Asia Pacific

Zhou Xiaochuan, China’s central bank governor, warned on Sunday that the country needed to be vigilant about signs of deflation and said policy makers were closely watching the slowing of global economic growth and declines in commodity prices, the International New York Times reported. Mr. Zhou’s comments are likely to add to concerns that China is in danger of slipping into deflation and to underline increasing nervousness among policy makers as the economy continues to lose momentum despite a series of stimulus measures. “Inflation in China is also declining.

Japan’s drift back toward deflation, two years after launching a radical monetary policy experiment to cure the affliction, underscores the continuing difficulties in pulling the world’s third-largest economy out of its long slump, The Wall Street Journal reported. The government said Friday its most closely watched price gauge was flat in February from a year earlier, far below the 2% target that the central bank had aimed to hit by this spring. It was the lowest level since May 2013 for the consumer price index, excluding fresh food prices and the effects of a tax increase.

South Korea’s government is fighting to address the dangers of the nation’s fast-rising household debt burden — even as critics accuse it of stoking the credit boom through deregulation aimed at boosting the housing market, the Financial Times reported. Economists have raised fears over the country’s heavy household debt, which has risen steadily since the late 1990s to more than 160 per cent of disposable incomes at the end of last year — one of the highest levels of any developed nation.

China’s central bank said on Wednesday that banks should step up financing support for farms in the latest bid to bolster that vulnerable sector and the overall economy, the International New York Times reported. The banking industry should “enhance the availability of financing for the agricultural sector at an affordable cost,” the central bank said in a news release. Policy makers face challenges in channeling bank loans into the cash-starved farming sector.

The government's student loan scheme is open to exploitation, the Ombudsman said, highlighting 13,000 default cases recorded over the past three years involving at its peak HK$200 million in unpaid debts, the South China Morning Post reported. Over half of the unpaid debts came from the extended non-means-tested loan scheme, which offers loans at lower-than-market rates - mostly to the working population to enrol in part-time courses.

Sunac China Holdings Ltd. Chairman Sun Hongbin defended Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd.’s debt-restructuring proposal, saying it’s “reasonable” and that his company may seek other opportunities if its planned acquisition fails. Sunac won’t let the purchase of the troubled Shenzhen-based developer affect its own operations, Sun said at a briefing in Hong Kong on Tuesday. Kaisa’s situation is worse than expected and the company “definitely” won’t be able to make coupon payments next month, Sun said.

Bonds of 11 Chinese companies now yield more than 15 percent as investors brace for the nation’s second onshore default amid record maturities in the coming quarter, Bloomberg News reported. Companies in Asia’s largest economy need to repay 1.5 trillion yuan ($242 billion) of local-currency notes in the period to June 30, the most for a quarter in Bloomberg data going back to 1998.

The U.S. and Europe are to blame for China’s formation of its own development bank after the Asian power was neglected in the structures of existing international banks, a top European Union official said Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reported. “China is aggressively stepping into an area where if we paid more attention, we would have had more normal relationships,” Kristalina Georgieva, vice president of the European Commission, said at the Brussels Forum, a foreign-policy conference.

The country’s savings rate, long one of the highest in the world, is now below zero. In short, Japan’s citizens are spending more than they earn, the International New York Times reported. By comparison, the rate in the United States, where consumers have a reputation for living beyond their means, is on the rise, hitting 5.5 percent in January. The reversal is stark. For decades, many Japanese hoarded cash, a habit that took hold in the years after World War II, when government protections like unemployment insurance and public pensions were scarce. Today, Japan is in a bind.

The five bills that make up the insolvency framework will not be heading to the plenum on Thursday as more time is needed to process them but an effort will be made to get them there before Easter, lawmakers said on Tuesday, Cyprus Mail reported. The decision was taken unanimously by the House Finance and Interior Committees. “At least as far as DIKO is concerned, an effort will be made to complete the examination of all the bills, all five, before Easter,” DIKO and House Finance Committee chairman Nicolas Papadopoulos said. The bills were now expected to reach the plenum on April 2.