Asia Pacific

Australia’s jobless rate has climbed to its highest level in 12 years, underlining the challenges faced by an economy in transition following the end of a decade-long mining investment boom, the Financial Times reported today. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate unexpectedly jumped to 6.4 percent in July, from 6 per cent in June, reflecting an increase in the number of people looking for work and a small drop in the number of people employed.

A reluctance among some developers in China to sell units at prices lower than they could fetch just months ago threatens to cause a swelling in unsold properties, Bloomberg News reported today. The worsening glut would extend a slide in construction that’s already put a drag on the world’s second-largest economy, and counter policy makers’ efforts to stimulate the real-estate industry with loosened rules. In Nanjing, eastern China, nine housing projects originally planned for sale in the first half of 2014 were held for later this year, consulting firm Everyday Network Co. says.

Individuals in Kazakhstan unable to pay off their loans will be declared bankrupts, the country’s Pesident Nursultan Nazarbayev said when speaking at the extended sitting of the Government Tengrinews.kz reported today. “Borrowers must pay off their loans either in monetary form or through foreclosure of their property," Nazarbayev said. The Government should teach Kazakhstan’s citizens to pay off loans, Tengrinews.kz reported in April, citing the country’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev as saying.

China's overseas borrowings are leaving the country increasingly vulnerable to a rise in U.S. interest rates, potentially creating funding problems for some companies and tighter conditions for the financial system overall, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The world's second-largest economy largely rode out the 2008 global financial crisis, shielded in part by a surge in domestic bank lending and capital controls that protected it from a sharp reversal in global money flows.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) left its benchmark lending rate unchanged Tuesday, but acknowledged progress in its fight to rid Asia's third-largest economy from the plight of high inflation and pledged to cut rates as soon as possible, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The Indian central bank kept its overnight lending rate steady at 8 percent for its third policy meeting in a row. The RBI also reduced the minimum government bondholding rule—the statutory liquidity ratio—for banks by 0.50 percentage point to 22 percent with effect from the two weeks starting on Saturday.

The archbishop of Cyprus has taken the unusual step of urging thousands of small investors in the island’s biggest bank to reject a €1bn share sale agreed with international fund managers and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development when it comes up for approval next month at an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders, the Financial Times reported.

The biggest political crisis that President Benigno S. Aquino III of the Philippines has faced in four years in power could damage his image as a crusader against corruption and undermine his ability to deliver on overhauls to sustain strong economic growth, the International New York Times reported. The Supreme Court has declared partly illegal a 145 billion peso, or $3.34 billion, economic stimulus fund that Mr. Aquino created in 2011 from budget savings.

China’s government is authorizing developer debt sales for the first time in five years in a bid to avoid bankruptcies as the property market cools, Bloomberg News reported. Jiangsu Future Land Co., a builder of homes in eastern China, sold 2 billion yuan ($323 million) of five-year AA rated bonds last week to yield 8.9 percent. That’s less than the average 9.73 percent on trust products that many developers relied on for financing after authorities stopped approving onshore note issuance in 2009.

A group of Chinese investors is in talks with the bankruptcy estate of Icelandic bank Islandsbanki, which was previously known as Glitnir and failed in 2008, over buying a stake in the up-for-sale bank, a finance ministry source said on Thursday. The source told Reuters that among the investors were Chinese bank ICBC, insurer China Life Insurance Company and a large Chinese private equity fund. Creditors own 95 percent of Islandsbanki through ISB Holding while the government owns 5 percent.

Cyprus plans to seek a buyer for the local operation of Federal Bank of the Middle East, a Lebanese-controlled lender, which has been placed under administration by the island’s central bank following allegations of money-laundering, the Financial Times reported. FBME, which has a $2bn balance sheet, was accused by the US Treasury’s financial crimes enforcement network (FinCEN) of facilitating a “substantial volume” of money-laundering through its network for many years.