Asia Pacific

New Zealand’s government is tightening its belt as a domestic recession and concerns about China’s faltering economy erode tax revenue and strain its budget, Bloomberg News reported. The government has identified almost NZ$4 billion ($2.4 billion) of potential savings over the next four years, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said Monday in Wellington. He has instructed the public service to cut spending on consultants and contractors and said he will also reduce future budget allowances. “We have seen further deterioration in the global economy, particularly in China,” Robertson said.

Embattled property developer China Evergrande Group said on Friday it has "adequately" fulfilled the resumption guidance issued by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and made an application to resume trading in shares on Aug. 28, Reuters reported. Once China's top-selling developer, Evergrande has become the poster child for an unprecedented debt crisis in the country's property sector, which accounts for roughly a quarter of the economy, after facing a liquidity crunch in mid-2021.

Chinese developer Country Garden Holdings has delayed from Friday until Aug. 31 the deadline for holders of a private yuan bond to vote on its new plan to extend its repayment schedule, a filing seen by Reuters showed. The deadline has been postponed to give bondholders more time to consider the plan, according to the filing. China’s largest private developer earlier this month missed two dollar coupon payments totalling $22.5 million, raising fears that the country’s deepening property debt crisis will hamper the financial sector and a broader economic recovery.

China's central bank has asked domestic lenders to scale back outward bond investments according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, the latest in series of increasingly strong steps to support the yuan, Reuters reported. The directive, issued this week, is for banks to restrict southbound purchases under the Bond Connect scheme, and is aimed at limiting the supply of yuan offshore, the sources said. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to talk to the media. The PBOC declined to comment on the content of the window guidance.

The Adani Group said cash and profit generated from its sprawling infrastructure business can cover all the debt maturing each year in the coming decade, messaging that’s part of the Indian conglomerate’s latest effort to shore up investor confidence months after a damaging short seller attack, Bloomberg News reported. In a credit report released Thursday, the power-to-port conglomerate founded by billionaire Gautam Adani said its cash flow generated from business operations and balances stood at 778.9 billion rupees ($9.4 billion) as of end-March.

Just the threat of legal action has been pushing many promoters to pay their dues, according to Indian government data, the Economic Times of India reported. Many companies' managements have reportedly paid back their dues shortly after lenders filed cases with the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), out of fear of losing control over their companies. Creditors, banks and suppliers have recovered dues pretty much immediately after filing under the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code (IBC), without even waiting for petitions to be admitted.

Global investors fleeing China have one simple message for the country's leadership: put prudence aside for a short while, and start spending big, Reuters reported. As they go from hope to disappointment and now capitulation, investors are losing patience with what they see as incoherent, slow and stingy measures by China to revive its sputtering economy and defuse a deepening property crisis.

Indonesia’s central bank tapped tools other than interest rates to help the rupiah weather an emerging-market selloff triggered by the prospect of tighter US monetary policy, Bloomberg News reported. Bank Indonesia Thursday kept the benchmark seven-day reverse repurchase rate at a four-year high of 5.75%. While the decision was widely expected, Governor Perry Warjiyo announced a new tool to attract foreign funds to support the local currency. The decision came as data compiled by Bloomberg showed investors sold $127 million worth of Indonesian bonds so far this August.

At an unfinished Country Garden residential complex on the outskirts of the northern Chinese metropolis of Tianjin, construction has slowed to a dull whirr and a few idle workers roam a near-empty site, Reuters reported. "They haven't paid us since Chinese New Year (in January). We are all worried," said a labourer surnamed Wang, 50, who said he had stopped work at the Yunhe Shangyuan site last week. The sprawling complex is one of two projects Reuters visited on Friday in Tianjin, a port city of 14 million people about 135 km (84 miles) southeast of Beijing.

Liquidity in the banking system has slipped into a deficit for the first time in FY24 as the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) decision to impound a chunk of banks' extra funds - and hence reduce inflation risks - has led to a cash shortfall amid tax outflows, the Economic Times of India reported. Daily central bank data showed that the RBI injected funds worth ₹23,644.4 crore into the banking system on August 21, marking the first infusion of cash since March 27. An injection of funds by the RBI reflects deficit liquidity conditions in the banking system.