In the realm of global economic policy, Friday Nov. 13, 2020, was meant to be about hope — not the trigger for another pandemic-era fright. That’s when Group of 20 finance ministers announced final agreement on a blueprint for the US, China and other relatively new creditor countries like India to cooperate on debt relief for more than 70 low-income nations facing a collective $326 billion burden, and deliver it in a “timely and orderly” way, Bloomberg News reported.
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Asia Pacific
Resources Per Country
- Afghanistan
- Armenia
- Australia
- Azerbaijan
- Bangladesh
- Cambodia
- China
- Cook Islands
- Cyprus
- Fiji
- Georgia
- Hong Kong
- India
- Indonesia
- Japan
- Kazakhstan
- Kyrgyzstan
- Laos
- Macau
- Malaysia
- Maldives
- Mongolia
- Myanmar
- Nepal
- New Zealand
- North Korea
- Pakistan
- Papua New Guinea
- Philippines
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Sri Lanka
- Taiwan
- Tajikistan
- Thailand
- Turkey
- Uzbekistan
- Vietnam
President Biden and his top officials vowed this week to introduce additional sanctions aimed at impeding Russia’s war efforts against Ukraine. But the administration’s focus is increasingly shifting to the role that China has played in supplying Russia with goods that have both civilian and military uses, the New York Times reported. As one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of products like electronics, drones and vehicle parts, China has proved to be a particularly crucial economic partner for Russia. Beijing has remained officially unaligned in the war.
Pakistan pledged to pay its sovereign debt obligations this year as it treads close to a possible default with foreign-exchange reserves covering less than a month of imports, Bloomberg News reported. “Come what may, we will be paying off all of our anticipated payments this year,” Commerce Minister Syed Naveed Qamar said in an interview in Washington Tuesday. The government will fulfill its international financial obligations, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said in a statement the same day.
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The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is likely intervening in both the offshore and onshore markets to shield the rupee from the fallout of investors lifting their expectations on the U.S. Federal Reserve's terminal rate, traders said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The rupee has fared much better against the dollar than other emerging market currencies since the blowout U.S. jobs report on Feb. 3 raised bets of a higher-for-longer rate regime. Since then, the rupee has fallen 1.2%.
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New Zealand’s battle with inflation had shown signs of easing before Cyclone Gabrielle wrecked homes, downed power lines and washed away roads after making landfall earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported. Now, officials at the South Pacific country’s central bank are assessing how the rebuilding effort could complicate their campaign to bring price pressures under control.
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When China’s private real-estate developers started sliding into distress more than a year ago, the government encouraged state-owned property companies to step in and take over their ailing peers’ projects and assets, the Wall Street Journal reported. That call has gone largely unheeded—a big reason why the country’s housing market remains in the doldrums. State-backed property companies have considered and ultimately decided against acquiring a great number of projects started by private developers.
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Bankers said that Turkey's central bank used $7 billion of reserves in the last two weeks to help steady the lira in the aftermath of devastating earthquakes, and reserves could remain under pressure in the weeks ahead, Reuters reported. The worst disaster in Turkey's modern history killed tens of thousands and levelled areas of the south, temporarily closing the stock exchange. But in foreign exchange (FX) markets, the lira has shed only 0.2% versus the U.S. dollar since the initial quake on Feb. 6.
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The Japanese subsidiary of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX said it started allowing customers to withdraw their assets on Tuesday, a relatively quick reboot that Tokyo regulators see as the fruit of their strict crypto laws, the Wall Street Journal reported. The situation in Japan contrasts with the U.S. and other countries, where most FTX customers are a long way from getting access to their assets more than three months after the exchange’s U.S. bankruptcy filing. Japan, which was burned by the collapse of the early cryptocurrency exchange Mt.
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Hong Kong outlined a plan to let retail investors trade digital tokens like Bitcoin and Ether, taking a major step toward its goal of becoming a crypto hub in a policy shift that contrasts with a crackdown in the U.S., Bloomberg News reported. Individual investors would be allowed to trade larger coins on exchanges licensed by the Securities and Futures Commission, providing safeguards such as knowledge tests, risk profiles and reasonable limits on exposure are put in place, the regulator said in a consultation paper on Monday.
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A downturn in South Korea's home prices is causing pain in the country's unusual rent-free rental system that benefited landlords and tenants alike during a long surge in residential property prices, Reuters reported. In the "jeonse" scheme, tenants put up a deposit typically worth as much as 70% of the home's value, then live without paying rent for two years until the landlord returns the full amount.
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