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Bloomberg From oil to copper to coal, China’s gigantic commodities industry is signalling that the first economy to be flattened by the coronavirus is getting closer to a return to normality. Bloomberg Economics estimates that most of China was 90%-95% back to work at the end of last week, noting pick-ups in the steel market, construction activity and crude processing. ...

Bloomberg Italy is finalising new measures aimed at providing liquidity to companies, Finance Minister Roberto Gualtieri said. The government will guarantee loans of up to 800,000 euros at 100%, and will boost guarantees to 90% on another 200 billion euros ($216 billion) in loans, Gualtieri said in a televised comment on Rai TG1. Companies will be able to seek bank ...

Bloomberg If UK debt issuance is anything to go by, this economic crisis is likely to be far worse than the last. Britain’s Debt Management Office will have to raise sales of government bonds to 285 billion pounds ($352 billion), according to Citigroup Inc. That’s over 50 billion pounds more than during the great financial crisis. Still, gilts have been ...

Bloomberg European companies have been quick to slash or cancel their dividends in response to the coronavirus crisis, fueling calls from market participants that U.S. firms should take heed and preserve cash. The pandemic’s damage to profit as well as regulators’ calls for corporations to preserve liquidity have so far pushed 107 companies in the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 Index ...

Bloomberg The UK is facing a leadership crisis as it heads into the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, with Boris Johnson in intensive care and his government under pressure to get a grip on the outbreak. The 55-year-old prime minister was taken to the hospital on April 05 for routine tests after struggling to shake off Covid-19, but his condition ...

RAS AL KHAIMAH / WAM Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority (RAKTDA) unveiled support measures that will be in place from mid-April aimed at helping tourism industry in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. It include a six-month waiver of all touristic licences; waiver of tourism dirhams from March to May; a complete exemption of tourism licencing fees for Q2 ...

ABU DHABI / WAM A United Arab Emirates aid plane carrying approximately 10 tonnes of medical supplies was dispatched to Italy to assist the country in combating the Covid-19 pandemic, benefitting over 10,000 healthcare professionals. This initiative is part of the UAE’s commitment to cooperating with countries affected by the Covid-19 outbreak in order to bolster global efforts to curb ...

Dubai / WAM The Ministry of Finance (MoF), has announced the launch of the unified digital platform to settle fees for common federal and local government services, to find an optimal interconnected alternative with the aforementioned systems, and to provide shared government services without manual procedures. The new platform will manage financial settlements and accounting operations, thus aligning data accuracy ...

ABU DHABI / WAM The gross domestic product (GDP) of Abu Dhabi at current prices (nominal GDP) grew 4.6 percent to around AED620 billion, during the first nine months of 2019 from around AED592.9 billion in the comparable period of 2018. The growth was led by the momentum recorded across all economic platforms during the reference period, according to combined ...

Bloomberg When government official Kiran Dighavkar heard that a 56-year-old man who’d recently died in the Mumbai suburb of Dharavi had tested positive for Covid-19, he knew his next moves would determine the trajectory of the outbreak in India’s commercial capital. The man, who died on April 1, lived with seven members of his family in a 400 square foot ...