2026-08-15 Saturday

Global food prices rose 0.6% in July to 131.1 points, with wheat up 5.8% on Black Sea disruptions and heatwaves, compounding the inflationary shock from El Niño and Middle East conflict. This pressure on food import bills and central bank targets comes as Taiwan's Q2 GDP surged 12.93% and July PPI jumped 16.94%, signaling strong export demand but rising input costs. The FAO index and Taiwan's PPI both point to persistent cost-push inflation, challenging central banks in emerging markets and beyond. Meanwhile, the ECB blog post finds that subsidies, which nearly doubled to USD 108 billion in 2024, are unlikely to drive global imbalances, which rose to 3.7% of world GDP in 2025. China's surplus hit a record 0.6% of world GDP, while the US deficit stood at 0.9%, and subsidy intensity is highest in semiconductors (3.9%) and solar panels (3.6%). This suggests that trade tensions over subsidies may be overstated, as imbalances primarily reflect saving-investment gaps. In other developments, Russia proposes capping crypto in broker capital at 25%, Ghana's market rebounds with the GSE Composite Index up 79.4%, and Peru's exports surge 23.4% in June. The widely reported topics of the day include the aftermath of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake in Indonesia and the RBI's swap facility attracting $56.8 billion in inflows.