Iraq's oil exports reached their highest level in more than three decades last month as the country's output has continued to increase, oil ministry officials said on Saturday.

Overall exports averaged 2.565 million barrels per day (bpd), bringing in $8.442 billion in revenues on the back of average oil prices of $106 per barrel, Falah al-Amiri, head of the State Oil Marketing Organization, said.

Despite its solid foundations, Finland's economy is threatened by the euro crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a report published Friday.

Finland enjoys "strong economic fundamentals and continued sound policy management," the report noted, but "as a small open economy, with deep trade and financial linkages, the country is sensitive to adverse spillovers from the turmoil in the euro area."

Spain's cabinet approved a major financial reform package on Friday including the creation of a "bad bank" to buy troubled property assets and bad loans from lenders.

Spain had agreed to push through the changes as a condition for receiving a banking sector rescue loan of up to 100 billion euros ($125 billion) from its Eurozone partners.

IMF Deputy Managing Director David Lipton said Friday he was optimistic that Greece could get its restructuring program back on track and remain in the Eurozone.

Lipton told CNBC television that the International Monetary Fund believes that Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and his team "are dedicated to finding an appropriate path for adjustment, getting things back on track, and we're trying to help."

China's manufacturing activity slumped in August to a nine-month low, official figures showed Saturday, in the latest sign of serious weakness in the world's second-largest economy.

The government's purchasing managers' index (PMI) fell to 49.2 in August from 50.1 in July, according to a statement released by the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing and the National Bureau of Statistics.

President Francois Hollande said Friday that the economic crisis is "exceptionally serious".

"My duty is to tell the truth to the French. We are facing a crisis of exceptional seriousness, a long crisis that has lasted now for more than four years and none of the big economic powers, even the emerging (economies), is spared," he said in a speech.

The head of the German central bank or Bundesbank has threatened to resign amid a festering fight with the European Central Bank over its anti-crisis measures, the daily Bild reported Friday.

The Bundesbank declined to comment on the article.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim will visit Ivory Coast and South Africa next week on his first official foreign trip since taking over as head of the global lender in July.

Kim will visit the two countries on September 4-6 to discuss how the World Bank can help African nations achieve higher economic growth, reduce poverty, and create jobs, the international organization said in a statement Thursday.

EU Commissioner Michel Barnier said Friday that Eurozone banks would gradually come under the remit of a new common supervisor with a complete shift over for all 6,000 lenders on January 1, 2014.

Barnier is leading preparations for plans for a common supervisor, which was part of a wider agreement on letting the new Eurozone rescue fund directly rescue lenders instead of forcing countries to seek a full bailout.

Global food prices soared 10 percent in July, increasing the threat to millions of the world's poor especially in Africa and the Middle East, the World Bank said Thursday.

Drought and soaring temperatures in the United States and Eastern Europe have savaged some of the key grain crops that feed much of the world, with prices for corn (maize) and soybeans hitting records.