US first-quarter growth quickens
US economic growth regained speed in the first quarter, but not as much as expected, which could heighten fears the already weakening economy could struggle to handle deep government spending cuts and higher taxes.
Gross domestic product expanded at 2.5% annual rate, the Commerce Department said on Friday, after growth nearly stalled at 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter. The increase, however, missed economists' expectations for a 3.0% growth pace.
Part of the acceleration in activity reflected farmers' filling up silos after a drought last summer decimated crop output. Removing inventories, the growth rate was a tepid 1.5%.
Given the smaller-than-expected increase and signs the economy has weakened in recent weeks, the GDP data will probably weigh on US stocks. It could also give ammunition for the Federal Reserve to maintain its monetary stimulus.
The US central bank, which meets next week, is widely expected to keep purchasing bonds at a pace of $85bn a month.
Data ranging from employment to retail sales and manufacturing weakened substantially in March after robust gains in the first two months of the year. There are indications the weakness persisted into April.
Broad-based gains
The GDP showed contributions to growth from all areas of the economy, with the exception of government, trade and investment by businesses in offices and other commercial buildings.
Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of US economic activity, increased at 3.2% pace - the fastest since the fourth quarter of 2010. It grew at a 1.8% rate in the fourth quarter of last year.
However, households cut back on saving to fund their purchases after incomes dropped at a 5.3% rate in the first quarter - a bad sign for future spending growth. The drop in income was the largest since the third quarter of 2009.
The saving rate - the percentage of disposable income households are socking away - fell to 2.6%, the lowest since the fourth quarter of 2007, from 4.7% in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Much of the gains in first-quarter spending came from automobile purchases and outlays for utilities, which were boosted by unusually cold temperatures. Consumers managed to step up their spending despite the return of a 2% payroll tax and higher gasoline prices.
Despite the spike in gasoline prices, inflation pressures were benign in the first three months of the year.
An inflation gauge in the government's GDP report rose at a 0.9% rate, the smallest increase since the second quarter of 2012. The personal consumption expenditure index had increased at a 1.6% pace the fourth quarter.
A core measure that strips out food and energy costs rose at a 1.2% rate, still well below the Fed's 2% target. Core PCE had increased at a 1.0% rate in the fourth quarter.
The lack of inflation should come as welcome relief for American households, but it could cause some nervousness at the US central bank, which may see it as a symptom of the economy's weakness.
Another big contributor to growth in the fourth quarter was inventory accumulation, which added a full percentage point to GDP growth after chopping off 1.5 points from output in the final three months of last year.
Business spending on equipment and software slowed sharply, growing at an only 3.0% rate after a brisk 11.8% pace in the fourth quarter.
Economists caution that it is too early to blame the cooling in business investment and other more recent signs of economic softness on the $85bn in mandatory government spending cuts, known as the sequester, that began on March 1.
Homebuilding marked an eighth straight quarter of growth, though the pace moderated from the fourth quarter. Housing added to growth last year for the first time since 2005 and its recovery should help ensure the economy does not contract.
While export growth rebounded, it was outpaced by imports, resulting in a trade deficit that cut off half a percentage point from output.
Cyprus partly eases capital controls
Cyprus has further eased capital controls imposed last month to prevent a run on deposits, raising the threshold for transactions that do not require prior approval by the central bank, the finance ministry said on Thursday.
With the latest decree, Cyprus has permitted transactions up to €500 000 domestically without prior vetting, the ministry said in a statement.
Banks on the island were shut down for nearly two weeks in March after Cyprus agreed a €10bn international bailout that forced major depositors at its two biggest lenders to pay part of the cost of the rescue.
The banks reopened under tight restrictions on March 28, a first in the history of the eurozone, to prevent a run on deposits by panicked savers.
Firms, which cannot make transfers exceeding €20 000 overseas unless they are vetted by the central bank, had complained the restrictions were stifling. Russia had warned it would only restructure its loan Cyprus if its interests were protected.
Finance Minister Harris Georgiades told Reuters he was confident the controls, which he called "necessary but temporary measures", would gradually be lifted within the next six months.
Other provisions of the new decree raised the amount individuals can transfer domestically to €10 000 a month from €3 000, and to €5 000 from €2 000 abroad.
Travellers may now take €3 000 abroad, increase from €2 000. Other restrictions, such as a €300 cash withdrawal limit and a ban on cashing cheques, remained in place.
British economy grows in first quarter
Britain's economy dodged a return to recession and grew faster than expected in the first three months of this year, providing some political relief for a government under fire over its austerity drive.
The Office for National Statistics said Britain's gross domestic product rose 0.3% in the first quarter, well above forecasts for a 0.1% rise.
The economy shrank shrank 0.3% quarter-on-quarter in late 2012, so a second contraction would have put Britain into its third recession in less than five years.
Year-on-year, the latest GDP reading was 0.6% higher, the strongest rise since the end of 2011.
Finance minister George Osborne said Thursday's data was encouraging and vowed to stay the course on fixing Britain's budget problems.
"We all know there are no easy answers to problems built up over many years, and I can't promise the road ahead will always be smooth, but by continuing to confront our problems head on, Britain is recovering and we are building an economy fit for the future," he said in a statement.
Sterling hit its highest level in two months against the dollar after the data and British government bond prices fell.
Britain's preliminary GDP figures are one of the first for a major advanced economy, and based mostly on estimated data, but it would be rare for a reading this high to be revised down into negative territory.
The rise was driven by strong services sector growth and a bounce-back in North Sea oil and gas output.
Politically, a slip back into recession would have been difficult for the government in general and Osborne in particular, coming just days after ratings agency Fitch stripped Britain of its top-notch credit rating.
Osborne is sticking to his commitment to eliminate Britain's underlying budget deficit in five years, betting that growth will pick up in time for a national election in May 2015 despite sluggish expansion forecast to be just 0.6% this year.
But the International Monetary Fund - previously supportive of Britain's approach to deficit reduction - thinks some cuts may need to be deferred given the weakness in demand.
An IMF mission visits Britain next month for an assessment of the country's economy that could include recommendations for a change of course.
The stronger-than-expected reading may help Osborne when he tries to convince the IMF that Britain's economy is on track for recovery, and that he is right to stick with his current plans.
Pitfalls ahead
Analysts warn of a broader problem of stagnation that has led some to warn that Britain risks a Japanese-style 'lost decade of near-zero growth.
Britain's GDP remains 2.6% below its peak in the first quarter of 2008 and even with Thursday's data, has stagnated for the past 18 months.
Rob Wood, an economist at Berenberg Bank, said a recovery appeared to be on the horizon but pitfalls lay ahead.
"The economy seems to have done a little better than the main surveys suggested but it is hardly a picture of rude health right now," he said. "We suspect there will be another couple of disappointing quarters to get through before the UK can see a return to sustainable growth."
Britain has been much slower to recover from the financial crisis than most other big economies. Weak demand from a recession-hit eurozone, a drag from the government's deficit-reduction measures and high inflation eating into meagre wage rises are all to blame.
Furthermore, the global economy is weakening and there are signs of slowing growth in the United States and China.
Britain's government and the Bank of England are making some efforts to boost growth without requiring more public spending, including seeking to expand bank lending .
The first-quarter rise in output was driven by a broad-based increase in services output, building on a strong January, with the motor trade particularly strong.
Industrial output was lifted by the biggest rise in the mining and quarrying sector since 2002, as some North Sea oil and gas fields came back on line after lengthy maintenance that depressed output in 2012.
UK credit scheme to aid small firms
Britain sought to inject new life into the country's stagnant economy on Wednesday by giving banks greater incentives to lend to small and medium-sized firms which complain they are starved of credit.
The Bank of England and the Treasury said a new phase of their flagship Funding for Lending Scheme would be heavily skewed towards smaller firms.
Banks taking part in the programme will also now be able to lend to alternative providers of credit - such as leasing firms which often work with small companies - as well as mortgage and housing credit corporations.
Under a third change, banks can get funding from the FLS for an extra year until the end of January 2015.
The Bank of England and the government see a lack of credit to small businesses as a major factor behind Britain's very slow recovery from the financial crisis. On Thursday, data could show the economy slipped into its third recession in under five years
Finance minister George Osborne is under pressure to boost growth after concerns from the International Monetary Fund - previously a supporter of his austerity policies - said he may need to slow the pace of spending cuts.
He announced measures to boost the housing market in March and employers groups welcomed Wednesday's changes to the FLS. But they said it remained to be seen whether banks would become less risk-averse and lend to such borrowers as start-up firms.
"What a lot of SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) will be looking for is money actually getting to the front line on reasonable terms, and not just to the safe bets," said Adam Marshall, policy director at the British Chambers of Commerce.
Economists said the changes were not a game-changer for the economy. "The FLS is likely to provide a boost when confidence returns to the economy, but confidence is the elusive factor," analysts at Barclays said in a note to clients.
Alan Clarke, an economist at Scotiabank said the changes were probably a complement to more broad-based stimulus in the future by the Bank of England, and were unlikely to stop it from buying more government bonds later in the year.
Incentives to lend to small firms now
The original FLS was launched last August and offers banks cheap credit if they increase lending to households and businesses. Results have been mixed, with benefits so far mainly going to banks and homebuyers rather than small businesses.
Banks drew £14bn ($21bn) in cheap funding from the Bank of England between August and the end of last year but the FLS failed to stop a decline in overall bank loans at the end of 2012, adding to pressure on the government to take more action.
Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said the extension of the FLS would assure banks about their cheap funding rates.
"This innovative extension will now do even more for small and medium-sized businesses so that they can play their full part in creating new jobs," Osborne said in a statement.
One of the changes announced on Wednesday seeks to get credit to small and medium-sized firms flowing as soon as possible: for every pound of additional lending by banks to the sector in the remainder of 2013, the amount of funding that banks will be able to draw upon increases by 10 pounds.
In 2014, that falls to five pounds of FLS funding for banks for every pound they lend to SMEs.
Lending to other sectors will count on a one-for-one basis towards the allowance for banks accessing the scheme.
Cormac Leech, a banking analyst at Liberum Capital, said the 10-to-1 ratio to increase bank lending to small firms this year would help banks such as Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds, which are Britain's biggest business lenders.
"They are highly incentivised to write SME loans even at an underwriting loss. So it's a key positive for them and should help to drive their share price and sector earnings," he said.
Employers groups want more competition in Britain's banking sector as a way to spur fresh lending. Those hopes suffered a blow on Wednesday when the planned sale of 630 bank branches by Lloyds to the Co-Operative Group fell through.
Chinese manufacturing slows in April
Manufacturing activity slowed in China in April as exports were hit by sluggish overseas demand, HSBC said on Tuesday, fuelling concerns about the strength of the world's second-largest economy.
The preliminary figures come just over a week after China revealed growth in the January-March quarter had slowed from the previous three months and HSBC said Beijing would likely move to take measures to stoke economic activity.
HSBC said its initial purchasing managers' index (PMI) fell to 50.5 this month from a final figure of 51.6 in March.
The index tracks manufacturing activity and is a closely watched barometer of the health of the economy. A reading above 50 indicates expansion while anything below points to contraction. The bank's final result will be released on May 2.
"New export orders contracted after a temporary rebound in March, suggesting external demand for China's exporters remains weak," Qu Hongbin, a Hong Kong-based economist with HSBC, said in a release.
"Beijing is expected to respond strongly to sustain the economic recovery by increasing efforts to boost domestic investment and consumption in the coming months."
China's 2012 growth of 7.8% was its slowest in 13 years owing to weakness at home and in overseas markets.
Observers had hoped for a rebound this year that would drive a global recovery after October-December saw expansion of 7.9%, snapping seven straight quarters of slowing growth.
But the government last week said the first quarter of this year saw the economy grow just 7.7%, disappointing economists who had predicted 8.0%.
On Tuesday the International Monetary Fund lowered its forecast for China's growth this year to 8.0%, while Beijing last month kept its target for this year at 7.5%, unchanged from the previous year's.
