Tag: april 12 2022

Ukraine accounts for 47 percent of the world’s exports of sunflower oil, a common cooking oil in developing nations and a staple ingredient in processed foods from bread to mayonnaise because of its mild flavor. Russia’s invasion has halted those exports, pushing consumers to grab alternatives and sending all kinds of cooking oils to record...

Europe imports about 40 percent of its gas, and Germany 55 percent, from Russia. If those deliveries were to stop—either by Western sanction or by Russia’s decision—there is not enough extra gas to be found elsewhere in the world to replace it. Finding replacements for Russia’s gas is “impossible,” chief gas researcher Giles Farrer at...

Western sanctions against Russia could reduce the dollar’s dominance by allowing countries to become used to paying for imports using other currencies, Gita Gopinath, the International Monetary Fund’s first deputy managing director, said in a Financial Times interview. “The dollar would remain the major global currency even in that landscape,” she said, “but fragmentation at...

The world’s fertilizer industry is imploding. Together, Russia and its neighbor Belarus—now coming under Western sanctions—export about 40 percent of the world’s supply of potash, 95 percent of which is used to make fertilizer. Russia also delivers 11 percent of the world’s urea and 48 percent of the globe’s ammonium nitrate, both also key elements...

Members of the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) policy-making committee are at odds over the pace and degree of ending bond purchases and raising interest rates, according to the Financial Times. Some members want a “firm end date” to bond-buying so the bank can raise interest rates in this year’s third quarter to avoid “falling behind...

Ashmore Group and other asset managers heavily invested in emerging markets face worsening losses as investors withdraw to safer havens amid high inflation, rising interest rates, the Ukraine war’s economic fallout, and concerns about exposure to China’s slowing economy and growing affiliation with Russia, the Financial Times reported. Bank of America (BoA) analysts have reduced...

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO’s) food price index averaged 159.3 last month, a “giant leap” of 12.6-percent gain from February’s level, which itself was the highest since the index was created in 1990, the FAO said. The index stands 34 percent higher than a year ago. The index rose at the fastest monthly...

In response to street protests around the world, governments are adding to their already considerable debt to give tax breaks, subsidies, and other supports to outraged consumers as food and fuel prices ratchet up to new record levels. In Peru, soaring fuel prices sent people into the streets where they clashed with riot police. At...

The world has entered a “new inflationary era” in which consumers’ and businesses’ expectations about prices are becoming “unmoored” from their historical norms, the president of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has warned. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered sanctions that supercharged inflation in food, fuel, and across consumer and industrial goods well beyond the...