Monday, September 21 2020 | ASIA TODAY INTERNATIONAL - Reporting the Business that Matters in Asia
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.
GUANGZHOU - China's State newsagency, Xinhua, reports that more than 120,000 samples for nucleic acid tests of COVID-19 had been collected by Sunday morning in the cities of Shanwei and Shenzhen, in South China's Guangdong Province after a new confirmed case emerged earlier last week.
SINGAPORE -- Interest rates have risen as China's better-than-expected second quarter GDP growth lifted markets, according to S&P Global Ratings, which says that underlying inflation continues to keeps fall, causing an even larger rise in real rates. S&P believes a climb in real interest rates may throw China's recovery off course "just as it should be gathering steam".
TAIPEI -- In a video address to two US-based think tanks, the Hudson Institute and the Centre for American Progress (CAP), Taiwan's President, Tsai Ing-wen, has reiterated her four principles for management of cross-strait relations, mooted a Free Trade Agreement with the United States, and called on the international community to speak out and act against the demise of Hong Kong's freedoms.
BEIJING - China's State newsagency, Xinhua, says Chinese national flags will be flying in more places in the country, including compounds of Party and State organs, schools and public cultural facilities.
BEIJING - Chinese media group Caixin reports that Huawei Technologies has confirmed supplies of its self-developed flagship chipset will stop after September 15 under US sanctions barring major chipmaking partners from working with the telecom giant.
MANILA - GDP in the Philippines contracted by 16.5% y/y in Q2, reflecting the full extent of COVID-19 containment measures implemented during March-April. In a research note, ANZ Bank says a recent resurgence of infections and re-imposition of mobility restrictions could delay the recovery.
NEW DELHI -- In a unanimous decision, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) today kept its policy repo rate and reverse repo rate unchanged at 4.00% and 3.35%, respectively. Acknowledging that growth will contract in FY21, the central bank noted that policy space is available for further action, but only when inflation has durably reduced.
BEIJING - China's Minister of National Defence, Wei Fenghe, on Thursday took a phone call from US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper "upon invitation", China's State newsagency, Xinhua, reported.