Reuters The International Monetary Fund backed Saudi Arabia’s sweeping economic reform plan on Thursday and said the kingdom was cutting spending at the right speed to cope with a huge state budget deficit caused by low oil prices. Late last month, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced steps to reduce the kingdom’s dependence on oil exports over the ...

  Bloomberg OPEC’s strategy to defend market share over prices is working as oil approaches $50 a barrel amid rising demand and declining output from producers including U.S. shale companies, Kuwait’s acting oil minister said. Oil will end the year at $50 a barrel and the market will rebalance in the third or fourth quarter of the year, Anas Al-Saleh, ...

  Tokyo / Bloomberg Environmental groups urged the Japanese government to use the Group of Seven summit meeting to be held from Friday in western Japan as a platform to announce a shift away from fossil-fuel financing. The groups, including 350.org Japan and Friends of the Earth Japan, staged rallies outside government offices in Tokyo on Thursday ahead of submitting ...

  Shanghai / Bloomberg China National Chemical Corp. extended its tender offer for Syngenta AG shares by more than a month as it waits for regulatory approval for its planned $43 billion takeover of the Swiss seed and pesticide maker. State-owned ChemChina offered in February to buy Basel, Switzerland-based Syngenta for $465 a share in cash plus a special dividend ...

  HYDERABAD / AP Apple will set up an office in southern India to develop the Maps feature for its products, the company said on Thursday in its second such announcement since CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country. A company statement said the venture will be located in the technology hub of Hyderabad and will create about 4,000 jobs. ...

  HONG KONG / AP Chinese appliance maker Midea made a takeover offer for German industrial robot maker Kuka, a move that it says would help it capture a larger share of the “future service robots market.” Midea said it would offer 115 euros (about $130) a share to buy all the Kuka shares it doesn’t already own. The cash ...

  Manila / AFP The Philippines’ economy grew a better-than-expected 6.9 percent in the first quarter, the government said on Thursday, putting it on track to meet full year targets and making it one of Asia’s best performers for the three month period. The GDP figure beat economist forecasts of about 6.6 percent, and marks the highest quarterly growth in ...

  Bloomberg Euro-area officials are weighing a proposal to purchase loans that member states made to Greece in a move that would ease the nation’s debt burden, a precondition for the International Monetary Fund’s involvement in a bailout program. Senior finance ministry officials from the currency bloc held a conference call on Wednesday evening to discuss ways to make Greece’s ...

  Bloomberg The pound has shaken off an unwanted label. It’s no longer the worst-performing Group-of-10 currency of 2016, after surging this week as polls signaled a receding risk of a Brexit following the European Union referendum in June. Sterling cemented its lead over the Australian and New Zealand dollars on Thursday as retail-sales data showed there’s still life in ...

  Bloomberg The European Central Bank is likely to exceed its inflation goal for a while after a long period of near-stagnant prices, Governing Council member Erkki Liikanen said. “You can never have average inflation close to 2 percent if you are never above 2; it’s arithmetic,” Liikanen, the Bank of Finland governor, said in an interview in Helsinki on ...