India and the United Arab Emirates signed a broad trade and investment pact on Friday that will eventually cut all tariffs on each other's goods and aims to increase annual trade between the two nations to $100 billion within five years, Reuters reported. The virtual signing ceremony marks the first trade deal sealed by the Gulf state since it began pursuing such pacts last September in a bid to strengthen its status as a business hub.

Many Sri Lankan voters who backed President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s election bid three years ago are now struggling to make ends meet. His government is spending to ensure that support continues even as reserves and finances dwindle, Bloomberg News reported. That could lead to Colombo asking for more loans and aid from China and India given that the government has vowed to stay away from International Monetary Fund assistance that often comes with conditions for fiscal and monetary reform.

Turkey’s central bank left its key interest rate unchanged for a second consecutive month, pausing the government’s policy of interest-rate cuts that triggered a chaotic slide in the value of the lira last year, the Wall Street Journal reported. The bank’s monetary policy committee said Thursday it left the benchmark interest rate on hold at 14%, in line with market expectations. In a statement, the bank cited “increasing geopolitical risks” in a possible reference to the crisis over nearby Ukraine.

A Chinese court has ordered the freezing of 640.4 million yuan ($101 million) in assets held by a subsidiary of China Evergrande Group, according to a filing by contractor Shanghai Construction Group, Reuters reported. State-owned Shanghai Construction, which sued the Evergrande unit in the southwestern city of Chengdu in December for overdue construction fees, cited the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court ruling that the assets to be frozen will include bank deposits and real estate.

China’s factory-gate inflation eased and consumer price growth slowed, giving Beijing room to stimulate growth at a time when more major economies are looking to tighten policy to curb rising prices, the Wall Street Journal reported. The producer-price index, a gauge of wholesale prices charged by manufacturers, rose 9.1% in January from a year earlier, down from December’s 10.3%, National Bureau of Statistics data published on Wednesday show. Softening coal and steel prices helped lead the index lower, said Dong Lijuan, a senior statistician with the bureau.

Two former Goldman Sachs colleagues will face off in a Brooklyn courtroom on Wednesday in a trial over the looting of hundreds of millions of dollars from Malaysia's 1MDB sovereign wealth fund, one of the biggest scandals in Wall Street history, Reuters reported. Roger Ng, Goldman's former head of investment banking in Malaysia, is charged with conspiring to launder money and to violate an anti-bribery law. Prosecutors said in opening statements at his trial on Monday in Brooklyn federal court that Ng received millions in kickbacks for helping embezzle funds from 1MDB.

The Kolkata bench of the National Company Law Tribunal has approved consolidated insolvency proceeding for Srei Group's two non-bank lenders, BloombergQuint reported. Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd. and Srei Equipment Finance Ltd. will face a consolidated insolvency proceeding under the same committee of creditors, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. The bidders will place a single bid under the insolvency proceeding to purchase a consolidated balance sheet, the first of the two people quoted above said.

China’s central bank stepped up support for its slowing economy by pumping in cash via policy loans for a second straight month. The benchmark stock index advanced, outperforming regional equities, Bloomberg News reported. The People’s Bank of China injected a net 100 billion yuan ($15.7 billion) into the banking system with its medium-term lending facility, while leaving the borrowing rate unchanged. The CSI 300 rose as much as 1.1%. Chinese banks in January extended a record amount of loans after the PBOC lowered borrowing costs for the first time since 2020 last month.

China’s “Covid-zero” policy has limited impact on the economy because measures are highly localized and targeted, according to Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd, Bloomberg News reported. Only around 2.6% of China’s economy in terms of gross domestic product is subject to so-called “dynamic clearing” policy measures currently, economists led by Raymond Yeung wrote in a report Tuesday. Assuming the impact lasts for a quarter, that effect is 0.6% of annual GDP, they estimate.

Mizuho Financial Group Inc. and other lenders are in talks with KKR & Co.-owned parts supplier Marelli Holdings Co. to renegotiate debt and offer financing to keep it operational, Bloomberg News reported. The auto-parts company, created in 2019 when KKR merged its Calsonic Kansei and Magneti Marelli units, is seeking to file as soon as March for an alternative dispute resolution in Japan, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. Marelli had at least 1.1 trillion yen ($9.5 billion) in total debt as of September.