"The world is going to look a lot better this time next year than it does now, and that's what equity markets are reflecting… The fact is the outlook has dramatically changed in the last month," said Mike Bell, global market strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management.

It's that positive note from investors that has caused global stock markets to rally in recent days, amid hopes that an end may finally be in sight to the COVID-19 pandemic that has crippled the world economy for most of 2020. Stock markets in the U.S., Europe and Asia continued to post gains in Wednesday trading, but good news on the vaccine front isn't the only feelgood factor at play. Read on to find out more.      

However, there was a stark warning from the UK on just how far-reaching the effects of the coronavirus have been for the world's sixth biggest economy. Chief finance minister Rishi Sunak announced that public borrowing in the UK will reach $525 billion this year, while unemployment could rise to 7.5 percent.

Elsewhere, the European Central Bank is warning eurozone lenders of their need to increase bad debt provision in the wake of the pandemic, with more businesses facing failure after months of lockdown.    

Questions are now being asked in many quarters about what form the recovery should take. CGTN spoke to Jose Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is lobbying governments globally for changes in key policy areas. Chief among his wishes for 2021? A single standardized digital tax. Read the highlights of his interview below.

And finally, stark figures on just how badly the eurozone hospitality industry fared this summer have been released. Hotel and accommodation bookings were down an eye-watering 95 percent in April. While a slight improvement was registered in August, prompting hopes of a rosier outlook in 2021, CGTN has spoken to hoteliers in Catalonia who say it's come too late to save many family-run firms, which have been left facing ruin after Spain's recent two-week lockdown.

Happy reading, 

Louise Greenwood    

Digital news reporter  

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France is continuing to press ahead with a new digital services tax that would demand millions of euros in back payments from U.S. tech giants, despite the threat of counter-measures from Washington. Facebook and Amazon are understood to have received demands for unpaid taxes from the French authorities in recent days. The office of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer concluded last year that the tax was unreasonable and discriminatory as the targets were American firms. Washington is now expected to raise tariffs by up to 25 percent on $1.3 billion worth of French exports, including luxury handbags, cosmetics and food.

Global stocks continued to rally on Wednesday on hopes that recent breakthroughs on a COVID-19 vaccine may herald a possible end to the pandemic. In New York, the Dow Jones breached the 30,000 mark in Tuesday's trading, in anticipation of a smooth handover to a Democrat administration following Joe Biden's presidential win. In Japan the Nikkei reached a high not seen since 1991, while in London the FTSE 100 hit a five-month peak in early trading before paring back by midday. Eurozone bourses also rose as traders took an optimistic cue from Wall Street.    

Elsewhere, the European Central Bank warned that lenders in the eurozone may have to increase bad debt provision as government stimulus packages to counter the effects of lockdown come to an end. In its new Financial Stability Review, the ECB warned that weak profitability in the European banks, along with more stringent default measures, means that allowances for corporate losses are lower now than in previous crises.

The euro has continued to edge towards the $1.20 mark for the first time since May 2018, buoyed by hopes of a possible Brexit trade deal as well as positive developments on a COVID-19 vaccine. The single currency has also benefited from the weakening of the dollar, which has lost ground in recent weeks over the prospect of a period of loose monetary policy ahead from the Federal Reserve. 

In the UK, the government's chief finance minister Rishi Sunak warned the economic emergency arising from COVID-19 "has only just begun." In his spending review, Sunak announced that state borrowing will rise to $525 billion this year as the economy shrinks by 11 percent, while unemployment is expected to peak at 7.5 percent, or 2.6 million people, by the middle of next year.

The European Commission failed to consider possible conflicts of interest in appointing the world's biggest asset management firm to advise on green banking regulation, according to an EU watchdog. The European Ombudsman launched the inquiry after the EU executive appointed BlackRock to produce a study on integrating sustainable practices into banking rules. Lawmakers questioned the impartiality of BlackRock, which has $7.8 trillion in assets under management including large stakes in fossil fuel providers  and other industries directly affected by future regulations.

