China - at the close, the Shanghai Composite index was up 0.37% at 2,825.90.

Spot gold rose 0.6% to $1,654.94 per ounce by 0719 GMT, having hit a four-week high of $1,671.40 on Tuesday. It has risen more than 2.3% this week.

Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa has been significantly impacted by the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and is forecast to fall sharply from 2.4% in 2019 to -2.1 to -5.1% in 2020, the first recession in the region over the past 25 years,

India's coal import in March stood at 15.74 million tonnes (MT), down 27.5 per cent over last year,

"At the same time, the industry has announced and initiated a number of measures, and we can already see that this is affecting activity on the Norwegian shelf. Substantial cost cuts have been announced, reducing both exploration activity, investments and operating costs moving forward," says Director General Ingrid Sølvberg.

Brent was up by 21 cents, or 0.8%, at $32.08 per barrel, WTI rose 82 cents, or 3.8%, to $24.45 a barrel

"We are encouraged by the President’s strong diplomacy with Saudi Arabia and Russia, and we are optimistic further progress will be made in the days ahead. No one wins in a price war, and the Saudis and the Russians aren’t benefiting from their decisions. We also urged the administration to avoid U.S. policies that could do more harm than good for American producers.

OPEC has been open to counting natural production declines in its output cut agreements, but there is no indication the US would be willing to sign up to that, and some delegates say Russia might not agree such a dressed-up US cut anyway.

Brent crude oil prices averaged $32/barrel (b) in March, a decrease of $24/b from the average in February and the lowest monthly average since January 2016.

The dollar’s rise came as global stocks wavered after two days of gains as deaths from the coronavirus mounted across the globe. The rising toll soured U.S. markets late on Tuesday, with pessimism spreading to Asian indexes a day later.