

Georgia's President Giorgi Margvelashvili, EP Vice-President Ryszard Czarnecki and EP rapporteur Andrejs Mamikins (on the left) at a joint press conference prior to the vote

Martin Schulz at the summit in October

On December 17, 2014 the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund completed the fourth and the fifth reviews of Niger’s economic performance under a program supported by an Extended Credit Facility (ECF) arrangement. The decision enables the disbursement of SDR 11.28 million (about US$16.52 million, 17 percent of quota), bringing total disbursements under the ECF arrangement to SDR 56.40 million (about US$82.62 million, 86 percent of quota)