In other COVID-19 news, Russia has claimed its own vaccine is showing signs of outperforming western rivals. Dubbed the "Sputnik 5", the state-run Gamaleya Institute in Moscow claims the two-dose vaccine is showing signs of 95 percent efficacy in phase three trials, putting it ahead of the treatments under development by Moderna, Oxford University/Astra Zeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech. So far, the Russian vaccine has not been subject to independent analysis or peer reviews.

Meanwhile, the pandemic continues to disrupt even the world's wealthiest economies. Sweden's central statistics agency says life expectancy in the Nordic nation will fall this year as a direct result of the virus. For men, average life expectancy is down to 80.8, from 81.3 in the year to August, and for women it's down to 84.4. Sweden is now backtracking on its controversial decision not to impose lockdown measures to deal with the coronavirus, with outright bans in place on some forms of social gathering.  

International media firm Bertelsmann has confirmed to CGTN Europe that its UK Random House publisher has acquired US based rival Simon & Schuster, which publishes the work of former U.S. President Barack Obama along with other popular writers such as Stephen King. Bertelsmann says it hopes the move will increase its global business in the U.S..     

And Scotland is to become the first country in the world to make sanitary products for women free of charge. The Scottish parliament at Holyrood has voted unanimously in favour of a bill that requires local authorities to provide menstruation products to anyone who needs them. Scottish Labour MSP Monica Lennon, who headed the campaign, says the vote marks "a proud day for Scotland and a signal to the world that free, universal access to period products can be achieved."

WATCH: A special project launched by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is aiming to boost business ownership by women in under-represented communities.  

With the COVID-19 outbreak leaving even the world's most highly developed economies with crippling debt, many are now calling for ambitious reforms in areas such as tax, energy and the environment to help address the recovery. CGTN spoke to Jose Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. 

What is the biggest area of policy concern?   

It is a time for an international agreement that will determine the rules and the criteria to which a digital tax should be applied. The work is being done now by 137 countries on how do you tax the growing digitalization of the worldwide economy? And the other one is this notion of a minimum tax on the larger companies in the world so that they will pay their fair share in both the societies in which they're based, as well as in the places where they do business. 

What might a change like this require?  

This involves changing some of the rules that have led taxation in the last decades, including the fact that you no longer need to be present in a jurisdiction, in a market, to do business because you can do business on the digital activities from anywhere in the world and still do hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of business in a particular market, or in a particular country or a particular jurisdiction. And then also the fact that the alternative is very dramatic. The alternative is very simply a trade war, because if each one of the countries goes on their own way, they take their own decisions and they put up their own taxation rules for the digitalization of the world economy, post COVID-19 the world's economy ... will be terribly shaken. It is already and governments around the world will understandably be tempted to seize at any growth opportunities.

What is OECD's view on the importance of green recovery, green investments and sustainable investments?

The most important, most urgent or immediate concern is to deal with COVID with the virus. The most important intergenerational responsibility is to protect the planet, to look after the environment, to look after biodiversity, to look after the oceans, the water in the world, the soil, the quality of the air, so we should not lose track of this responsibility, what we have to do is not only proceed with such a responsibility, but also discover and promote all the business opportunities, all the investment opportunities [therein].

What is China's role in that recovery? 

We were very encouraged by the statement by President Xi Jinping to say that China will go carbon neutral by 2060. It actually, as you saw, detonated some other statements around those dates – Korea said 2050, also Japan and you had before that the European Union. So you are moving into a direction in which there seems to be a greater awareness, which is very important and it has to be led, of course, by the largest economies. 

And finally, the impact COVID-19 has had on the EU's tourism sector is laid bare in figures just out. Between January and August, the number of nights spent in tourist accommodation was down by half on the same period last year. However, a gradual improvement in August has raised hopes in the industry of a better outlook in 2021.