Asia Pacific

A Japanese bank agreed to sell $100 million of loans related to Dubai World before completion of the state-owned entity's debt restructuring plan, Reuters reported on a story from The National. The bank, which the paper did not name, began selling its loans last summer before Dubai World reached an agreement with its creditors in September, The National reported, citing sources that it did not identify. A sale agreement reached last week would provide the Japanese bank with between 60 cents and 65 cents on the dollar.

Australia’s cost of living, having already outpaced inflation, is about to surge, according to economists at JPMorgan, The Australian reported. The cost of living for Australian workers rose 60 per cent faster than the official inflation rate of 2.8 per cent in the year to October, 2010, when workers needed 4.6 per cent more after-tax income to compensate for higher living costs, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics' latest cost of living index.

New Zealand’s unemployment rate rose more than forecast in the fourth quarter, sending the local currency lower and reducing the case for the central bank to raise interest rates in coming months, Bloomberg reported. The jobless rate increased to 6.8 percent from 6.4 percent three months earlier, Statistics New Zealand said today. The median estimate of 10 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for 6.5 percent. The New Zealand dollar fell to 77.41 U.S. cents at 1:11 p.m. in Wellington from 77.76 cents before the data.

The pay television arm of Wollongong-based WIN Corporation has collapsed after several years of trading unprofitably, leaving a multimillion-dollar debt trail, the Illawarra Mercury reported. Satellite-based broadcaster SelecTV, headed by Andrew Gordon, son of WIN Corp owner Bruce Gordon, went into voluntary administration last week. WIN Corp seized control of SelecTV in 2006 in a $46.9 million takeover bid and has reportedly sunk more than $10 million into the business. Industry sources last year estimated it was losing $1 million a month.

The Afghan Central Bank on Monday sharply disputed accounts by The New York Times and several other publications that Afghanistan’s largest bank had hundreds of millions of dollars more in losses than previously publicized. In a statement and a news conference it said that Kabul Bank, the country’s largest, “had a bright future.” Kabul Bank, the country’s most politically connected as well as the largest, was crippled last fall when it became known that it had hundreds of millions of dollars in nonperforming loans.

A Canadian public-sector pension fund has joined a forestry management firm in a C$415 million (A$415 million) acquisition of Australian timber lands, capitalizing on a failed government investment scheme, the companies said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Alberta Investment Management Corp and a fund run by Australia's New Forests Pty Ltd are buying the timberland assets of Great Southern Plantations, which include more than 2,500 square km (965 square miles) of land in forestry and agricultural regions in six states. The pair are buying the assets out of receivership.

China said Thursday that for the first time it would allow some cities to impose a property tax on homeowners in the hope of curbing speculation in the housing market and also reducing the government’s reliance on land auctions for income, the International Herald Tribune reported. China’s State Council, or cabinet, announced the decision a day after releasing a broader set of measures aimed at taming housing prices and preventing a property bubble from threatening the nation’s fast-growing economy.

The besieged pub sector has gone from bad to worse with industry claims that up to 90 per cent of pubs currently on the market are facing some sort of financial pressure, The Australian reported. The estimate, along with 2011 forecasts of a further softening of yields -- which have already caused a 40 per cent fall in pub values -- is the latest setback for the debt-laden sector which last week claimed its latest scalp, Sydney's Icon Hospitality Group of companies.

Standard & Poor's cut Japan's credit rating on Thursday for the first time since 2002, saying Tokyo lacked a plan to deal with its mounting debt, in a warning that will rattle other heavily indebted rich nations, Reuters reported. The agency reduced Japan's long-term sovereign debt rating by one notch to AA minus, three levels below the highest possible rating. It said Japan's fast-aging population, persistent deflation and the loss of the coalition's upper house majority had compounded the government's fiscal challenge.

Vietnam's inflation posted another double-digit rise ahead of the Lunar New Year, adding pressure on authorities to raise interest rates to slow the nation's growth and curb pressure on its currency, The Wall Street Journal reported. The nation has struggled to deal with several economic stresses, fueling concerns about the government's ability to manage fiscal policy as the trade deficit balloons and the Vietnamese dong remains persistently weak, bucking a trend across the region.