Topic category 1

The International Monetary Fund has told Morocco it is too hesitant in implementing reforms to improve its public finances, Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane said, but he pledged to move ahead with planned subsidy cuts and other measures.

An IMF delegation is in Morocco, scrutinizing the North African county's finances to see if it is still meeting the criteria of a two-year $6.2 billion precautionary credit line the IMF approved in 2012.

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Brazil has been criticized for battling a slowdown in its growth with protectionist trade policies, restrictions on capital flows and programs that favor local industry.

Can one of its diplomats now become the world’s free-trade champion?

World Trade Organization members announced in Geneva on Wednesday that they had chosen Brazil’s Roberto Azevedo to be the next director general, turning to a longtime trade diplomat from a prominent developing country to run an organization fighting to restore its clout.

Government subsidies of gasoline, electricity and other energy sources amount to about $1.9 trillion a year and should be ended or offset with taxes used to battle climate change and pay for social programs, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday in a major foray into the global warming debate.

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim today announced the appointment of Keiko Honda as Executive Vice President, Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) of the World Bank Group. Honda, a Japanese national, is joining the Agency from McKinsey and Co where she is a Director.

Increasing provisions for bad loans and developing a market to dispose of impaired assets would shore up the defences of Italian banks, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday.

Eurozone finance ministers have agreed a 10bn-euro bailout deal for Cyprus to prevent its banking system collapsing and keep the country in the eurozone.

Laiki (Popular) Bank - the country's second-biggest - will be wound down and deposit-holders with more than 100,000 euros ($130,000; £85,000) will face big losses.

However, all deposits under 100,000 euros will be "fully guaranteed".

Officials warn the island faces a deep recession with many businesses to shut.

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China is arguably becoming the most desperately green country in Asia if not on the planet.

With its worrisome pollution in the major cities, and its focused investments on solar power and lithium batteries, China sees clean energy as both necessity and opportunity.

Is any country too small to save? Not if it is part of the E.U., according to officials who hammered out a bailout deal early Saturday for the tiny Mediterranean island of Cyprus, whose economy faces a collapse. In an exclusive interview with TIME last Thursday, on the eve of the Cyprus crisis meeting in Brussels, Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, stated that the deal “cannot be a Band-Aid.” Sitting in her office in Paris that night, she said, “It’s true it is tiny, the size of Limousin,” a small region of central France. “However nonmaterial that country is relative to others, it is nonetheless significant and potentially an exposure for the whole of the euro zone because of the links between the various systems,” she added. With Europe’s banks intricately connected across the continent, an economic meltdown in Cyprus — one of the E.U.’s smallest countries — has “contagion risks.”

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda steps down today after eight years that has seen ADB transformed into a more relevant, responsive and results-oriented institution, helping developing Asia-Pacific countries reduce poverty and increase standards of living for their people.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda steps down today after eight years that has seen ADB transformed into a more relevant, responsive and results-oriented institution, helping developing Asia-Pacific countries reduce poverty and increase standards of living for their people.