Author: MD Editors

The share of the Chinese currency in transactions will rise tenfold this year, Herman Gref predicts The Chinese yuan has become a major player in Russia’s foreign trade and its share in the country’s cross-border settlements is expected to grow tenfold, Herman Gref, the head of Russia’s largest state-owned lender, Sber, said on Tuesday. The share of the yuan in Russia’s export settlements jumped from 2% to 18% and in import payments from 5% to 27% over the past year, according to Gref. Speaking at a Russian-Chinese Business Forum in Shanghai, he highlighted the “significant” interest in national currencies, and…

Manufacturing activity across the 20 countries that use the euro has declined at its fastest pace since the Covid-19 pandemic, amid a widening gap in global demand for goods and services, according to a study by S&P Global. Published on Tuesday, the report showed that the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for manufacturing dropped to 44.6 in May from 45.8 in April, and further below the 50-mark separating growth from contraction. A similar gauge of services fell to a two-month low, though its reading of 55.9 still signaled robust expansion. The outperformance of services relative to manufacturing was the widest since…

The expansion of Hungary’s Paks Nuclear Power Plant is crucial to the nation’s energy security Hungary has received the European Commission’s approval to amend contracts for new reactors at its Paks nuclear power plant (NPP), developed by Russia’s Rosatom, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has revealed. The Paks NPP produces more than half of the electricity consumed in the country. Moscow and Budapest struck the plant-expansion deal in 2014, with Rosatom intended as the builder of two new reactors with a capacity of 1.2 gigawatts each. The project has been hit with long delays and Hungarian officials have discussed changing the…

Demand for gas in the European Union is expected to decline by more than the bloc’s total imports from Russia this year, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing an internal European Commission document. The majority of the cuts were made by the EU’s most industrialized countries. Gas consumption will reportedly decrease by 60 billion cubic meters in 2023 compared to the average for the last five years. The figure represents “more than the gas volumes we still foresee to import from Russia in 2023, both pipeline and [liquefied natural gas],” reads the document seen by the FT.  The figure is also…

State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin has accused Washington of defrauding other nations Senior Russian lawmaker Vyacheslav Volodin has branded US federal government debt a global pyramid scheme that is heading for an inevitable collapse. The comments come as Washington struggles to agree on raising its debt ceiling to avoid a default. “Just think about it, in 2023 interest payments on the US debt could reach $1.5 trillion – almost a third of all US budget revenue!” Volodin, who serves as chairman of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said in a Telegram post on Friday. “The US public debt is a global…

Kazakhstan’s energy exports are heavily dependent on transit through the sanctioned country, an envoy has said The stability of oil supplies from Kazakhstan to the global market relies on transit through Russia, the country’s ambassador to the US, Yerzhan Ashikbayev, has stated. He added that any disruption to flows caused by sanctions could trigger a dire scenario. “We proceed from the mutual interest of all parties, the interest in the stability of the global market, in the stability of supplies. This is vital both for the functioning of our [Kazakh] economy and for the entire global economy,” the envoy told…

The US government may run out of money by June 9, Goldman Sachs economists have warned. The Treasury’s early June deadline for the debt ceiling looks “very accurate, in our view,” Alec Phillips and Tim Krupa told MarketWatch. According to their calculations, by June 2, the Treasury’s room to maneuver under the debt ceiling will barely exceed $30 billion – the minimum cash the Treasury has targeted in earlier debt-limit projections – and the funds will have run entirely dry by June 9, MarketWatch wrote on Friday. Phillips and Krupa expect a deal on the debt ceiling to be announced late on…

The country’s small- and medium-sized businesses make up just one-fifth of the economy The head of Sber, Russia’s largest state-owned lender, has called the small proportion of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Russian economy “shameful.” Small businesses account for just one-fifth of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and “it’s a shame,” Herman Gref said at a meeting of Opora Rossii, a non-governmental organization that represents the interests of SMEs. He cited the example of China, where SMEs account for between 60% and 70% of the economy, adding that in the US and Finland small businesses account for around 60% of…

The freezing of Russia’s forex holdings has accelerated de-dollarization around the world, experts say The process of diversifying away from the greenback by countries around the world is gathering pace, according to the latest data from the International Monetary Fund. The statistics tracked by the Washington-based institution show that the dollar’s share of official gold and foreign currency reserves dropped to a nearly three-decade low of 58% in the fourth quarter of 2022. The move has reportedly been gradual and the dollar share of central banks’ foreign reserves is now nearly down to a level last seen in 1995. The long-standing status…

The president vowed that Russia won’t reward firms opting to leave the country with excess capital Russian companies should reclaim their position on the domestic market and expand beyond it, President Vladimir Putin has told a televised meeting with industry leaders of the Business Russia organization. According to the head of state, focusing solely on the local market would only lead to self-isolation and loss of competitiveness. The country’s authorities will keep working to reduce the administrative burden that local businesses have to face, Putin said. He added that the government had introduced an assessment of the impact of regulations…