The head of Australia's central bank on Tuesday said further increases in interest rates would likely be needed to tame inflation, and it was ready to go faster on hikes or to pause for a time if necessary, Reuters reported. In a speech in Tasmania, Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Governor Philip Lowe said the policy making board was aware that rates had risen sharply in a short period of time and this was combining with high inflation to pressure household budgets.
Read more
Resources Per Country
- Afghanistan
- Armenia
- Australia
- Azerbaijan
- Bangladesh
- Brunei
- Cambodia
- China
- Cook Islands
- Cyprus
- Fiji
- Georgia
- Hong Kong
- India
- Indonesia
- Japan
- Kazakhstan
- Kyrgyzstan
- Laos
- Macau
- Malaysia
- Maldives
- Micronesia
- Mongolia
- Myanmar
- Nepal
- New Zealand
- North Korea
- Pakistan
- Papua New Guinea
- Philippines
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Sri Lanka
- Taiwan
- Tajikistan
- Thailand
- Turkey
- Uzbekistan
- Vanuatu
- Vietnam
Stellantis said that shareholders of its loss-making joint venture producing Jeep vehicles in China have approved it to file for bankruptcy, Reuters reported. The European carmaker said in a statement it had fully impaired the value of its investment in the venture in its results for the fist half of 2022, adding that it will continue to provide services to existing and future Jeep brand customers in China. Stellantis had terminated the joint venture with Guangzhou Automobile Group Co. (GAC) in July, only months after it said it would raise its stake in the business to 75% from 50%.
Read more
Turkey’s banking watchdog will continue tightening its grip on commercial loan access by further restricting companies holding foreign currency from borrowing liras, stepping up efforts to prop up the local currency and cool lending, Bloomberg News reported. The new rule announced on Oct. 21, and set to come into effect on Tuesday, will bar commercial lira loans to corporate borrowers if they hold more than 10 million liras ($537,000) in foreign currencies and if the amount exceeds 5% of total assets or annual sales.
Read more
Sri Lanka's key inflation rate eased to 66% in October after hitting 69.8% in September, the crisis-struck country's statistics department said on Monday, Reuters reported. The still extremely elevated Colombo Consumer Price Index (CCPI) reflected a 85.6% jump in food prices in October and a 56.3% climb in the non-food group, the Census and Statistics Department said in a statement. However, the pace of food inflation slowed from a all-time high of 94.9% in September.
Read more
Japan said on Friday that it would subsidize around 20 percent of the average family’s electric bill, part of a sweeping economic package that comes as the country struggles with high food and energy prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a yen trading at decades-long lows, the New York Times reported. The total package, which weighs in at over $200 billion, includes a wide variety of economic measures, ranging from individual payments to families with children to fuel subsidies for the transportation industry.
Read more
Japan's factory output fell in September for the first time in four months as manufacturers took a hit from rising costs for raw materials and the global economic slowdown. But in a brighter sign for the world's third-largest economy, retail sales grew for a seventh straight month, raising hopes for a sustainable boost in consumption after the easing of COVID-19-related border controls for foreign tourists earlier this month, Reuters reported.
Read more
Past financial crises are haunting South Korean policy makers as they rush to support a local credit market that’s quickly gone from one of the world’s safest to teetering on the brink, Bloomberg News reported. As Korea gets swept into a global debt market rout, corporate treasurers and market regulators in Seoul are staring down one of the most rapid deteriorations in the nation’s credit market ever. The rout is one of the worst in Asia’s local-currency markets amid a broader fixed-income slump this year.
Read more
Australia’s central bank faces a tough task in deciding whether to persist with smaller interest-rate increases or U-turning back to outsized hikes to try to gain control of hotter-than-expected inflation, Bloomberg News reported. Financial markets and most economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect the Reserve Bank will deliver a second straight quarter percentage-point rise at Tuesday’s meeting. That would take the cash rate to 2.85%, the highest level since April 2013. But there are still some high-profile dissenters and doubters.
Read more
Turkish bankers have confronted top officials over rules that saddled them with government bonds and kept rates artificially low, according to people familiar with the matter, warning of massive risks in case monetary policy becomes far less accommodative, Bloomberg News reported. In a recent series of closed-door meetings with key decision makers, bank executives pressed complaints against regulatory measures that forced them to buy government debt, the people said, asking not to be named because the discussions were private.
Read more
Australian inflation raced to a 32-year high last quarter as the cost of home building and gas surged, a shock result that stoked pressure for a return to more aggressive rate hikes by the country's central bank, Reuters reported. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Wednesday showed the consumer price index (CPI) jumped 1.8% in the September quarter, topping market forecasts of 1.6%. The annual rate shot up to 7.3%, from 6.1%, the highest since 1990 and almost three times the pace of wage growth.
Read more