Mon, Sep 26, 2011 page10

• World Business Quick Take

  • Agencies
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  FINANCE

  Poland ready with liquidity

  Poland’s central bank is ready to supply the country’s banking system with liquidity if a need arises and its intervention in the foreign exchange market will be random, Governor Marek Belka said late on Saturday. The current storms in the European economy carry a risk of shortages of available cash, Belka said at the sidelines of the IMF/World Bank fall meeting in Washington. “The central bank is ready to, if it becomes necessary, to supply liquidity to Polish banks,” he said. “They should feel secure. Even if the international banking system dries up they can count on us.” Belka also said that should the current destabilization in the country’s forex market continue, the central bank will carry out intermittent intervention aimed at keeping the rouble from sliding and spooking speculative investors.

  ECONOMY

  Australia not crisis-immune

  Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan sounded caution yesterday over Canberra’s plans to return to surplus next year, warning that Europe’s debt fears had delivered a “huge hit” to global confidence. Swan told ABC television from Washington there was a mood of “sober realism” among finance ministers at this weekend’s meetings of the G20 and IMF, with a “fair degree of concern” about the state of the global economy. Swan said Australia was not immune from Europe’s problems, tempering his previously strident promises of returning the budget to surplus by next year to 2013. “We’re determined to come back to surplus, but I just make the observation that these events globally have an impact upon global growth,” he said. “That has an impact upon domestic growth. That has an impact on revenue collections. And of course it makes it tougher to come back to surplus.”

  PORTUGAL

  Forecast both good and bad

  Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho said on Saturday he anticipated a better-than-expected economic performance this year, but that the outlook for next year was gloomier than previously forecast, Dow Jones Newswires reported. He said in an interview that the economy would contract by 1.8 percent this year, better than the previously estimated -2.2 percent growth, but that he expected -2.3 percent growth next year, a downgrade on the -1.8 percent that had been predicted. He credited better domestic performance for this year’s upgraded forecast, but explained that the new figures for next year were brought on by a worsening global economic outlook. He said he expected a return to positive growth in 2013, at 1.2 percent.

  INTERNET

  Google feature tag launched

  Google News has announced a twist in the automated news-feed algorithm: “featured” content selected from the stories it delivers every day. Google announced on Saturday that news organizations can add “standout” metadata tags to their best stories and the US edition of Google News may include a “featured” label when it displays a link to the story. There is no guarantee “standout” stories will be featured, the company said. If a news provider puts the standout tag on more than seven stories in a week, Google’s algorithm won’t factor in the tag from that company as much, or may ignore it, Google said. News organizations can also use a standout tag to highlight strong work by other providers. The plan was announced at the Online News Association conference in Boston.
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