The IMF hopes to gain governments’ agreement this week to raise its funds by more than US$400 billion, about two-thirds of the amount it said it would need three months ago, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde signaled yesterday.
Lagarde, who had already signaled the fund would need less than previously thought, said the success of some countries in raising funds on financial markets in the first quarter had eased the pressure on its crisis-fighting resources.
In an interview in yesterday’s Il Sole 24 Ore daily, she praised reform efforts by Italy’s government and said market confidence had improved since Rome agreed to enhanced surveillance by the IMF. She also saw progress in Spain.
“I really hope this week we’ll reach the critical mass of more than [US]$400 billion. We are determined to do all we can,” she was quoted as telling Italy’s main financial newspaper, though she also said finally sealing the funds might take a bit longer.
Finance chiefs meet in Washington on Friday and Saturday.
“I am ready to leave the matter open for a few weeks: Some countries need a little bit more time for parliamentary approval,” she added.
Yesterday, Japan pledged US$60 billion in loans to IMF in an effort to ensure that the debt crisis in some European economies will not spread.
Japanese Minister of Finance Jun Azumi announced the emergency loan, which would use the nation’s foreign-exchange reserves, his ministry said.
Lagarde welcomed the move and encouraged other fund members to do the same.
“This is an important step forward in the ongoing international effort to strengthen the adequacy of the global resources available to prevent and fight crises and to promote global economic stability,” Lagarde said in a statement.
The yield on Spain’s benchmark 10-year government bond jumped above 6 percent on Monday for the first time since November last year. Rising yields are a sign that investors are less confident in the country’s finances.
“We can never be optimistic about the situation in Europe, even though the area is almost set to exit the crisis, thanks to policy efforts,” Azumi was quoted by Kyodo News as saying.
In the interview, Lagarde said credit-crunch risks had receded.
“The overall risk evaluation is unchanged, but it’s April now and some countries have already raised on the markets more than half of what they need for 2012, so our estimate has shrunk,” she said. “In some countries, for small and medium enterprises, for households, credit may be more costly and difficult, but it is not as serious a threat as we feared in December.”
Lagarde said the IMF would keep pressing for the eurozone’s rescue funds to be allowed to lend directly to banks, to address the link between lenders and sovereign risk.
“I put the idea forward in July, it was not accepted. We insist,” she said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained