At the last European Council meeting, EU leaders covered a number of strategic energy-related questions, including market liberalisation, energy efficiency and infrastructure, external relations, renewable, and sustainable low carbon technologies. BMI believes that the considerations on infrastructure are by far the most significant and anticipates that both the greenfield and brownfield projects will generate substantial… [Read more]

After several postponements over the course of 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad finally announced on December 19 that his subsidy reform programme (which is, in effect, a subsidy phase-out programme) would begin immediately. Subsidies cost the government billions of US dollars every year, and Iran’s fiscal situation is so dire at the moment that Ahmadinejad… [Read more]

In keeping with its promise to deliver an emergency budget within 50 days of coming to office, the UK’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government today unveiled a painful package of fiscal reforms to get public finances back on an even keel. Delivered by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne before parliament, the budget proved to be… [Read more]

By now, regular readers should know that while I generally like India’s long-term macro story, New Delhi’s public finances leave a lot to be desired. After years of budgetary mismanagement, the country is a notable EM outlier in its fiscal/public debt dynamics, and for this reason, the FY2010/11 (April-March) budget, presented last Friday, was so… [Read more]

After months of mulling over the possibility of a Eurobond sale, Angolan authorities confirmed last month that the issue would go ahead in the early 2010. The amount being sought is reported to be close US$4.0bn – quite a sum for country whose nominal GDP is only about US$100bn. To my mind, the decision to… [Read more]

As the Latvian government proposes a bill to change mortgage regulation to ease the debt burden on households, Bruce Jeffery argues that the country may be one step closer to eventual devaluation of the currency peg.

 

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