Asia Pacific

Buried in China’s latest government budget were some numbers that add up to an alarming trend. Tax revenue is dropping, the New York Times reported. The decline means that China’s national government has less money to address the country’s serious economic challenges, including a housing market crash and the near bankruptcy of hundreds of local governments. Weak tax revenue also puts China’s leaders in a box as they square off with President Trump, who has imposed 20 percent tariffs on goods from China and threatened more to come.

Turkey’s central bank raised one of its key interest rates in a surprise meeting on Thursday, the latest move by authorities to reverse a decline in the lira, Bloomberg News reported. The monetary authority hiked the overnight lending rate by two percentage points to 46%, while keeping the main gauge of one-week repo unchanged. The lira, which tumbled 3.2% a day earlier, rose briefly after the news and was trading 0.1% lower at 37.9520 per dollar at 7:22 p.m.

South Korean authorities are ramping up efforts to regulate the crypto market, focusing on exchanges believed to be operating without proper licensing, CoinMarketCap.com reported. The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of the Financial Services Commission is investigating several platforms, including KuCoin, BitMEX, CoinW, Bitunix, and KCEX, for allegedly providing services to South Korean users without registering as Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs).

Reliance Capital Limited (RCL) has successfully exited insolvency after the implementation of its approved resolution plan, making it the first Non-Banking Financial Company-Core Investment Company (NBFC-CIC) to complete resolution under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), CNBCTV18.com reported. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had superseded the company’s board and appointed Nageswara Rao Y as the administrator under Section 45-IA of the RBI Act, 1935.

Iron ore miner Vale, a Chinese commercial partner since the 1970s, is welcome, along with other Brazilian firms, to further expand economic links with China, its commerce ministry said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The comments came as chief executives of foreign firms gathered in Beijing this week for a key annual corporate forum and China mounted a charm offensive to woo foreign investment.

The Bank of Japan kept interest rates steady on Wednesday and warned of heightening global economic uncertainty, suggesting the timing of further rate hikes will depend largely on the fallout from potentially higher U.S. tariffs, Reuters reported. But Governor Kazuo Ueda also said rising food costs and stronger-than-expected wage growth could push up underlying inflation, highlighting the central bank's attention to mounting domestic price pressures. "Japan's wage and price conditions are on track, possibly stronger than expected. But the uncertain U.S.

Indonesia’s central bank held interest rates steady again as volatility in local markets and the rupiah make the case for policymakers to tread cautiously, even as they continue to leave the door open to cuts, the Wall Street Journal reported. Domestic unease and heightened uncertainty abroad had economists divided on what Bank Indonesia would do ahead of its decision to keep the benchmark seven-day reverse repo rate at 5.75% on Wednesday.

The U.S. mission told China and Canada it was ready to confer with its officials in Geneva after those two countries filed trade disputes in response to new tariffs, World Trade Organization documents showed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Canada requested consultations - the first step in a WTO trade dispute - earlier this month in response to "unjustified tariffs" imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this month. China launched a dispute after Trump tariffs on Chinese goods in February.

Political pressure is mounting over a plan by a Hong Kong conglomerate to sell its Panama ports to BlackRock, the American investor, raising questions about the future of the $19 billion deal, the New York Times reported.