Asia Pacific

The bankruptcy court has rejected Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) Undertaking’s application to direct the liquidator of Spark Green Energy (Satara) Ltd to categorise it as a secured financial creditor and also admit its claim of Rs 156 crore, the Economic Times of India reported. The city-based public utility undertaking had approached the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) after the liquidator of Spark Green Energy (Satara) rejected the company’s claim to admit the amount.

In January, the Catalan regional government in Spain created a specialized desk dedicated to increasing investment and trade with China, the world’s second-largest economy. In July, the Port of Barcelona approved plans to build a terminal with direct access to the port’s railway for electric vehicles that China is exporting to Europe, the New York Times reported. Last month, during a visit to Beijing by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the Chinese wind turbine giant Envision Energy agreed to team up with his government and invest $1 billion to build a green hydrogen industrial park.

Indonesian textile giant PT Sri Rejeki Isman is contesting a court decision that declared it bankrupt as the company owner pledged to keep its factory open and see through the revival of the business, Bloomberg News reported. Sritex, as the company is more commonly known, filed an appeal on Oct. 25, requesting a review of the local court’s bankruptcy ruling, according to the court’s website.

China is considering approving next week the issuance of over 10 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) in extra debt in the next few years to revive its fragile economy, Reuters reported. China's top legislative body, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), is looking to approve the fresh fiscal package, including 6 trillion yuan which would partly be raised via special sovereign bonds, on the last day of a meeting to be held from Nov. 4-8.

Thai authorities reached a tentative agreement to keep the inflation target at 1% to 3% for next year, with the Finance Ministry pressing the central bank to take steps to spur price gains and growth in Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy, Bloomberg News reported. The price goal, in place since 2020, could be retained in 2025 provided the Bank of Thailand comes up with policies to push up inflation to 2%, Finance Minister Pichai Chunhavajira told reporters after a two-hour meeting with central bank Governor Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput on Tuesday.

Japan’s labor market tightened in September, indicating sustained pressure on companies to raise wages ahead of the Bank of Japan’s policy meeting this week, Bloomberg News reported. The job-to-applicant ratio edged up to 1.24 from 1.23 in August, meaning that there were 124 jobs offered for every 100 applicants, the labor ministry reported Tuesday. Economists had forecast no change from 1.23. A separate report from the ministry of internal affairs showed that the jobless rate decreased to 2.4% in September, falling to the lowest since January.

China's central bank launched a new lending tool on Monday to inject more liquidity into the market and support credit flow in the banking system ahead of the expiration of trillions of yuan in loans at the end of the year, Reuters reported. The People's Bank of China said in a statement it had activated the open market outright reverse repo operations facility to "maintain a reasonable abundance of liquidity in the banking system and further enrich the central bank's policy toolbox".

As recently as 2010, few industries were as lawless, and yet as central to the global economy, as China’s production of rare earth metals, the New York Times reported. Consignments of rare earths frequently changed hands for sacks of Chinese currency: The rule of thumb was that a cubic foot of tightly packed 100-renminbi bills was worth $350,000. At a warehouse in Guangzhou, near Hong Kong, acid was used illegally to extract rare earths, and the residue, faintly radioactive, was dumped into the municipal sewage.