Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras will call for an extension to the nation’s austerity program when he meets with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande next week, the Financial Times reported yesterday.
Samaras will hold talks with Merkel and Hollande in Berlin and will suggest that public spending cuts be spread over four years instead of two, according to a document seen by the paper,
BUDGET CUTS
Greece is currently scrambling to find budget cuts — amounting to about 5 percent of GDP — to be implemented next year and in 2014 as part of its existing bailout deal with the EU and the IMF.
Greece raised 4.063 billion euros (US$5 billion) in a sale of three-month treasury bills on Tuesday, paying a modestly higher rate of 4.43 percent, the public debt management agency said.
The extraordinarily large sale should help the Greek government avoid a cash crunch, according to a finance ministry source, as it faces redemption of a 3.2 billion euro bond held by the ECB that expires on Monday and awaits the next installment of its EU-IMF bailout package.
Greece has been shut out of the long-term debt markets since 2010 and has regularly issued short-term debt.
NEXT INSTALLMENT
Relying for its economic survival on EU-IMF bailout loans, Greece is waiting for the next installment of nearly 31.5 billion euros as a political deadlock, the result of back-to-back elections, has thrown its reform program off track.
Auditors from the country’s international creditors, who visited Greece late last month, are expected to return next month.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last