Italians have a last chance to vote on Monday in a two-day parliamentary election that could restore conservative billionaire Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister of a country on the brink of recession. Many Italians doubt, however, that Italy’s 62nd government since World War II will revive the economy.
Zimbabwe’s official presidential election results may remain secret for at least another week while substantial numbers of votes are recounted in a move the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says is designed to overturn fraudulently Robert Mugabe’s defeat and his Zanu-PF party’s defeat in Parliament.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) called on Saturday for ”strong action” and ”close cooperation” to combat the financial crisis that is battering the world economy. The IMF, wrapping up a meeting in Washington, DC, stressed ”the challenges facing the world economy are of a global nature”.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) holds its spring meeting in Washington, DC, on Saturday amid what officials describe as the worst financial crisis since the 1930s Depression and as the global economy weakens. The 185-member IMF warned on Wednesday that the economic outlook was increasingly grim.
World oil demand will rise much less than expected in 2008 because of slower economic growth in the United States and other industrialised countries, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday. The IEA, adviser to industrialised countries, also pointed to a drop in oil inventories.
Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday appealed to Italian voters to give him a huge majority at the general election on Sunday and Monday. He said that ”to really govern” he needed a margin of at least 20 seats in the Senate, the Upper House of the Italian Parliament. That would allow him ”to take, if necessary, difficult and unpopular decisions”.
Oil prices were steady on Thursday after retreating from levels just cents below the record trading high established in the previous session on an unexpected drop in United States crude inventories. By afternoon in Europe, the contract was up 25 cents, fetching ,12 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The United States mortgage crisis has spiralled into ”the largest financial shock since the Great Depression” and there is a one-in-four chance that it will cause a full-blown global recession, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned on Wednesday.
The global economic outlook is becoming increasingly grim as the United States appears unable to escape recession from a housing meltdown, the effects of which are still spreading, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Wednesday. Global expansion is set to slow to 3,7% in 2008 amid an unfolding crisis that began in the United States, the IMF said.
A new World Bank and International Monetary Fund report warns that most countries in Africa will not meet most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) due by 2015. While there has been strong growth in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the region is still likely to fall short of the first goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015.
While emerging markets have been resilient so far to global market subprime turmoil, global spillovers could test their resilience, said the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) director of monetary and capital markets, Jaime Caruana, on Tuesday at the launch of the IMF’s latest <i>Global Financial Stability Report</i>.
Africa will be well-placed to weather a global economic downturn if it uses high oil and commodities prices to diversify its economies, one of the continent’s most successful businessmen said in an interview. Nigerian tycoon Aliko Dangote said the world’s poorest continent could benefit while developed nations suffered an economic slowdown.
The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) gave a gloomy report on Saturday on prospects for the world economy to a dozen leaders debating how to respond to global financial turmoil. Dominique Strauss-Kahn told a high-powered forum that most of the downside risks to the world economy feared six months ago had now become reality.
Malawi is deepening trade and investment ties with China as part of a larger strategy to diversify its agriculture-dominated economy and increase its bargaining power in the international tobacco market, the country’s trade minister said late on Thursday.
Zimbabweans waited anxiously on Thursday for an end to a deafening official silence over the outcome of their presidential election, after the opposition took control of Parliament. The country’s electoral commission wrapped up final results on the parliamentary contest in the early hours, in which President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party lost its majority.
Seretse Khama Ian Khama was inaugurated as Botswana’s President on Tuesday, inheriting a rare political and economic success story. Just next door, millions of Zimbabweans desperate to end economic misery anxiously awaited results of an election in which President Robert Mugabe faced the biggest challenge in 28 years of iron-fisted rule.
Will Mugabe accept the result? Zimbabweans didn’t so much speak in Saturday’s presidential election as shout so overwhelmingly that Robert Mugabe and the Zanu-PF party elite who came to believe in their unchallenged right to rule have been stunned into silence.
The highest and oldest wall is that which separates ”us” from ”them”. This is described today as a great divide of religions or ”a clash of civilisations”, which are false concepts, propagated to provide ”the other” — a target for fear and hatred that justifies invasion and plunder, writes John Pilger.
