Asia Pacific

Australian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes on Thursday stood by the economics of a plan to ship energy from a giant solar farm in the country's north to Singapore via undersea cable as he took possession of the A$20 billion ($12.73 billion) project, Reuters reported. Cannon-Brookes, the co-founder of tech firm Atlassian turned environmental activist, said he continued to believe outside investors would be drawn to the Sun Cable project, adding it already had demand for more energy than it could produce.

Creditors of Country Garden Holdings are doubtful the Chinese developer will be in a position to service debt that will come due later this year without liquidity support, after it averted a catastrophic default this week at the last minute, Reuters reported. With its financial situation precarious and prospects of China's property sector remaining grim, the offshore creditors expect the country's largest private developer to get liquidity support soon or for it to undergo a debt revamp.

China’s exports to the rest of the world dropped for a fourth straight month in August, bringing little relief to the country from a deepening economic malaise and weighing on the global trade outlook, the Wall Street Journal reported. China has struggled to sustain a wave of overseas demand for Chinese-made goods that carried it through much of the three years of the pandemic, particularly as Western consumers tilted their spending back toward services and away from smartphones, furniture and other goods. Higher borrowing rates in the U.S.

The Reserve Bank of India has been frequently intervening in the non-deliverable forward (NDF) market to make sure that the rupee does not drop to a record low, four bankers told Reuters on Thursday. The rupee was at 83.1525 to the U.S. dollar as of 11:16 a.m. IST, not too far from its record low of 83.29 hit in October 2022. The currency has largely avoided the decline in its Asian peers. "The RBI intervened on NDF in the morning (before local over-the-counter, OTC, markets opened) and it did the same yesterday," the head of treasury at a private sector bank said.

Speculative bets that Chinese authorities will widen support for the property sector sent some of the country’s ailing developers surging by the most on record, Bloomberg News reported. A Bloomberg Intelligence gauge tracking Chinese builders gained nearly 10% Wednesday, the most in more than a month. Heavily indebted developers with depressed valuations were among those to rally the most, with Sunac China Holdings Ltd. soaring 68% alongside a spike in trading volume. China Evergrande Group closed up 83% — capping the biggest gain since its 2009 listing.

Financial technology companies should create a self-regulatory body to address their needs and challenges, the Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Wednesday, as the industry grows at a break-neck speed due to surging demand for digital payments and borrowings, Reuters reported. "I would like to use this opportunity to urge and encourage the fintechs to establish a self-regulatory organisation or SRO themselves. From the Reserve Bank, we are willing to engage with you," Das said while delivering the keynote address at the Global FinTech Fest 2023 (GFF).

China's Country Garden made interest payments on U.S. dollar bonds hours ahead of a grace period deadline, a person close to the firm said, pulling back from the brink of default for the second time in four days and bringing some relief to the country's crisis-hit property sector, Reuters reported. China's largest private property developer failed to pay coupons on the bonds totalling $22.5 million due on Aug. 6, exacerbating fears over how much cash it has left and keeping markets on tenterhooks throughout the bonds' 30-day grace periods.

The World Bank is in advanced talks to potentially double its exposure to Turkey to $35 billion to help stabilize the Middle East’s largest non-oil economy, Bloomberg News reported. The discussions include a World Bank pledge of as much as $18 billion for projects over the next three years, in addition to more than $17 billion in programs already in place, the people said, asking not to be named because the talks aren’t public. The funding would include direct lending to the government as well as support for the private sector.

Italy is preparing to cancel its controversial membership in China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, engaging in an elaborate diplomatic dance to avoid angering Beijing and triggering retaliation against Italian businesses, the Wall Street Journal reported. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani held talks in Beijing on Sunday and Monday to facilitate as smooth an exit as possible from the initiative while laying the groundwork for alternative economic deals with China.

China's largest private property developer, Country Garden, faces a deadline for making interest payments on two U.S. dollar bonds on Tuesday, just days after dodging an onshore debt default with a last-minute payment extension deal, Reuters reported. Country Garden last month said it had not paid coupons on the bonds due on Aug. 6 totalling $22.5 million, exacerbating market fear that the developer was slipping into a worsening liquidity squeeze. Both payments had 30-day grace periods, ending on Tuesday.