Caretaker Economy Minister Amin Salam announced Wednesday that “49,000 tons of wheat will enter the country at the end of this week.”

“We should not see queues (outside bread bakeries) after that and we will prosecute whoever wants to fabricate a crisis,” Salam said in a TV interview.

President Michel Aoun on Wednesday stressed that “Lebanon is committed to carrying out the necessary reforms in order to continue the negotiations with the International Monetary Fund as part of the economic recovery plan.”

Aoun voiced his remarks in a meeting in Baabda with the new World Bank regional director Jean-Christophe Carret and the outgoing director Saroj Kumar Jha.

Business leaders and officials from eight developing nations who had met in Bangladesh on Tuesday said more cooperation was needed among them to overcome dwindling foreign currency reserves, a growing energy crisis and supply chain disruptions.

Representatives from Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey and Bangladesh under the banner of D-8, or developing eight countries, were discussing alternative trade financing such as cross currency swap, barter and blockchain to address their foreign currency reserves vulnerabilities, according to organizers.

Despite damaging Western sanctions imposed on Moscow in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia's economy appears to be weathering the storm better than expected as it benefits from high energy prices, the IMF said Tuesday.

Turkey will resume gas exploration off its coast in the Mediterranean on August 9, the energy ministry said Tuesday.

Chinese investment and trade — and possibly an invitation to the Group of 20 summit in Bali this fall — are on the table in talks Tuesday between visiting Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Widodo arrived in Beijing on Monday night on the first stop of a trip that will take him also to Japan and South Korea later this week.

The European Union reached agreement on Tuesday on how to cut member states' consumption of gas by 15 percent and reduce their dependence on Russian supplies.

Russian state-run giant Gazprom will slash supplies to Europe from Wednesday, threatening economies like Germany's that rely on Moscow's gas for energy and chemical production.   

The business climate in Germany worsened "significantly" in July, according to a key survey published Monday, as an energy crisis pushed Europe's largest economy closer to a recession this year.

German national carrier Lufthansa is braced for further travel upheaval as the country's powerful Verdi union called on ground crew to strike on Wednesday in a row over higher wages.

European and American stocks advanced Monday as markets began a busy week, with the U.S. Federal Reserve poised to lift interest rates again and some of the world's biggest companies scheduled to publish their latest earnings reports.

Asian markets ended lower.