Japan is in the midst of en masse hiring season, when a wave of college graduates join companies in formal ceremonies after sweating through the job-interview gantlet. While this year’s ritual has a different look, with Covid-19 forcing many companies to scale back or go online, the goal has long been the same: to kick off what was often a lifetime devoted to one company, the New York Times reported.

A senior Taiwanese minister has pressed U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to include the island in the United States' forthcoming Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, his office said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Tai last month declined to say if Taiwan would be invited to join the Biden administration's Indo-Pacific economic plan, spurring Senate criticism that excluding the island would be a missed opportunity.

China reported its biggest decline in consumer spending and worst unemployment rate since the early months of the pandemic as Covid lockdowns put a strain on the world’s second-largest economy, adding another threat to global growth, Bloomberg News reported. The figures for March came alongside a stronger-than-expected acceleration in gross domestic product growth in the first quarter to 4.8%, an outcome that doesn’t capture the full extent of the economic damage from Covid lockdowns in financial and trade hub Shanghai and other places from the middle of last month.

China will step up financial support for industries, firms and people affected by COVID-19 outbreaks, the central bank said on Monday, as part of steps to cushion economic slowdown, Reuters reported. Authorities will guide financial institutions to expand lending and surrender profits to the real economy, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in a statement on its website. Financial institutions should flexibly support COVID-affected individuals by reasonably delaying loan repayments and overdue loans may not be recorded, the central bank banks.

Sri Lanka is barreling toward a “series of defaults” as it stops paying its foreign debts, Moody’s Investors Service warned in a downgrade of the country’s credit rating, Bloomberg News reported. The first default could come quite soon. The island nation was meant to pay about $78 million in interest to its bondholders on Monday -- until, of course, the government said last week it would halt foreign debt service to preserve cash for food and fuel imports. That has led rating companies to slash Sri Lanka further into junk, with Moody’s on Monday lowering its score to Ca from Caa2.

When Sri Lankan officials arrive in Washington this week to meet with the International Monetary Fund amid an economic and political crisis, the main question they’ll need to answer is how the country plans to manage its billions in debt, Bloomberg News reported. Sri Lanka is seeking up to $4 billion this year to help it import essentials and pay creditors. To get any of that through the IMF’s various programs, the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa must present a sustainable debt program.

Nearly half of the 3,247 insolvency cases have been resolved through liquidation, and only a paltry 457 or 14 per cent of them through asset sale as per their lenders-approved resolution plans, a report said on Friday, the Economic Times of India/em> reported. Even the various resolution processes have witnessed the recovery of debt of just 31 per cent on an average, said the data from the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Board of India.

A Seoul court on Thursday approved a new auction to sell debt-ridden SsangYong Motor Co. following its preferred bidder's payment failure for the carmaker last month, Yonhap News Agency reported. In January, Edison Motors Co. signed a deal to acquire SsangYong for 304.8 billion won (US$249 million). But the deal collapsed as the electric bus maker failed to make the full payment by the March 25 deadline. The Seoul Bankruptcy Court extended the deadline for SsangYong to find a new owner and submit a new restructuring plan by six months until Oct. 15.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the central bank's monetary policy is aimed at achieving its 2% inflation target, not at manipulating currency rates, brushing aside the view the country must end an ultra-low interest rate policy to stem sharp yen declines, Reuters reported. Kishida also said the recent rise in domestic inflation was due mostly to a global spike in crude oil and raw material costs, rather than the weak yen.

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) is likely to raise its inflation forecast for this fiscal year to near 2% at this month's policy meeting as global commodity inflation drives up energy and food costs, Reuters reported. While the upgrade will bring inflation closer to its 2% target, the central bank will stress its resolve to keep monetary policy ultra-loose to underpin a fragile economic recovery.