The war between Israel and Gaza drove the Palestinian economy of Gaza and the West Bank into its first contraction since 2006, the International Monetary Fund said Thursday.

While the West Bank managed a 4.5 percent expansion last year, Gaza's economic activity declined by about 15 percent, the IMF said, linking it to Israel's harsh bombing and shelling of the Gaza enclave and slow progress on rebuilding.

Iraq cut its 2015 budget Thursday by nearly $3 billion (2.7 billion euros) due to the falling price of oil, on which its government is almost entirely dependent for revenue.

MPs approved a budget of $99.6 billion, down from the $102.5 billion the cabinet proposed last month.

Israel's state-run electricity company is to reduce energy supplies to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank because of a debt of more than $450 million, an official said Thursday.

The move comes at a time of diplomatic tensions, weeks after Israel froze the Palestinian Authority's (PA) tax revenues in retaliation for joining the International Criminal Court (ICC).

U.S. President Barack Obama will on Thursday unveil plans to forestall automatic budget cuts, increasing spending $74 billion above a cap for 2016.

Rolling out budget proposals for the coming year, White House officials said that Obama will seek to freeze the so-called sequester, which would automatically trim spending by about $1 trillion by 2021.

Economic powerhouses Germany and China warned Greece on Thursday against reneging on reforms tied to its massive international bailout, with markets still jittery over fears Athens could default on its debt.

Germany, which has shouldered most of the multi-billion-euro EU rescue plan for Greece, said the country's new anti-austerity government could not make changes "to the detriment" of other European citizens.

Bank of England governor Mark Carney has warned that the eurozone faces "another lost decade", urging more solidarity in what is being seen as a thinly-veiled reprimand to Germany after elections in Greece.

Carney started off his speech in Dublin late on Wednesday saying he intended "to reflect on how the euro area could act to avoid another lost decade".

Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest lender, said Thursday that its net profit for 2014 more than doubled from the previous year, to a better-than-expected 1.7 billion euros ($1.9 billion).

The bank's bosses, who introduced a drive to reduce costs and boost profitability when they took over in 2012, said they were "encouraged" by the group's results but would not take their foot off the pedal.

Energy group Royal Dutch Shell on Thursday announced an eight-percent drop in annual net profits owing to a slump in global oil prices and said it would accelerate spending cuts.

Profit after tax dropped to $15.05 billion (13.3 billion euros) in 2014 compared with the Anglo-Dutch company's performance one year earlier, dragged down by plunging earnings in the fourth quarter as the cost of crude tumbled.

New Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is in a similar position to Phaeton, the Greek mythological figure given the reins of the sun only to lose control and nearly destroy the earth, Chinese media said Thursday.

The comments came after the newly-elected authorities in Athens said they would halt the privatization of Greece's biggest port, which China's COSCO group has bid for.

The Iraqi government and Royal Dutch Shell signed Wednesday an agreement in principle potentially worth $11 billion (9.6 billion euros) to build a large petrochemicals plant in the country's south.

"The deal is huge and the plant should be operational in five years," oil ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told AFP.