China's industrial output, which is crucial to job creation, slowed in the first quarter to 9.5%, from 10% in October-December.
Xiao Chunquan, spokesperson of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said on Tuesday that downward pressure remains on industrial production growth this year.
"Insufficient effective demand has become a rather significant constraint on industrial development," he said at a press conference.
Xiao noted that both domestic retail sales and overseas markets were slack, while fixed-asset investment has been less efficient in driving industrial growth.
Zhang Zhiwei, an economist with Nomura International, said China's economic growth would further trend down through the rest of the year and could potentially come in at 7.0% - 7.5% for the whole year.
"The effectiveness of policy easing has been diminished by aggressive stimulus measures taken over the past five years," he said in a research note.
India tightens security for richest man
The Indian government has agreed to provide billionaire Mukesh Ambani with top-level security cover following threats to his life, an interior ministry spokesman said on Monday.
The country's richest man, who controls the Reliance Industries Ltd conglomerate, personally requested the "Z Category" security that is usually reserved for politicians and top-level civil servants.
The government has not yet decided whether Ambani will pay the government for the services, and how many policemen will guard the billionaire, Home Ministry spokesman H. Rahman said.
A source familiar with the issue, who declined to be named, said Ambani may pay the government up to 900,000 rupees ($16,600) a month for protection by armed commandos.
Ambani received a handwritten letter about two months ago that threatened an attack at his $1bn Mumbai residence. He added that the Islamist group Indian Mujahideen was suspected of sending the letter, but investigations were still under way.
Social media websites were abuzz with criticism of the move, with many questioning why highly trained commandos should protect a private citizen.
Among them was Arvind Kejriwal, an anti-graft activist, who told Reuters: "He is such a rich man. He can hire the best security agencies. Why does the government need to provide him with security?"
"None of the political parties is opposing this move. This clearly shows Mukesh Ambani is in the good books of all political parties," Kejriwal added.
Reliance already provides protection for Ambani, whose personal worth Forbes magazine has put at $21.5bn, the source said. However, the company lacks government intelligence and, by law, private security guards are not allowed to carry sophisticated weapons.
Under "Z Category" cover, Ambani will have 22 security guards, an escort and a pilot car, an arrangement similar to that provided for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, news network NDTV said. ($1 = 54.0750 Indian rupees)
France logs record unemployment
The number of jobless people in France has climbed to a new record, the French Labour Ministry said late on Thursday.
At the end of March, 3.2 million people were unemployed in the country, which is the second-largest economy in the eurozone after Germany.
The number of jobless went up by 36 900 in March over the number of unemployed in February and the total was 29 100 more than the previous record set in January 1997, the ministry said.
Unemployment has been on the rise in France since May 2011. An end to the trend is expected at the end of the current year at the earliest.
Spanish unemployment tops 6 million
More than six million Spaniards were out of work in the first quarter of this year, raising the jobless rate in the eurozone's fourth biggest economy to 27.2%, the highest since records began in the 1970s.
The huge sums poured into the global financial system by major central banks have eased bond market pressure on Spain, but the cuts Madrid has made in spending to regain investors' confidence have left it deep in recession.
Unemployment, 6.2 million in the first quarter, has been rising for seven quarters and the latest numbers will fuel a growing debate on whether to ease off on the budget austerity which has dominated Europe's response to the debt crisis.
"These figures are worse than expected and highlight the serious situation of the Spanish economy as well as the shocking decoupling between the real and the financial economy," strategist at Citi in Madrid Jose Luis Martinez said.
The collapse of a property boom driven by cheap credit has seen millions in the construction sector laid off since 2009 and private service sector, worth almost half gross domestic product, has followed as Spaniards tightened purse strings and investment plummeted.
The malaise has been made worse by billions of euros in state spending cuts and tax hikes to reduce one of the euro zone's highest deficits and convince nervous markets Spain can control its finances.
Spain and Italy's costs of borrowing hit their lowest in more than two years this week and EU officials have begun to talk openly of easing up on deficit targets.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said earlier this week that a new reform plan, to be announced on Friday, would not include more austerity measures in an effort to calm increasingly desperate Spaniards and reassure investors the country will soon be able to grow.
