Finance & Economics | WPN World People News

Oil accounts for 80 to 90 percent of Congo’s exports and budget revenues.

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has completed its annual review of the Fund’s income position for the financial year ending April 30, 2013 (FY2013) and maintained the margin for the lending rate for IMF credit at 100 basis points for FY2014.

Seventeen years from now, half the global stock of capital, totaling $158 trillion (in 2010 dollars), will reside in the developing world, compared to less than one-third today, with countries in East Asia and Latin America accounting for the largest shares of this stock, says the latest edition of the World Bank’s Global Development Horizons (GDH) report, which explores patterns of investment, saving and capital flows as they are likely to evolve over the next two decades.

The World Bank Group’s work on fragile and conflict-affected areas was the focus of a three-day visit to the Palestinian Territories by the institution’s Managing Director Caroline Anstey.

The European Union will pledge more than $650 million to help Mali rebuild after its conflict, ahead of a major international donors' conference in Brussels Wednesday.

Nigeria’s short term macroeconomic outlook looks generally strong, with the likelihood of higher growth, lower inflation, and reserve accumulation. This will present the Government with an opportunity to make progress in key reforms and public investments associated with the Transformation Agenda for job creation, diversification, and more effective governance, says the World Bank in its new Nigeria Economic Report (NER) launched Monday in Abuja

Monday the World Bank Board of Directors approved a loan of US$50 million to the People’s Republic of China to help improve airline connectivity in northeastern Jiangxi Province and demonstrate the environmental sustainability of the development and operation of the Shangrao Sanqingshan Airport.

More and more citizens sense that Germany is in danger of being drawn into a bottomless vortex. All of Southern Europe is being economically ruined by the austerity demands of the Troika [IMF-ECB-European Commission]; youth unemployment there is up to 60% (!); the European Central Bank, by cutting interest rates to 0.5%, has opened the monetary floodgates in the tradition of Weimar Germany in 1923, just as the Fed and the central banks of Britain and Japan have done; and Germany is supposed to be the paymaster of last resort for everyone in Europe. In short, only an ignoramus does not see that the euro is a failed experiment!

Yukio Takasu, Under-Secretary-General for Management and Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Human Security.