Friday, April 26 2024 | ASIA TODAY INTERNATIONAL - Reporting the Business that Matters in Asia
HONG KONG – ANZ Bank says the Peoples Bank of China has started to gradually drain liquidity in the market after a record injection before the Chinese New Year holidays. “Meanwhile, the central bank will increase the frequency of open market operations, suggesting that China may be moving to a more market interest rate based monetary policy regime,” the bank says.
BARCELONA - Almost three-quarters of the world’s population will be connected to a mobile network by 2020, according to the latest study from GSMA Intelligence, the research arm of the GSMA. The new study indicates that an additional one billion people will become mobile subscribers over the next five years, bringing the total to 5.6 billion.
BEIJING - China’s Foreign Ministry has released a number of statements defending its decision to deploy its military in the disputed South China Sea as Foreign Minister Wang Yi prepares to visit the US later this week. Spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the deployments in the area “are no different from deployments by the United States on Hawaii”, and neither confirmed nor denied recent US accusations of China deploying surface-to-air missiles on a disputed island.
BEIJING - Officials from THE Beijing Municipal Commission of Tourism Development (BCTD) say the northern capital raked in a total of RMB460.7 billion (US$71 billion) in tourism revenue last year, hosting a total of 273 million tourists, up from 261 million tourists in 2014. Officials point to a tax rebate scheme for overseas visitors in July 2015 as a possible cause for this growth.
TAIPEI – Taiwan’s Government has confirmed a rapid deterioration of economic outlook in 2016, with GDP growth in Q4 2015 revised to -0.52% y/y in Q4, from the advance estimate of a 0.28% decline. For the full year of 2015, the economy grew 0.75% y/y, compared with January’s advance estimate of 0.85%.
BEIJING - Addressing an executive meeting with China’s State Council, the Premier, Li Keqiang, has called on key members to “be more responsive to the public and to international concerns” related to the nation’s economic prospects.
JAKARTA - As expected, Bank Indonesia (BI) today cut its main policy rate by 25 basis points to 7.00% in an effort to spur more momentum for growth. The lending facility rate and deposit facility rate were each cut by the same amount, and the primary reserve requirement ratio was cut by 100 basis points to 6.5%.
SINGAPORE- Hong Kong's Linked Exchange Rate System remains credible and robust despite recent volatility and depreciation pressures in the Chinese yuan market, ratings agency Standard & Poor's says in a report published today.
SEOUL - South Korea is pulling its nationals out of the inter-Korean industrial complex of Kaesong as the government in Seoul moves to close the factory zone in response to North Korea’s latest nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.
SEOUL – South Korea last year exported more than US$500 million worth of e-government products, including digital inspection systems, remote control systems for electronic meters and transport systems. The Ministry of the Interior said about 500 Korean tech firms recorded total exports of US$ 534.4 million, up 12% on 2014.
JAKARTA - Both Indonesia’s export and import growth in January continued to remain weaker than the consensus was expecting, with a modest trade surplus the surprise outcome. Exports fell by 20.72% y/y in January (consensus -15.20%) following a revised 17.46% y/y fall in December. Imports fell by 17.15% y/y (consensus -8.65% y/y), following a revised 16.33% y/y fall in December.
BEIJING - Southwest Guizhou province, one of China’s major coal-producing provinces, shut down 183 mines last year in an attempt to cut obsolete capacity, according to the State-owned Xinhua newsagency, quoting local authorities.
PERTH – The Perth-based FYI Resources has signed an MoU with the Yuntianhua Group (headquartered in Yunnan, China), for collaboration in a potash project with potential resource development and production opportunities in Laos. Yuntianhua, via a subsidiary company – Sino-Lao Mining Development and Investment - majority owns the “Sino-Lao” potash project located approximately 40 km north of Vientiane.
BEIJING - Speaking on the high-priority issue of excess capacity in China’s steel and coal industries, Premier Li Keqiang has announced that China will cut crude steel production capacity by 100 to 150 million tons. While the State Council did not specify any deadline for such cuts, the nation’s Cabinet pointed out in an official statement that China has cut is production capacity of crude steel by more than 90 million tons in recent years.
JAKARTA - At 5.04% y/y, Indonesia’s Q4 GDP growth has come in on the firmer side of consensus expectations. “At the margin,” ANZ Bank says, “Indonesia has ended 2015 on a less-weak footing than we previously thought. We would hesitate to use the expression ‘stronger footing’ as we have yet to be convinced that the major expenditure categories we need to see bounce to pull growth recovery onto a more stable trajectory are indeed sustainably recovering.”
HONG KONG – BBVA Research says a number of hedge funds have shifted their attention to the Hong Kong Dollar (HKD), speculating on the possibility of the currency abandoning its decades-old peg to the USD. This has caused the HKD to soften against the USD and raised the interbank interest rate.