Asia Pacific

Bondholders are bracing for a potential default by Pakistan as the beleaguered nation struggles to meet billions of dollars in debt repayments by June, Bloomberg News reported. The nation’s dollar bonds due next year slid to the lowest since November on Thursday as investors weighed its ability to honor $7 billion of repayments in the coming months, including a Chinese loan of $2 billion due in March, according to Fitch Ratings. The rupee slumped 6.7% to 285.09 per dollar at close, according to State Bank of Pakistan.

Sri Lanka's recent tax rises are in line with international comparisons and needed to help creditors regain confidence, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday, backing the crisis-hit country's effort to lock down a $2.9 billion bailout, Reuters reported. An IMF statement said the hikes, which included an up to 36% rise in income taxes, were essential to tackle revenue collection that has been low by global standards. External financing would not bridge the gap needed to fund essential expenditure, the statement added.

Retail theft has hit record levels in Australia, government statistics show, putting pressure on grocery giants Woolworths Group Ltd and Coles Group Ltd that are already struggling with soaring supply costs and freight blockages, Reuters reported. Store theft rose 23.7% in New South Wales, the home state of a third of Australians, from 2021 to 2022, state government figures showed on Thursday, the fastest year-on-year increase since records began in 1995.

China is willing to "constructively" participate in solving the debt problems of relevant countries under a multilateral framework, its Premier Li Keqiang said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. China, the world's largest bilateral creditor, has criticised multilateral lenders for not accepting losses, or haircuts, on loans to low-income countries while Beijing is being asked to do so on credit it has extended on its own.

Economic activity in China expanded sharply for a second straight month, in an early sign the country may be shaking off the impact of pandemic curbs sooner than expected, the Wall Street Journal reported. An official gauge of manufacturing rose at the fastest pace in more than a decade in February, while export orders expanded for the first time in almost two years, the National Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday. Services and construction activity also expanded further, the purchasing managers index report showed.

China’s banks and asset managers are turning to an old yet potentially risky accounting maneuver to attract buyers for their investment funds after a rout in the bond market triggered waves of redemptions last year, Bloomberg News reported. Banks including Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and Postal Savings Bank of China Co.’s wealth management units are rushing to sell new funds that value most assets based on adjusted costs rather than current market prices, masking day-to-day volatility.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has admitted Mumbai-based KLT Group's subsidiary, Colour Roof India (CRIL), under the corporate insolvency resolution process and appointed Hemant Kumar Shah as the insolvency resolution professional, the Economic Times of India reported. The company is involved in design, development and supply of roof and wall cladding sheets. The NCLT's Mumbai bench admitted the company in an application filed by Phoenix ARC, which had approached the tribunal after the company allegedly failed to repay its dues of over ₹166 crore.

Indonesia is drawing on the structure of the stock market to revamp crypto trading and mitigate the risks exposed by the collapse of the FTX digital-asset exchange, Bloomberg News reported. A key plank of the plan is a proposed state-backed crypto bourse where private-sector platforms will execute trades, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency, which currently oversees digital assets. “The hard part is we can’t find a benchmark for such a crypto bourse,” the agency’s head Noordiatmoko said in an interview.

Property developer China Evergrande Group is struggling to reach a deal with foreign bondholders, raising the possibility that a court will tell the company to wind down, the Wall Street Journal reported. Evergrande, once China’s largest property developer by sales, sold more than $20 billion of dollar bonds during a debt-fueled spending spree. The company defaulted on its foreign debt in late 2021, and has since been embroiled in a difficult negotiation with international bondholders.

The two major earthquakes which hit Turkey on Feb. 6 caused about $34.2 billion in direct physical damage, but total reconstruction and recovery costs facing the country could be twice as high, the World Bank said on Monday, Reuters reported. The bank estimates that the earthquakes would also shave at least half a percentage point off Turkey's forecast gross domestic product growth of 3.5% to 4% in 2023, Humberto Lopez, World Bank country director for Turkey, told reporters.