Centuries before European colonialists carved up Africa, Arab traders marvelled at the profits to be reaped in the fabled lands south of the Sahara. ”In the country of Ghana, gold grows in the sand as carrots do and is plucked at sunrise,” wrote Ibn al-Faqih, a ninth-century chronicler.
Libya’s Parliament passed a -billion budget for 2008 aimed at giving Libyans a direct share in oil wealth after leader Moammar Gadaffi said economic development was too slow, state media reported on Tuesday. Many Libyans say they are still waiting to benefit from soaring oil revenues and rising foreign investment.
South Africa’s rating of 63,2% ranks it 52nd globally on the Heritage Foundation 2008 Index of Economic Freedom. In a statement released on Monday, Century 21 South Africa — the local chapter of the world’s largest real-estate brand — said the index, which covers 162 countries, took 10 specific freedoms into account.
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/ 26 February 2008
World economic growth could miss the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) forecast of 4,1% this year if United States and European banks disclose more major losses on the subprime market, the head of the IMF said on Monday. Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned that emerging economies would not escape the effects of the slowdown in rich countries.
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/ 25 February 2008
Rapid economic growth rates in Africa are at risk from a global downturn, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told West African leaders on Monday. The IMF has cut its 2008 global growth projection to 4,1%, down from 4,9% last year, blaming the weak outlook in the United States and Europe.
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/ 25 February 2008
Prudent fiscal and monetary policies during 2007 have kept inflation under control in Mozambique, the International Monetary Fund said in a statement on Monday. ”We congratulate the Mozambican authorities on their strong commitment to sound economic policies and for an impressive economic track record over the last years.
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/ 19 February 2008
Billionaire philanthropist George Soros made his fortune on the markets and is giving a lot of it to Africa. Last week he hosted an Africa Forum in Dakar on whether the continent is moving closer to his open society ideal. Ferial Haffajee asked him about the global economy, African governance and the role of China in Africa.
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/ 12 February 2008
A shocking new range of price increases were announced on Tuesday as Zimbabwe’s world-record hyperinflation spun further out of control, with charges for cellphone calls soaring by nearly 1 700%. The official National Incomes and Prices Commission said international calls were up to Z,2-million from Z 400 per minute.
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/ 8 February 2008
Zimbabwe’s former finance minister Simba Makoni — who announced his bid to challenge President Robert Mugabe in presidential elections next month — on Thursday taunted the octogenarian leader, suggesting he could unseat Mugabe as the ruling party’s candidate and stand for the presidency in his place.
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/ 7 February 2008
United States President George Bush will spend most of his time during a five-nation tour of Africa later this month in Tanzania, to spotlight development gains in the East African nation. "This is a success story," said US embassy public affairs officer Jeffery Salaiz of Tanzania, during a press conference held in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday.
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/ 22 January 2008
Stocks plummeted across the world on Monday amid fears of a global recession, with markets in Europe suffering their biggest one-day losses since the September 11 attacks on the United States. Dealers said a major new plan by President George Bush to prevent a United States recession was not enough to offset the stream of bad news from banks.
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/ 19 January 2008
Cuba will support crisis-riddled Zimbabwe, which is being ”punished” by the West for seizing white-owned farms, the Cuban ambassador was quoted as saying in Harare on Saturday. Cosme Torres Espinoza told reporters that there were similarities in the way the United States treated Cuba and Zimbabwe.
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/ 11 January 2008
Tax collectors from 39 countries around the world meeting in an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development-sponsored conference on Friday agreed to support a further conference specifically on taxation in Africa. The conference will be hosted by the South African Revenue Service, and will take place in May this year.
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/ 11 January 2008
A uranium mining project by an Australian firm due to begin in northern Malawi next year will boost the country’s exports by 25%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In a new country report released this week, the IMF said the -million project by mining firm Paladin could add up to 10% of the Southern African country’s overall GDP and 25% to exports.