Asia Pacific

For all its focus on the newest anime and latest electronics, Tokyo’s Akihabara neighborhood also has a lot of local history. Sadly, a tasty piece of that history is disappearing, with the news that an Akihabara curry restaurant that’s been in business for 50 years will be filing for bankruptcy, Japan Today reported. Bengal was officially founded in 1973 and started serving customers at its Akihabara curry restaurant in 1974, while also operating as a spice wholesaler.

China will sharply increase funding from ultra-long treasury bonds in 2025 to spur business investment and consumer-boosting initiatives, a state planner official said on Friday, as Beijing cranks up fiscal stimulus to revitalise the faltering economy, Reuters reported. Special treasury bonds will be used to fund large-scale equipment upgrades and consumer goods trade-ins, said Yuan Da, deputy secretary-general of National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) at a press conference.

Turkish inflation eased in December, likely reassuring the country’s central bank after it cut its key interest rate for the first time since 2023 last month, the Wall Street Journal reported. Consumer prices were 44.4% higher on year in December, the lowest since June 2023, cooling from the 47.1% a month earlier, the country’s statistics agency Turkstat said Friday.

Manufacturing conditions across much of Asia expanded in December, according to the latest surveys, but weakening confidence and soft export orders continued to weigh on outlook, the Wall Street Journal reported. The headline S&P Global manufacturing PMI for Asean indicated modest growth, though it slightly declined to close out the year. Several countries in the region led the growth, including the Philippines, where output and new orders rose sharply, both marking the largest expansion since April 2022.

China is keeping its hand firmly on the yuan, supporting the currency via the official daily reference rate after it slid to the weakest level since 2022 at year-end in offshore trading, Bloomberg News reported. The People’s Bank of China set the so-called fixing, which confines yuan’s trading onshore to a 2% range on either side, at 7.1879 per dollar on Thursday. That’s little changed from the prior reading. But it was 1,323 pips stronger than forecast in a Bloomberg survey, the largest difference since July.

China’s manufacturing activity slowed its pace of expansion in December, as investors wait for more economic stimulus when Donald Trump — who is threatening tariffs on Chinese exports — returns to the White House, Bloomberg News reported. The Caixin manufacturing purchasing managers index fell to 50.5 from 51.5 in November, according to a statement released by Caixin and S&P Global on Thursday. While any reading above 50 indicates an expansion of activity, the figure was a disappointment compared with the median forecast of 51.7 by economists.

South Korea's central bank governor said on Thursday the pace of monetary policy easing would need to be flexible this year due to heightened political and economic uncertainty, Reuters reported. "This year, conditions surrounding our economy will be more difficult than ever before," Bank of Korea Governor Rhee Chang-yong said in a New Year's address. "Monetary policy needs to be operated with flexibility and agility, as political and economic uncertainty is unprecedentedly high," Rhee said.

Turkey’s annual inflation in December likely eased less than the central bank projected, just as policymakers have started to set the stage for a more accommodative stance in the new year, Bloomberg News reported. Annual growth in consumer prices slowed to 45.2% in December from 47.1% a month earlier, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of analysts. The data is due Friday. The central bank earlier raised its year-end estimate to 44% from 38% in November.

Turkey’s banking regulator has drawn up a plan to restrict the tenures of banking executives, a proposal that comes after high-profile accusations of a ponzi scheme at a bank with one of the nation’s longest-serving chief executive officers, Bloomberg News reported. According to the proposal, CEOs would be permitted to serve in that position at the same bank for at most 10 years, according to a draft of the regulation seen by Bloomberg. Deputy general managers would also be allowed up to 10 years, but that could be extended for as much as 5 years with approval from regulators.