Wednesday, January 27 2021 | ASIA TODAY INTERNATIONAL - Reporting the Business that Matters in Asia
TAIPEI - Taiwan's President, Tsai Ing-wen, has told an inaugural EU Investment Forum in Taipei City that Taiwan is ready to become one of the EU's top partners in future industries en route to negotiating a bilateral investment agreement. Biotech, health and mobility, and information and communication technology were sectors in which Taiwan excels, Tsai said.
HANOI - Vietnam from September 18 began implementing the terms of a tariffs agreement on imports from and exports to the European Union as spelled out in a new Free Trade Agreement. Duties overpaid from August 1 through to September 18 will be repaid. New tariff levels now apply.
BEIJING -- The Standing Committee of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's top political advisory body, will convene its 14th meeting in early November in Beijing.
HONG KONG - Hong Kong's economic outlook is stable, says ratings agency Standard and Poor's, reflecting its expectation that current fiscal deterioration is not structural, and that political developments between mainland China and Hong Kong--as well as between the U.S. and Hong Kong--will not materially jeopardise Hong Kong's strong economic profile.
NEW DELHI - India's economy will experience a record contraction in fiscal 2021 (ending March 31, 2021), largely owing to the global COVID-19 pandemic, according to ratings agency Standard and Poors, which is expecting India's real GDP growth to recover from fiscal 2021 onwards.
TAIPEI - Taiwan's export orders gained 13.6% on-year to reach US$45.49 billion in August, a record high for the period backed by global demand for the country's high-tech products.
BEIJING - Profits of China's major industrial firms totalled RMB612.81 billion (about US$90 billion) in August, up by 19.1% year-on-year, China's State newsagency, Xinhua, reported, quoting data from the National Bureau of Statistics. Growth narrowed by 0.5% from July, it said.
WASHINGTON -- Regardless of who wins the Presidential election, it's clear the US has turned a corner in its relations with China, and will continue to maintain a hard line, ANZ Research says in a new report. "A hawkish stance is a bipartisan view, and it seems that a growing majority of Americans are seeing China in an unfavourable way," the report says.
SYDNEY - Austrade, the Australian Government's trade and investment agency, is warning that cyber criminals are impersonating Austrade representatives.
BEIJING - Diverging funding costs could indicate that more defaults are on the way for China's weaker State-owned enterprises, according to S&P Global Ratings in a report published today.
BEIJING - Economic activity indicators for August, including industrial production, fixed-asset investment and retail sales, all showed remarkable improvement from their previous month's readings -- and beat market consensus, according to the global financial services group, BBVA. Although China's recovery was still unbalanced, the silver lining was in retail sales, which entered positive expansion.
HONG KONG - With minds in Beijing focussing increasingly on the upcoming meeting of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee in October, high on the CPP's agenda will be the sketching out of a new official five-year plan for Asia's largest economy. Global financial group, Natixis, says a freshly-coined buzzword -- "dual circulation" -- looks set to play a leading role.
MANILA - ANZ Bank has revised its Philippine 2020 GDP growth forecast downwards by 6.6% to minus-9.1% year-on-year. Apart from the Philippines economic performance for the first half, ANZ says its downbeat assessment is based on four key considerations: (a) the re-imposition of social containment policies; (b) falling remittances; (c) slow fiscal response; and (d) diminished transmission of monetary accommodation.
HONG KONG -- China's ongoing effort to stimulate its economy led to much faster accumulation of debt in Q2 2020, with the debt ratio moving up by another 8% to 268.4% as a proportion of GDP, according to the global financial group, Natixis, in a report issued today. The report says the largest rise in debt stems from the corporate sector, with its debt increasing from 162.6% to 166.2%. "In particular, corporate loans and bond issuance grew by another 2.1% and 1.4% respectively."
SYDNEY - Australian exports of food and agricultural products to China rose 8% in value terms in the 2019/20 season, reaching the highest level in the history of the China-Australia trading relationship. But that could well prove to be the peak of Australian agriculture's exposure to China, agribusiness specialist Rabobank said in commentary released today.
BANGKOK -- Thailand's GDP growth slumped 12.2% y/y (-9.7% q/q ) in Q2, the weakest level since the 1997-98 Asian Financial Crisis. Public spending and investment picked up, but could not offset a sharp plunge in private demand.