Protests have become commonplace across the country and thousands of police have been drafted in to Madrid to handle a march on Parliament on Thursday.
But few believe the government's plans will be ambitious enough to restart the ailing economy and create jobs. The International Monetary Fund sees Spanish unemployment at 26.5% next year.
China's factories crawl, Germany's shrink
China and Germany, the world's two biggest
exporters, showed new signs of weakness in major business surveys on Tuesday,
increasing doubt about the strength of global demand and economic recovery.
A similar survey for US manufacturing is due later in the day, expected
to show growth among factories there slowed slightly this month.The surveys come as a rethink by European leaders of their budget-cutting is gaining momentum - that, in the words of European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, austerity has reached its limits as a policy.
Business activity in Germany shrank for the first time in five months in April, while growth among the legion of Chinese factories slowed to a near-crawl as export orders dwindled.
Although purchasing managers' indexes (PMIs) published on Tuesday showed France may have passed the worst of its downturn, Germany's relapse means the wider eurozone still looks a long way from a return to economic growth.
The unexpected decline in German activity also adds a new dimension to next week's European Central Bank policy meeting.
"With Germany unable to offset the austerity and credit crunch drag on growth in the (weaker parts of the eurozone), and with excess capacity growing and business expectations falling, the only question is why the ECB has not cut rates already," said Lena Komileva, director of G+ Economics.
Markit's flash, or preliminary, services PMI for Germany, measuring growth in companies ranging from hotels to banks, fell to 49.2 in April from 50.9 the previous month.
That was worse than even the most pessimistic forecast from economists polled by Reuters and meant the index slipped below the 50 point dividing growth and contraction for the first time since November.
"Whereas we'd seen evidence that the economy had bounced back quite nicely in the first quarter ... there are suggestions that we could see a renewed downturn in the second quarter," said Chris Williamson, chief economist at compiler Markit.
Europe's politicians are becoming increasingly focussed on what will get the economy growing again, as the recession has undermined governments' efforts to get their finances in order.
Finance leaders of the G20 economies on Friday edged away from a long-running drive toward government austerity in rich nations, rejecting the idea of setting hard targets for reducing national debt in a sign of worries over a sluggish global recovery.
Exports wilt
Those fears were illustrated plainly by the PMIs.
The flash HSBC Purchasing Managers' Index for April fell to 50.5 in April from 51.6 in March but was still stronger than February's reading of 50.4.
The figures followed an unexpected contraction in export orders in March to Taiwan, one of the region's biggest providers of tech gadgets, signalling that Asia's trade-reliant economies may be losing further momentum.
"This release was more in line with the official PMI headlines in previous months, painting a picture of a painfully slow recovery in China's manufacturing sector," said Societe Generale economist Wei Yao in Hong Kong.
He said the official PMI, due on May 1, might provide a better guide for clues on how the second quarter is shaping up for China.
At least there might be better times ahead for its emerging market peer India, whose finance minister on Tuesday said the country's worst slowdown in a decade has bottomed out.
France too might have passed the nadir of its own economic troubles, the PMIs suggested, which helped the broader eurozone composite survey hold steady in April at 46.5.
But while on one hand showing the eurozone's recession is not worsening, the dire tone of the German PMIs means that might not be the case in the coming months.
"It is statistically neutral, but not in economics terms," said Komileva at G+ Economics of the eurozone PMIs.
France, Spain miss deficit goals
France and Spain fell short of their budget deficit goals last year, data showed on Monday, although the overall fiscal picture for the eurozone improved.
France's 2012 budget deficit was 4.8% of economic output, statistics office Eurostat said in the final reading of all 27 countries' public accounts. It compared with a target of 4.5%.
Spain's budget shortfall was 7.1%, excluding bank recapitalisation, higher than the government's 6.98% official year-end reading and well above Madrid's original target of 6.3%.
Overall, the 17-nation eurozone looked much better off at the end 2012, however. Its combined fiscal deficit was 3.7% of gross domestic product, compared with 4.2% in 2011 and 6.5% in 2010.
