Sunday, March 24 2019 | ASIA TODAY INTERNATIONAL - Reporting the Business that Matters in Asia
MELBOURNE - WIPRO, a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company founded in India, is to set up a Chair for Artificial Intelligence at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.
PARIS - Asia has been under pressure following tighter global liquidity in 2018 as global monetary policy tightening drains liquidity from Asian markets, says the Paris-headquartered credit insurer Coface. A few markets will benefit from strong fundamentals, pro-active monetary policies and ample buffers to resist outflows, but others will be under pressure inn 2019, says Coface.
ISLAMABAD - Ratings agency Standards and Poors says Pakistan's economic outlook, as well as its external position, have deteriorated well beyond S&P's previous expectations, and has lowered the country's rating to 'B-'.
SEOUL - The Korea Tourist Organization (KTO) says the number of foreign visitors visiting South Korea in 2018 rose 15% from 2017 to 15.34 million, while the number of foreign tourists excluding those from China (which accounts for the most tourists going to Korea) reached 10 million for the first time.
HONG KONG- It is important to realise that the US-China trade war has evolved into a more complex reality, namely strategic competition between the two largest economies in the world, says French banking group Natixis in a research note on current US-China talks.
SINGAPORE -- China's current economic slowdown is mainly driven by domestic Government policies, according to S&P's Global Economics team in report titled, "China's Slowdown--This Time Is Different."
BEIJING - China's Stater newsagency, Xinhua, is reporting China's Ministry of Commerce as saying it will take more effective measures to strengthen protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) in legislation, the justice system and through law enforcement.
SINGAPORE - Export growth of emerging markets in Asia has slowed sharply in recent months, and the near-term outlook remains challenging, according to a research note from ANZ Bank, which says the export weakness is broad-based across the region and reflects both slower export price and volume growth.
HONG KONG - Potentially higher interest rates, as well as volatile domestic currencies, bond markets, and property prices, will make financing conditions more difficult for Asia-Pacific financial institutions in 2019, according to a report published today by S&P Global Ratings.
TAIPEI - Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has strongly condemned Chinese authorities for what it calls "their recent outrageous demand" that 66 multinational companies change their designation for "Taiwan" to "Taiwan, China".
TAIPEI - The annual India-Taiwan Trade Forum in Taipei City has brought together more than 150 business leaders and representatives to explore new and enhanced commercial tie-ups.
BEIJING - China's State planner has given the green light for a 239-metre (784 ft) hydropower dam on the mountainous Tibet-Sichuan border, as plans to dam the Yangtze's upper reaches gather pace, according to a report in Caixin.
BANGKOK - The impending merger of Thailand's Thanachart Bank and TMB Bank, the country's sixth- and seventh-largest lenders by assets, is just the tip of the iceberg as more and more banks look to merge and compete with their larger regional rivals, according to a report by the data and analytics company GlobalData.
BEIJING - A cotton seed, carried to the moon by China's Chang'e-4 probe, is the first ever to sprout on the moon, according to scientists of the mini-biosphere experiment, quoted by China Daly and China's State newsagency, Xinhua.
GUANGZHOU - The capital city of Guangdong Province, Guangzhou, has pledged to co-operate with Hong Kong and Macao to speed up construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in 2019, according to a report in China Daily.
HONGKONG - Real-time polling of delegates to the 12th Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong has shown that only 15% of respondents were optimistic about the outlook for the global economy in 2019. Another 38% were neutral, while 47% were pessimistic. When asked about the countries and regions that will offer best investment returns in 2019, 39% and 35% of respondents believed it would be Southeast Asia and Mainland China respectively, followed by the United States (16%), Japan (3%) and Western Europe (2%).