BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand plans public-private partnership investment projects worth 1.19 trillion baht ($33 billion) during 2020-2027, the government said on Friday, as it tries to boost long-term economic growth. The revised amount is slightly higher than 1.17 trillion baht previously approved and aims to attract more private companies to…

By Nevzat Devranoglu ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s central bank is expected to keep its key interest rate steady at 45% next week, after a 250 basis-point hike last month, marking the end of its aggressive tightening cycle, a Reuters poll showed on Friday. The monetary policy committee meeting on Feb.…

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Europe’s sluggish productivity growth may slow the fall in inflation to the European Central Bank’s 2% target, ECB policymaker Isabel Schnabel said on Friday. Schnabel pointed to a number of factors behind the euro zone’s long-running economic underperformance versus the United States, including lower investment in technology,…

By Tim Kelly and Chris Gallagher TOKYO (Reuters) – Hiromichi Akiba is stocking his Tokyo supermarket with more chicken because customers who used to buy beef are switching to cheaper meat as rising prices put a squeeze on their spending, his business and Japan’s economy. Japan unexpectedly fell into recession…

MADRID (Reuters) – Severe droughts and heatwaves in Spain could have a persisting impact on the domestic lenders’ solvency by slowing down the economy and leading to more loan losses, the Bank of Spain Governor Pablo Hernandez de Cos said on Friday. Spain has logged its warmest January since records…

By Elena Fabrichnaya, Alexander Marrow and Vladimir Soldatkin MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia’s central bank held its key interest rate at 16% on Friday, opting to leave borrowing costs unchanged after five successive rate hikes since last summer, still grappling with stubborn inflation pressure. The central bank had raised rates by 850…

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The potential confiscation of Russian assets by Western governments would send a strongly negative signal to other central banks and would gradually undermine international finance, Russia’s Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina said. The European Union on Monday adopted a law to set aside windfall profits made on…

LONDON (Reuters) -Britain, the United States and Canada remain “deeply concerned” about foreign information manipulation and other actions aimed at undermining democracies and human rights globally, the three Western countries said in a joint statement. “The time is now for a collective approach to the foreign information manipulation threat that…

By Pete Schroeder WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve’s top regulatory official said on Friday that bank supervisors are flagging problems at banks at a higher rate in the past year, and are conducting additional exams at firms facing large unrealized losses. Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr also…

(Reuters) – Despite “remarkable” progress on U.S. inflation, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Mary Daly said on Friday “there is more work to do” to ensure stable prices – a phrase that signals she feels it’s not yet time for interest-rate cuts. “We will need to resist the…