UK retail sales fall as online spending drops, fuel prices pinch
British retail sales unexpectedly fell in February as online shopping sank back to its levels at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and surging fuel prices took up a bigger chunk of household budgets, official data showed on Friday.
Sales volumes were down by 0.3% from January, the Office for National Statistics said.
Economists polled by Reuters had on average forecast a 0.6% monthly rise in retail sales.
Russia says capital controls were tit-for-tat move after reserves were frozen
Russia’s central bank on Friday said restrictions it imposed on capital flows were a tit-for-tat move after its reserves were frozen by Western countries over events in Ukraine.
“In response to the freezing of part of Russia’s reserves, Russia also introduced restrictions on the movement of funds that could be transferred to unfriendly countries by a comparable amount,” the central bank said.
The bank also said that all the gold in Russia’s foreign exchange reserves was currently on Russian territory.
Ukraine’s new agriculture minister warns over global food prices
Ukraine’s new agriculture minister said on Friday that Ukraine’s grain stocks for export amount to $7.5 billion but did not say what the volume of grains for export was.
Mykola Solskyi, who was appointed on Thursday, said global food prices would continue to rise if the situation in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion did not change
When it comes to oil, the global economy is still hooked
The world may be less dependent on oil now than it was during the energy shocks of the 1970s, but the Ukraine conflict is stark evidence of a stubborn craving that can still disrupt economies, confound policymakers and spark political strife.
When the Yom Kippur War of 1973 triggered an Arab State oil embargo that convulsed world markets and sent inflation into double-digits, oil made up nearly half the global energy mix – a figure that has since dropped to around one third.
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