Asia Pacific

Japan needs to quickly lower its corporate tax rate to less than 30 percent to boost the nation’s competitiveness in the global market, Deputy Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said, according to Bloomberg News today. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to experiment with reforms in the labor market, health care and agriculture and other areas in the zones -- a central plank of his growth strategy. Japan will lower its tax on corporate profits to 35.6 percent from 38 percent in April when a temporary levy to fund reconstruction of regions devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami ends.

Turkey’s legal morass thickened after a prosecutor said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government is obstructing a graft probe by preventing detentions, disobeying court orders and allowing suspects to flee, Bloomberg News reported today. Istanbul Prosecutor Muammer Akkas said yesterday that the investigation he was leading into businessmen and officials for involvement in bribery, rigging tenders, and fraud was stripped from him. Erdogan has said that the probe is a smear campaign orchestrated by his opponents.

The decision by India’s top investigating agency to probe a third billionaire-led mining deal in six months puts at risk government efforts to revive $160 billion of stalled projects, Bloomberg News reported today. The Central Bureau of Investigation said on Dec. 23 it started probing Anil Agarwal, who runs the country’s biggest aluminum and copper producer. It alleged irregularities in his 2002 purchase of the state’s 26 percent stake in Hindustan Zinc Ltd., a producer of zinc used in making metals and chemicals.

Japan's financial regulator came down on Mizuho Bank harder than expected yesterday for not addressing loans to members of alleged criminal groups, and for the way it handled disclosures about the problem, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The Financial Services Agency ordered Mizuho Bank to suspend for a month its loan transactions with consumer-credit affiliates, which handled the questionable loans. It also ordered Mizuho Bank and its parent, Mizuho Financial Group Inc., to submit a business-improvement plan by Jan. 17.

Japan’s banking regulator will seek to introduce penalties for manipulation of financial benchmarks, joining market watchdogs around the globe in pushing for broader authority and tougher supervision, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The Financial Services Agency should get formal authority to supervise organizations that set benchmarks such as the Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate (Tibor) and to conduct investigations, an advisory committee to the regulator said in a statement on Tuesday. The FSA plans to submit a bill including the changes to parliament next year.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suffered the worst blow in his decade in power when an old friend quit the cabinet and called for his resignation, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The public chastisement came after the premier pushed Environment and Urban Planning Minister Erdogan Bayraktar, who has served alongside Erdogan since the 1990s, and two other ministers to resign Wednesday. Each has a son who has been implicated in the graft investigation.

Australia’s four largest banks will need to carry an extra 1 percent of core tier 1 capital from Jan. 1, 2016, due to their systemically important status, according to the country’s banking regulator, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank Ltd. and Westpac Banking Corp. need to have a greater capacity to absorb losses, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) said in a statement yesterday.

Vietnam’s economic growth accelerated as exports climbed, even as banks struggled to meet the government’s lending target, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Gross domestic product rose 6.04 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, quickening from a 5.54 percent gain in the three months through September, according to data released by the General Statistics Office in Hanoi yesterday. For the full year, the economy grew 5.42 percent, faster than a 5.25 percent pace in 2012.

The stress in China's financial system appeared to be easing today as short-term borrowing costs fell following the central bank's decision to resume using its most popular tool to inject cash into the money market, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The People's Bank of China is offering 29 billion yuan ($4.8 billion) of reverse repurchase agreements, a form of short-term lending to banks, after halting the use of the instrument for nearly three weeks, traders participating in the sale said.

Bankruptcy cases, both personal and commercial, have shown signs of rising due to the economic slowdown this year, the The Nation reported today. As of October, the Legal Execution Department had 264,232 cases with assets for sale valued at up to Bt3.47 trillion. In the last fiscal year ended September, the department succeeded in settling 25,717 cases by mediating between debtors and creditors and selling assets for Bt33.14 billion out of an estimated value of Bt33.23 billion. For this fiscal year, the department targets to clear at least 150,000 cases.