2025-01-17 19:09
SANTIAGO, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Chile expects to reach a new agreement with neighbor Argentina to supply up to 2.5 million cubic meters of natural gas per day as needed in the cooler winter and springs months through September to meet energy deficits in the country's remote north. The Chilean energy ministry said in a statement to Reuters that during 2025 "a new agreement will be reached to export volumes of natural gas to Argentina" at a shipment rate of 2-3 million m3 per day through the NorAndino gas pipeline. The operation contemplates a total volume of up to 117 million m3 of natgas with a daily maximum of 2.5 million m3 between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, 2025. The supply would be carried out on a spot basis, giving priority to domestic consumption. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chile-pen-new-gas-supply-deal-with-argentina-meet-deficits-north-2025-01-17/
2025-01-17 19:07
WASHINGTON, Jan 17 (Reuters) - U.S. clean energy tax subsidies under President Joe Biden's signature Inflation Reduction Act will boost U.S. budget deficits by $825 billion over the next 10 years, Congressional Budget Office director Philip Swagel said on Friday, far above the initial $270 billion 10-year estimate. Swagel told reporters that higher cost estimates are due in part to a different budget window, 2025-2035, compared to 2022-2031 for an initial estimate when the legislation was approved in 2022. Costs also were higher because of subsequent rule changes that increased the uptake of electric vehicle subsidies, including a leasing provision and new tailpipe emissions standards for internal combustion cars, he said. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-clean-energy-tax-subsidies-cost-825-billion-over-10-years-cbo-says-2025-01-17/
2025-01-17 18:44
Jan 17 (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday said Digital Currency Group Inc. and the CEO of its now-defunct subsidiary Genesis Global Capital LLC have agreed to pay a combined $38.5 million in civil penalties to settle charges they misled investors about Genesis's financial condition. Regulators found that DCG and Genesis chief Soichoro Moro downplayed the impact of a mid-2022 default by one of its largest borrowers, Three Arrow Capital, the SEC said in a statement. The SEC said Moro made false or misleading statements on Twitter, now known as X, by characterizing Genesis’s balance sheet as strong. Other executives retweeted some of those statements. Neither the firm nor Moro admitted or denied the SEC's findings. Moro's lawyer said in a statement, the executive is pleased to put the matter behind him. "Mr. Moro helped guide Genesis through a period of extreme market volatility and, working with the DCG and Genesis teams, sought to provide truthful and accurate updates about the company along the way," his lawyer Marcus Asner said in the statement. "Genesis met all withdrawal requests and continued to do so for many months after Mr. Moro left Genesis in August 2022." A DCG spokesperson said in a statement that the firm is pleased to have concluded the matter, which was limited in its findings to social media posts by a former executive of the Genesis subsidiary. "DCG has always strived to conduct its business with the highest integrity, and we believe our actions related to Genesis were consistent with that approach," the spokesperson said. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/legal/digital-currency-group-former-genesis-ceo-pay-385-mln-over-sec-charges-2025-01-17/
2025-01-17 17:41
LONDON, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey called for the world's financial powers, led by the United States and China, to avoid economic nationalism in a speech , opens new tab released three days before Donald Trump is due to be sworn in as U.S. president. Bailey said global cooperation was more likely to succeed when economic benefits were widely shared and that it was an open question whether there could be effective cooperation when the United States and China had such different philosophical outlooks. "We can hope, but hope is not a winning strategy," he said in the text of the speech he is scheduled to make at the University of Cambridge. "A world where there is greater actual and perceived risk of unequal outcomes and instability is one where collective action is harder and less likely to succeed." The International Monetary Fund warned earlier on Friday that unilateral measures such as trade tariffs, non-tariff barriers or subsidies could potentially leave all countries worse off. Bailey said global cooperation should not be restricted to acute crises like the 2007-08 financial meltdown. "And this is the risk we face today - the vulnerabilities are growing, and the necessary solutions are global, but they are not sufficiently great to tip into crisis multilateralism. And we don't want that to happen," he said. Bailey made no comments in the text of his speech about the outlook for the British economy or the BoE's monetary policy. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/bank-englands-bailey-warns-against-risks-economic-nationalism-2025-01-17/
2025-01-17 16:59
Jan 17 (Reuters) - Argentina brought in its first budget surplus in more than a decade in 2024, data published on Friday showed, marking a win for libertarian President Javier Milei and his sweeping austerity push in his first full year in office. The nation's budget surplus came in at 1.76 trillion pesos, or 0.3% of gross domestic product (GDP) in the full year, the economy ministry said. Meanwhile the primary fiscal balance, which excludes debt payments, was up to a 10.41 trillion peso surplus, or 1.8% of the GDP. "Zero deficit is a reality," Milei said on social media. "Promises are fulfilled." Milei slashed public spending after taking office in December 2023 in a bid to tamp out rampant inflation, which hit an annual peak of nearly 300% in April of last year. The economy ministry in a statement said that the government's fiscal anchor would remain in place for 2025. The budget and primary balances for the month of December were in the negative, marking the first monthly primary deficit after 11 months in the black. The South American nation logged a primary fiscal deficit of 1.30 trillion pesos and a financial deficit of 1.56 trillion pesos in December. Economy Minister Luis Caputo attributed the deficits to seasonal factors, given that December was typically a month of high government spending. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/argentina-logs-first-financial-surplus-14-years-2024-2025-01-17/
2025-01-17 16:35
WASHINGTON, Jan 17 (Reuters) - China notified the International Monetary Fund on Thursday that its economy grew by 5% in 2024, IMF Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told reporters, calling the development a "positive surprise" compared to the IMF's forecast of 4.8%. Gourinchas said the IMF had increased its forecast for Chinese growth slightly to 4.6% for 2025 and by four-tenths of a percentage point to 4.5% for 2026, reflecting some increased momentum caused by fiscal measures, although that was offset by trade policy uncertainty. But he stressed that China, the world's second-largest economy, still needed to make domestic demand a bigger engine of its growth, a message long delivered by the IMF to Chinese authorities, but that had not happened yet. "The Chinese economy needs to pivot to a more domestically-driven engine of growth," Gourinchas said during an online news conference on Friday, adding that it would become increasingly difficult for the Chinese economy to expand through external trade alone. "China is a very large economy, and it cannot just rely on the rest of the world to fuel its own domestic growth," he said, adding that Chinese authorities had adopted some measures to move in that direction, but more work was needed. Any weakness in the Chinese economy would have spillover effects for many emerging and developing countries, posing a risk factor for the global economy, he said. The IMF forecast Chinese growth would stabilize at 4.5% in 2026 as trade uncertainty dissipated and higher retirement ages slowed the decline in the country's labor supply. China's top legislative body in September approved plans to raise the retirement age for men to 63 from 60, and to 58 from 55 for women in white-collar work. For women in blue-collar jobs it increased to 55 from 50. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/imf-says-chinas-economic-growth-5-2024-was-positive-surprise-2025-01-17/
