China Consumer Inflation Picks Up as Holiday Boosts Spending

China’s consumer inflation accelerated for the first time since August, caused by a burst of household spending around the Lunar New Year holiday even as deflationary pressures persist, Bloomberg News reported. The consumer price index rose 0.5% in January from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Sunday, compared with a 0.1% gain in the previous month. A temporary spending boom during the eight-day break briefly masked the extent of the deflationary challenge facing the world’s second-biggest economy.
China
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Hong Kong to Challenge U.S. Tariffs on Imports in WTO Complaint

Hong Kong will file a complaint against the U.S.’s additional 10% tariff with the World Trade Organization, claiming the levies violate WTO rules, the Wall Street Journal reported. In a statement released Friday, a spokesman for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government described the tariffs as “unreasonable measures” and “grossly inconsistent with the relevant WTO rules.” The U.S. measures “ignore our status as a separate customs territory as stipulated in Article 116 of the Basic Law,” and recognized by the WTO, the spokesman said.
Hong Kong
United States
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India Ramps Up Stimulus to Spur Faltering Economy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is counting on a two-pronged stimulus of tax and interest rate cuts to turn around India’s slowing economy, but investors may need more convincing that the measures will be enough, Bloomberg News reported. The decision by India’s central bank on Friday to reduce its key rate for the first time in five years comes less than a week after Modi’s government unveiled historic tax cuts in its federal budget. Taken together, the measures underscore the urgency with which Modi’s government is moving to address the growth slowdown gripping the economy.
India
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IBBI Moves to Tweak Bankruptcy Code for Speedier Resolutions

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) wants the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code to allow group-level insolvency and concurrent bidding to both speed up and maximise recoveries of stuck loans, the Economic Times of India reported. Citing cases like Videocon and SREI, the regulator is looking to introduce "coordinated resolution for interconnected entities" to reduce costs and quicken the process.
India
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Hawkish BOJ Board Member Calls for Potentially Faster Rate Hikes

A hawkish member of the Bank of Japan’s policy board on Thursday called for potentially faster interest-rate increases, sending the yen to its strongest level against the dollar in eight weeks, the Wall Street Journal reported. In a speech to business leaders in Nagano prefecture in central Japan, Naoki Tamura said that the central bank should raise rates to 1% or higher in the fiscal half starting in October. That level is likely consistent with a neutral rate setting that is neither restrictive nor stimulating for the economy, he added.
Japan
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