Sri Lanka’s politics have been dominated for much of the past two decades by a single family. Now a deepening economic crisis is threatening the Rajapaksa clan’s grip on power, the Wall Street Journal reported. Public dissent has been growing in the island nation of 22 million as energy shortages have led the country to resort to rolling blackouts and Sri Lankans have waited for hours in lines to obtain basic goods such as cooking gas and medicine. Dwindling foreign-currency reserves have left the country struggling to pay for imports and on the verge of a sovereign-debt default.

China's factory inflation slowed but beat expectations in March, official data showed on Monday, as the country grapples with cost pressures caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and persistent supply chain bottlenecks, Reuters reported. The producer price index (PPI) increased 8.3% year-on-year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), easing from 8.8% growth in February but beating a forecast for a 7.9% rise in a Reuters poll. While the year-on-year PPI rise was the slowest since April 2021, the monthly increase of 1.1% was the fastest pace in five months.

Oil resumed its decline as China’s virus resurgence worsened, raising concerns about demand from the world’s biggest crude importer, Bloomberg News reported. West Texas Intermediate futures slid below $96 a barrel after climbing 2.3% on Friday, the first gain in four sessions. Virus cases continue to rise in Shanghai and there is no clarity on when restrictions will be lifted. The flare-up has led to disruptions at ports and prompted some refiners to trim operating rates.

Shanghai reported nearly 25,000 locally transmitted COVID-19 infections on Sunday and sought to assure locked-down residents of China's most populous city that supply bottlenecks affecting availability of food and other items would ease, Reuters reported. Streets remained largely silent in the city of 26 million people as curbs under its "zero tolerance" policy allow only healthcare workers, volunteers, delivery personnel or those with special permission to move freely.

Once conduits for hundreds of millions of dollars looted from 1MDB, a group of offshore entities are being repurposed to try to track down the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund’s stolen money, Bloomberg News reported. Three British Virgin Islands-based companies linked to 1MDB on Tuesday filed for chapter 15 bankruptcy in Florida, utilizing the section of the U.S. code that allows foreign debtors to bring proceedings in the states. Their aim is to recover a portion of the $8.5 billion allegedly stolen from 1MDB, some of which may be in the U.S., the companies said.

Asia boasts some of the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies, but the region that’s keen for more investments accounts for only a fraction of the global private credit market, Bloomberg News reported. From restrictions on foreign investment in India and China to Japan’s ultra-low returns, the mixed environment means investors face a fragmented if potentially lucrative market. The legacy of the Asia financial crisis means there’s a wariness of hot money flows, while currency volatility that may prompt costly hedging is a particular headache for debt investors.

China's cabinet on Wednesday held out the prospect of more measures to support an economy under pressure from a slowing global recovery, volatile commodity markets and COVID-19 outbreaks, Reuters reported. State media quoted the cabinet as saying it would roll out policies to stabilise market expectations in a timely way, without giving details. Analysts expect China's central bank to lower borrowing costs or pump more cash into the economy to spur growth.

The Delhi bench of the National Company Law Tribunal has initiated bankruptcy proceedings against Anand Divine Developers pvt ltd, a group company of realty developer ATS over dues of Rs 25 crore, the Economic Times of India reported. According to the NCLT order, ICICI prudential venture has moved the tribunal after the developer defaulted on payment. “In the present case, the corporate debtor has not filed any reply and written submissions till now.

China reported a record number of local Covid-19 cases on Monday, as authorities extended a sweeping lockdown in Shanghai in an effort to curb the country’s worst outbreak in more than two years, the Wall Street Journal reported. China recorded more than 16,400 new local Covid cases for Monday, according to the National Health Commission, the highest daily tally in mainland China in more than two years. More than 80% of the latest daily cases were in Shanghai, the commission said on Tuesday.

The Indian Supreme Court on Monday said that it will protect the interests of homebuyers in Supertech’s to-be-razed twin towers situated at Noida’s Emerald Court project from the ongoing insolvency proceedings against the company, and directed the interim resolution professional to separately deal with the refund claims of the buyers and the creditors, the Hindustan Times reported.