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Germany will no longer lecture other European countries over their economies, the next finance minister of the eurozone’s richest nation said today. Olaf Scholz, of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) that this week struck a deal to reform Germany’s so-called grand coalition government with Chancellor Angela Merkel, said Germany “doesn’t need to dictate to other European states how they run themselves”. “Mistakes have certainly been made in the past,” Scholz told Der Speigel magazine, an apparent reference to the policy of his predecessor Wolfgang Schauble, who oversaw Germany’s oft-criticised massive…

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday exuded confidence that there will be no more fiscal slippages as the financial position is likely to be comfortable from the next fiscal. Brushing aside any need to worry about rising global oil prices, Jaitley said an assessment should not be made based on hypothetical situation concerning crude prices as the trend in the last three days has been the opposite (with prices falling again). He added that at this stage he was not worried about any slippages on the fiscal front. Addressing a…