German prices fell 0.1% in July, first contraction since 2016

20:29, July 30, 2020

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  German labor market barometer continues to recover in July

  A rainbow and dark clouds are seen over the city of Dortmund, western Germany on July 26, 2020. (Photo: AFP)BERLIN, July 28 (Xinhua) -- The labor market barometer of the German Institute for Employment Research (IAB) rose by 3.1 points, compared to the previous month, to 97.8 points in July, the IAB announced on Tuesday.After a slight rise of 0.8 points in June, the IAB indicator made "a great leap upwards" in July, the research institute of Germanys Federal Employment Agency (BA) noted. In April, the labor market barometer had plummeted to 93.5 points, the lowest value in its history."The negative trend in the labor market seems to have largely stopped," said Enzo Weber, head of the IAB research department.Index values for both unemployment and employment also increased, according to IAB. Both values still remained below the neutral 100-point benchmark.The labor market in Germany had so far "coped relatively well" with the economic impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, stressed Weber.In June, the German government agreed on an economic stimulus package to mitigate the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, including a temporary reduction of value-added tax (VAT), quick loans for struggling companies as well as additional measures to avoid lay-offs.Last week, head of BA Detlef Scheele told the German Press Agency (dpa) that the German labor market could require up to three years to recover from the coronavirus crisis.In June, 2.85 million people in Germany were registered as unemployed, around 640,000 more than the same month last year. On Thursday the BA is scheduled to present figures for the German labor market in July.Despite the COVID-19 impacts, Scheele believed that the unemployment figure in Germany would not exceed the three million mark in the next two months.

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  Full steam ahead for China-Laos railway trainees

  A student of the first group of Laotian trainees for the China-Laos railway takes notes in Chinese and pinyin while learning traffic signs.The first group of trainees for the China-Laos railway have been undergoing intensive Chinese language and professional railway theory training since mid-July in

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  Singapore's manufacturing output declines 6.7 pct on year in June

  SINGAPORE, July 24 -- Singapore Economic Development Board announced on Friday that the country's manufacturing output decreased 6.7 percent year on year in June, compared to a revised 8.Output of the biomedical manufacturing cluster fell 30.