Budget cuts are at the centre of the euro zone's strategy to overcome a three-year public debt crisis but they are also blamed for a damaging cycle where governments cut back, companies lay off staff, Europeans buy less and young people have no little hope of finding a job.
Crippling levels of unemployment and outbreaks of violence in southern Europe are now forcing something of a rethink, with the focus shifting to economic growth strategies.
Both Spain and France are expected to get more time to reach EU-mandated targets of 3%.
"We need to combine the indispensable correction in public finances, huge deficits, huge public debt... with proper measures for growth," the European Commission's President Jose Manuel Barroso said in a speech in Brussels just before Eurostat released its data.
EU leaders are desperate for economic growth as the eurozone struggles through its second consecutive year of recession, and some officials say they will back off from the spending cuts blamed for deepening Europe's economic downturn.
The Commission will decide on May 29 whether to recommend to EU finance ministers to give Paris and Madrid until 2015 to cut its fiscal gap to 3% of GDP, today targeted for 2014.
End of austerity?
It is not yet clear how big a policy shift EU policymakers are planning.
EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told Reuters in Washington on Thursday that financial leaders from the group of 20 economies calling for less austerity were "preaching to the converted."
Rehn says he is willing to grant more flexibility on fiscal targets to try to increase economic growth and is looking increasingly at countries' fiscal efforts in structural terms, which means removing the effects of the business cycle and one-off measures on the budget.
Germany and the European Central Bank still want to see the euro zone put its finances in order after a decade of borrowing that saw countries' debt and deficit levels rise dramatically.
In addition, the EU's Fiscal Compact treaty signed by all EU countries, except Britain and the Czech Republic, in March 2012 requires governments to keep the budget in balance or surplus with a structural deficit no higher than 0.5% of GDP.
"I can't see there's been a big change and that austerity is off the table," said Jurgen Michels, a senior economist at Citigroup in London. "Most countries will have to come out with additional, substantial fiscal measures in order to meet their new targets," he said.
Underscoring that, the task facing Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy remains daunting if he is eventually to bring Spain's budget deficit down to EU-mandated levels.
Adding in the cost of recapitalising Spain's banks and a €40bn ($52 billion) bank bailout from the eurozone, Spain's deficit was nearly 11% in 2012, higher than the European Commission's forecast of 10.2%, and an increase from the 9.4% deficit of 2011.
Oil buyers owe Iran $4bn - official
Iran is owed $4bn for oil sales to customers who have been unable to pay because of sanctions imposed on the Islamic republic over its nuclear programme, a top Iranian oil official said on Sunday.
"We have been unable to get paid around four billion dollars due to the sanctions," National Iranian Oil Company chief Ahmad Qalebani told reporters when asked about the amount owed by customers, mostly Western, to Iran.
"There is a possibility that it could be paid either as medicine, food or barter of commodities," he told a press conference on the sidelines of an oil and gas trade fair in Tehran.
Qalebani did not give details on these customers.
But on Saturday, Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said that Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell was among the firms that owes Tehran petro-dollars which the Islamic republic can not repatriate due to sanctions.
"Currently, we have approximately $2.336m payable to and $11m receivable from National Iranian Oil Company. We are unable to settle the payable position as a result of applicable sanctions," Shell said in its 2012 annual report.
Last December, Economy Minister Shamseddin Hosseini said that Tehran is losing half of its oil revenues because of international sanctions imposed over its disputed nuclear programme.
Iran is struggling against what it calls an "economic war" to cope with punitive measures targeting its vital oil income and access to global financial systems.
An oil embargo imposed by the European Union on Iran came into effect in July 2012, ending European purchases of Iranian crude. It has also lowered purchases by major Asian customers under pressure from the United States.
Iran's oil output dropped to 2.67 million barrels per day in February from 2.72 in the previous month, Opec said in April, citing secondary sources.
On Saturday, Qasemi confirmed that production and export of oil had declined in 2012.
"Our export has declined (in 2012) compared to the previous year because the European nations are not buying from us and naturally we have had a decline in oil production."
Iran is now Opec's fourth biggest producer, after Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait, according to the cartel's data. In 2011, it ranked second.
