IMF chief Christine Lagarde said Thursday that China was unlikely to suffer a hard landing, describing it as a "poorly understood and poorly interpreted" economy that took a cautious approach to growth.

The International Monetary Fund expects China's economy to expand 7.5 percent in 2014, but subdued inflation and manufacturing data has fueled concern about a slowdown in the world's second-largest economy.

France said Wednesday that nearly 16,000 people had declared funds hidden abroad after Switzerland ended its vaunted banking secrecy.

Budget Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the government was on track to collect 230 million euros ($316 million) from only 2,621 of the cases.

Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey said Wednesday it was "hugely important" that G20 leaders agree to faster global growth targets when they meet in Sydney this weekend.

Hockey is chairing a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bankers, and wants not only a commitment for growth targets, but also endorsement for reforms to labor markets, tax rules and infrastructure spending.

Britain's unemployment rate edged up to 7.2 percent in the quarter to December, official data showed on Wednesday, easing pressure on the Bank of England to raise interest rates.

Unemployment rose from a near five-year low level of 7.1 percent in the quarter to the end of November, the Office for National Statistics said in a statement.

The value of bitcoin on a Tokyo exchange was less than half that on other platforms Wednesday, two weeks after it suspended withdrawals claiming a bug in the software that underpins the virtual currency.

MtGox, one of the world's oldest Bitcoin exchanges, this month stopped processing client requests to withdraw money held at its "wallet", citing a problem with the technology.

Australian state governments that sell assets such as airports and utilities as part of a national policy to rekindle economic growth will get new tax arrangements to offset lost revenue, the federal treasurer said Wednesday.

Treasurer Joe Hockey wants to reinvest the money from asset sales into new national infrastructure that he hopes will fill the investment void left by the slowing mining industry. The government hopes sales of state companies will raise as much as 130 billion Australian dollars ($117 billion), but the policy would also result in some lost revenue for states by putting the businesses in private hands.

Turkey's central bank held its key interest rates steady on Tuesday after pressure on the embattled lira relented in response to aggressive monetary tightening last month.

In a statement posted on its website, the bank said the overnight lending rate was kept at 12.0 percent, while the the borrowing and one-week repo rate were left at 8.0 percent and 10.0 percent.

Spanish banks reported Tuesday record-high bad loans in December as lenders continued to pay for the country's real estate bust even as the financial sector prepared to exit a 41-billion-euro ($56 billion) bailout.

Doubtful loans -- those at risk of not being repaid -- rose in December to 13.6 percent of all credit extended by Spanish banks, up from 13.07 percent the previous month, a Bank of Spain report showed.

The eurozone's current account surplus contracted to 21.3 billion euros ($29.2 billion) in December from 23.3 billion euros in November, European Central Bank data showed on Tuesday.

The current account on the balance of payments, which includes payments for imports and exports in both goods and services plus all other current transfers, is a closely tracked indicator of the ability of a country or area to pay its way in the world.

The South African economy, the biggest in Africa and a top emerging market, is being held back badly by a crisis at the sclerotic state-owned electricity provider Eskom, experts say.

They blame a range of problems linked to management weaknesses at national and company level, warn that there is little prospect of improvement soon, and suggest that nuclear and shale energy may be needed.