The United States and Japan are set to announce a deal to grant Japanese steelmakers relief from Trump-era U.S. tariffs for a limited amount of steel imports, Reuters reported. Anonymous sources said that it will allow about 1.25 million metric tonnes into the United States duty-free, with volumes above that level subject to the 25% "Section 232" national security tariffs.

Turkey is preparing to return to global bond markets for the first time since the lira’s implosion, Bloomberg News reported. The nation has picked banks including HSBC Holdings Plc to manage a sale of Islamic debt, known as a sukuk, which could happen this month. The sale may be used to refinance about $2 billion of debt maturing this month. The last time Turkey turned to foreign investors with a bond sale was in September, before President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s insistence on cutting interest rates despite high inflation sent the currency into a tailspin.

The Chinese government could take further measures if needed to keep the yuan stable, potentially putting downward pressure on the currency, a former foreign exchange regulator said, Reuters reported. Policymakers could increase yuan's flexibility, expand capital outflows, or control capital inflows to rein in the yuan, which could deviate from economic fundamentals in the short term, wrote Guan Tao, global chief economist at BOC International and a former official at the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE).

Candidates seeking to succeed Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said they will continue to push for better infrastructure, pitching to prioritize areas outside the capital and for companies to build more while government debt remains high, Bloomberg News reported. At the first presidential forum on Friday, Manila Mayor Isko Moreno and Senator Panfilo Lacson said they will boost public-private partnerships, which Duterte earlier criticized but eventually adopted. The Southeast Asian nation is banking on infrastructure spending to help boost pandemic recovery.

India’s central bank rejected bids for bonds at the weekly auction following a surge in yields spurred by the government’s record-borrowing program, Bloomberg News reported. The Reserve Bank of India didn’t accept any bids for the 2026 and 2035 bonds at Friday’s auction, as traders probably asked for higher yields. It sold only 105.3 billion rupees ($1.4 billion) of notes, compared with 240 billion rupees on offer, the RBI said in a statement.

Ecuador expects to pull together a trade deal with China at the end of this year and will begin formal debt re-negotiations with the Asian country, Ecuadorean President Guillermo Lasso said on Saturday, after a Beijing visit with his counterpart Xi Jinping, Reuters reported. China became Ecuador's top lender over the last decade, with millions of dollars in long-term credit tied to the handover of crude oil, large investments in hydro-electric and mining projects and other loans. "In China we had a productive meeting with the President Xi Jinping," Lasso posted on Twitter.

Lenders to Future Retail, the company being fought over by Reliance Industries and Amazon.com Inc , have told India's Supreme Court that its assets should be put up for auction after it missed payments, Reuters reported. They also said they have started classifying loans to the country's second-largest retailer as non-performing and would have to make combined provisions of 80 billion-90 billion rupees ($1.1 billion-$1.2 billion) due to the non-payment.

A real rate of minus 35% and little prospect of a rate hike by the Turkish central bank can only mean more losses for the beleaguered lira, Bloomberg News reported. Traders see a probability of almost 50% that the lira will surpass its record low of 18.3633 per dollar by the end of the year, according to Bloomberg calculations based on prices of put and call options. The currency slumped as much as 1.2% Thursday before paring its drop to trade at 13.5772 as of 2:08 p.m. in Istanbul.

Japan's biggest lenders on Wednesday all sounded alarm about the risk the Omicron variant could have on their earnings, reviving concerns that a resurgent pandemic could trigger more bad loans, Reuters reported. It was a sobering assessment from Japan's three top banks - some of the world's biggest lenders by assets - and underscored how the latest coronavirus variant could put more downward pressure on an already fragile domestic economy. Top lender Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc.

The Philippine government’s outstanding debt reached 11.7 trillion pesos ($229 billion) at end-December, up by a fifth from a year ago, according to the Bureau of the Treasury, Bloomberg News reported. The debt-to-GDP ratio widened to 60.5% in 2021 from 54.6% in the year previous.