The International Energy Agency improved its oil demand forecast, pointing to declining storage capacity, gathering pace of vaccination and a "firmer footing" in the global economy. OPEC also raised its forecast earlier. The International Energy Agency (IEA) raised its forecast for global oil demand in 2021 by 230,000 bpd from March. It now expects demand to reach 96.7m bpd: an increase of 5.7m...

Desktop and notebook PC manufacturers shipped 69.9 million PCs in the first quarter of 2021, up 32.2% year-on-year, according to preliminary data from analyst agency Gartner. The company notes that the low early 2020 figures made the growth a record high in all time that the market has been monitored. The top three computer manufacturing companies are Lenovo (17.5 million, 25.1% of the global...

Head of the US Federal Reserve (Fed) Jerome Powell believes that the US economy is at a tipping point. In his view, growth in the second half of the year will be "very strong". "What we're seeing now in the economy looks like a tipping point... We feel we are in a place where the economy will start growing faster and jobs will be created faster... I would say that the growth we expect in the...

Cheniere, the largest producer of liquefied natural gas in the US, has for the first time estimated the potential impact on the global LNG industry if companies have to pay for greenhouse gas emissions. Cheniere published its assessment of LNG demand scenarios and the potential costs of the industry in the context of the climate change challenge. Cheniere is the largest LNG operator in the US and...

In the course of fighting the pandemic and its aftermath, governments have approved budget support programmes worth a total of $16 trillion. As a result, budget deficits and national debt levels have grown to unprecedented levels, according to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) review. At the same time, according to the fund's estimates, the use of such stimulus measures allowed to reduce the...

Saudi Aramco, the Saudi state oil company, is in talks to sell up to 49% of its oil pipeline business to a consortium of US, Chinese and local investors. This was reported by The Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the situation. According to them, the US investment companies Apollo Global Management and EIG Global Energy Partners, the Chinese Silk Road Fund and China Reform Fund...

In the pandemic year 2020, shoppers around the world spent $900 billion more online than in the previous two years, Mastercard analysts said. Shoppers around the world spent $900 billion more on online purchases during the pandemic than the average of the previous two years. That's according to a Mastercard Economics Institute study based on a comparison of the number of online sales made in 2020...

The net inflow of foreign investments in portfolios of stocks and bonds of developing countries in March amounted to $10.1bn. This figure was the lowest since April 2020, reports Reuters, citing data from the Institute of International Finance (IIF). In February 2021, investment inflows reached $23.4 billion. According to the IIF, almost 90% of the investment inflow came from China: $3.8 billion...

The S&P 500 index, which tracks stocks of the biggest US companies by capitalisation, surpassed 4,000 points for the first time in history. Exchanges reacted positively to Biden's sweeping new plan to revamp the US economy by $2.25 trillion. The S&P 500 stock index surpassed 4,000 points for the first time in history, New York Stock Exchange reported. The S&P 500 consists of the...