Asia Pacific

China Vanke Co. won more support from authorities as its largest state shareholder agreed to provide up to 2.8 billion yuan ($383 million) to help the struggling developer repay outstanding debt, Bloomberg News reported. Shenzhen Metro Group Co., which holds a 27% stake in Vanke, signed a three-year secured loan agreement with the firm on Monday, according to a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange. Under the deal, Vanke will provide asset collateral worth up to 4 billion yuan to Shenzhen Metro through an 18% stake in its property management unit Onewo Inc.

Country Garden Holdings Co.’s sales slump dragged on in January, as new residential transactions countrywide resumed falling on weak sentiment. Contracted sales dropped 59% from a year earlier to 2.26 billion yuan ($309 million), following a 51% year-on-year decline in December, according to Bloomberg calculations based on corporate filings. Country Garden’s slide in home sales substantially surpasses the 3.2% posted by the 100 biggest real estate companies tracked by China Real Estate Information Corp. The market is dented by weak domestic demand and a worsening job market.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has terminated the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP) against Logix Infrastructure Pvt Ltd — the developer of Blossom County in Sector 137 — citing "fraudulent intent" in the petition, the Times of India reported. In its Feb 6 order, the tribunal asked the resolution professional (RP) to allow Logix Infrastructure's former directors to take back control of the company's management.

China’s consumer inflation accelerated for the first time since August, caused by a burst of household spending around the Lunar New Year holiday even as deflationary pressures persist, Bloomberg News reported. The consumer price index rose 0.5% in January from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Sunday, compared with a 0.1% gain in the previous month. A temporary spending boom during the eight-day break briefly masked the extent of the deflationary challenge facing the world’s second-biggest economy.

Hong Kong will file a complaint against the U.S.’s additional 10% tariff with the World Trade Organization, claiming the levies violate WTO rules, the Wall Street Journal reported. In a statement released Friday, a spokesman for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government described the tariffs as “unreasonable measures” and “grossly inconsistent with the relevant WTO rules.” The U.S. measures “ignore our status as a separate customs territory as stipulated in Article 116 of the Basic Law,” and recognized by the WTO, the spokesman said.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order delaying tariffs on de minimis, or low-cost, packages from China until the Commerce Department can confirm that procedures and systems are in place to process packages and collect tariff revenue, Reuters reported. Read more.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is counting on a two-pronged stimulus of tax and interest rate cuts to turn around India’s slowing economy, but investors may need more convincing that the measures will be enough, Bloomberg News reported. The decision by India’s central bank on Friday to reduce its key rate for the first time in five years comes less than a week after Modi’s government unveiled historic tax cuts in its federal budget. Taken together, the measures underscore the urgency with which Modi’s government is moving to address the growth slowdown gripping the economy.