Two of China’s largest and most prosperous cities have cut interest rates for prospective home buyers, joining an effort to prop up a housing sector whose weakness could threaten the broader economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. Six of China’s largest state-owned banks, including Bank of China and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, cut mortgage rates for home buyers in the southern city of Guangzhou by 0.2 percentage point on Monday, according to state-run broadcaster China Central Television.

South Korea’s parliament passed a larger-than-planned first extra budget of the year as the government tries to shore up parts of the economy worst hit by the nation’s biggest coronavirus outbreak of the pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. The 16.9 trillion won ($14.2 billion) budget, approved by parliament late Monday, is aimed at compensating losses to businesses that have been laboring under some of the strictest conditions since Covid-19 erupted, as virus cases rose from thousands a day to over a 100,000. The government had initially proposed a 14 trillion won plan.

Zhenro Properties Group Ltd., a Chinese developer, said its existing internal resources may be insufficient to meet debt payment obligations next month, according to a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange, Bloomberg News reported. The Shanghai-based developer is soliciting the consent of creditors “to certain proposed waiver and amendments” to help improve its overall finances and give it stability, it said in the filing late Friday. Zhenro is China’s 30th largest builder by contracted sales in 2021, according to China Real Estate Information Corp.

Indonesia’s central bank may start next year to sell the government bonds it bought as part of a $58 billion debt monetization that supported stimulus spending during the pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. “We will discuss the possibilities later but based on the information that we have now, it is likely that we will roll back our government bond holding starting next year,” Governor Perry Warjiyo said in a Saturday interview.

Passengers are starting to arrive in Australia as it allowed travel by double-vaccinated visitors, following almost two years of strict travel bans introduced to stem the spread of Covid-19, Bloomberg News reported. It’s also a long-awaited day for the tourism sector -- which employed about 5% of the nation’s workforce and contributed 3% to the economy prior to the pandemic -- and was already reeling in early 2020 from devastating wildfires.

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.