The International Monetary Fund announced Thursday it has reached a preliminary agreement to provide Sri Lanka with $2.9 billion over four years to help it recover from its worst economic crisis, the Associated Press reported. The arrangement will help restore financial and macroeconomic stability and debt sustainability as well as enable the country’s growth potential, an IMF team visiting Sri Lanka said in a statement.

Chinese factory activity shrank and home sales tumbled in August, as the world’s second-largest economy struggled to shake off the impact from Covid-19 flare-ups, its worst heat wave in six decades and a deepening real-estate downturn, the Wall Street Journal reported. As the heat wave led to electricity shortages and production disruptions, manufacturing activity shrank for a second consecutive month, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday.

One of China’s largest developers said the country’s property market has tumbled into a severe depression, using some of the strongest language yet to describe the yearlong downturn and the financial pain it has caused, the Wall Street Journal reported. Country Garden Holdings Co., which for years ranked as China’s top real-estate developer by contracted sales, on Tuesday reported a 96% drop in first-half profit after selling a third fewer homes than it did a year ago.

Lenders to Reliance Capital (RCap) received 14 resolution plans on Monday as part of the Anil Ambani-founded holding company's insolvency proceedings. A Piramal Group-led consortium, Oaktree Capital, Torrent Investments, IndusInd International and Cosmea Financial Services are among bidders who have either offered to acquire the entire company or submitted plans for select clusters, the Economic Times of India reported. Advent International and Zurich Insurance have bid for 100% stake in Reliance General Insurance (RGI), the people said.

Sri Lanka’s president said yesterday that his bankrupt country’s talks with the International Monetary Fund for a rescue package have successfully reached final stages as he presented an amended budget that seeks to tame inflation and hike taxes, the Associated Press reported. President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is also the finance minister, said in a speech in Parliament that his government will soon start negotiating debt restructuring with countries that provide loans to Sri Lanka.

Global funds that invested in China Evergrande Group's bonds have come up with their own debt restructuring plan for the property developer and demanded that its chair repay liabilities with his own fortune, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, according to Reuters. With more than $300 billion in liabilities, Evergrande, once China's top-selling developer, has been at the centre of the crisis and its debt restructuring plan is seen as a possible template for others.

China is set to step up scrutiny of companies seeking to sell offshore debt, as defaults worsen to record levels and concerns mount about the fallout from dollar strength, Bloomberg News reported. Borrowers including financial firms will be required to register, report and receive approval for issuance of offshore debt with tenors longer than one year from the National Development and Reform Commission, according to a draft for comments posted on the NDRC website and dated Aug. 26. The opinion consultation period is from that day to Sept. 26.

China's three biggest airlines posted on Tuesday a combined 28.4 billion yuan ($4.12 billion) second-quarter loss, wider than in the first quarter, due to major travel disruptions including a strict COVID-related lockdown in Shanghai, Reuters reported. The country's policy of localised lockdowns in response to case numbers that are small by global standards has forced carriers to frequently press the stop button on domestic travel, the main driver for revenue amid border policies that have all but grounded international travel.

Japan's Ministry of Finance (MOF) has raised its assumed interest rate used to calculate debt servicing costs in its budget request for the next fiscal year, a senior ministry official said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The ministry has set the assumed interest rate at 1.3%, up from 1.2% the previous year, reflecting rises in long-term rates, the official told reporters. It marks the first increase in assumed interest rates since fiscal 2007/08 when the assumed rates increased to 2.9% from 2.7%, the official said.

Agricultural Bank of China Ltd., the nation’s third-largest bank by assets, said it’s facing 1.23 billion yuan ($178 million) in overdue loans, nearly double a previous estimate, from a mortgage boycott on unfinished projects that has swept the country, Bloomberg News reported. After reporting a small gain in earnings on Monday, the Beijing-based lender revealed that the overdue loans are linked to 1,112 projects. It had previously estimated 660 million yuan in loans were affected by the unprecedented protests.