The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on Tuesday backed Japan's bid to end years of deflation, but called on Tokyo to step up efforts to shrink its huge debt pile.

In an annual country report, the 34-member OECD described the new government's bid to reverse falling prices with huge stimulus measures as "most encouraging".

Spain's population fell last year the first time since annual records began in 1998 as immigrants left in droves because of a steep recession that has tipped one in four people in the country out of work, official data showed Monday.

There were 47.1 million residents in Spain as of the first of January, 205,788 fewer than during the same time last year, according to provisional figures from the national statistics institute.

Greece will be offering residence to non-EU investors purchasing or renting property over 250,000 euros ($326,000), in a bid to revive its moribund real estate industry, officials said on Monday.

The initiative, voted into law by parliament last week, comes in response to strong demand from Arab, Chinese and Russian investors, the officials from the interior ministry and property groups told a news conference.

The Saudi Shura Consultative Council agreed on Monday to study a recommendation to switch the Islamic weekend in the kingdom to Friday and Saturday, like other Gulf states, state news agency SPA reported.

The weekend in Saudi Arabia remains on Thursday and Friday, although other Gulf states have pushed it back by one day to reduce the difference with the rest of the world, which affects financial markets and businesses.

Energy-rich Qatar and a consortium led by Total of France have signed a joint venture agreement to build a $1.5 billion petroleum refinery in the Gulf state, local media reported on Monday.

The refinery will have a daily production capacity of 146,000 barrels of petroleum products, reports said.

A wide-scale rise in wages in Germany would not benefit other eurozone members, but would actually harm the single currency area as a whole, Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann said Monday.

"Given the relatively weak trading relations with peripheral European countries, they would barely profit from the reduced price competitiveness and increased consumption in Germany," Weidmann told the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview.

The European Commission released on Monday final deficit and debt data for eurozone and EU states that was in line with upward revisions announced in late March by key countries such as Spain and France.

The figures showed that Spain posted a 2012 deficit of 10.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), including the cost to the state of recapitalizing broken banks.

Swiss banks could adapt to a significant easing of their cherished secrecy practices, but only if global standards are created for information exchange to fight tax evasion, the head of the Swiss Bankers Association said in an interview published Sunday.

"Today, there is no global standard" for the automatic exchange of banking information, Patrick Odier told the NZZ am Sonntag weekly.

The International Monetary Fund and Egypt hope to conclude talks for a loan deal "in the coming weeks", they said in a joint statement Sunday.

The statement came after IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde met an Egyptian delegation in Washington this weekend that included Central Bank of Egypt Governor Hisham Ramez and Finance Minister Al-Mursi Hegazy.

German flag carrier Lufthansa said that most of its domestic, European and long-haul flights would be cancelled on Monday due to strike action by ground personnel and cabin crews.

"Due to strike action announced for April 22, nearly all Lufthansa flights to German and European destinations must be cancelled," the airline announced in a statement on Saturday.