China

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.

Easing property curbs may do little to brighten the outlook for Chinese residential sales as weak home-buyer confidence remains a key hurdle, with Covid’s spread adding extra near-term threats, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. China’s central bank reduced the reserve requirement ratio for most banks by 25 basis points Friday, giving lenders a modest cash boost. It also kept the one-year policy interest rate unchanged, disappointing the majority of economists who predicted a cut.

Nearly 400 million people are estimated to be under some form of lockdown in China as officials try to stop a fast-moving Omicron outbreak that is beginning to weigh on the world’s second-largest economy, the New York Times reported. Hundreds of thousands of people have been sent to isolation facilities in China, and millions more have been told to stay in their homes. Officials in dozens of cities have shut down normal daily life across the country in a race to track and trace the coronavirus and stamp out China’s worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic.

China's race to stop the spread of COVID-19 is clogging highways and ports, stranding workers and shutting countless factories - disruptions that are rippling through global supply chains for goods ranging from electric vehicles to iPhones, Reuters reported. While some factory owners try to tough it out through "closed loop" management that keeps workers isolated inside, some said that is becoming harder to sustain given the extent of local COVID-19 curbs aimed at heading off the Omicron variant, complicating efforts to procure materials or ship products.

Exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui is offering to repay the more than $100 million he owes creditors in part by offering up the yacht that drove him to bankruptcy, court papers show, Bloomberg News reported. The businessman’s debt stems from a $30 million loan he got from a fund in 2008, which according to the lender Guo failed to repay. Guo arranged for the yacht to leave U.S. waters sometime after October 2020, putting it out of the reach of debt collectors.

Luckin Coffee Inc., said on Monday that it had emerged from bankruptcy proceedings, two years after an accounting fraud derailed the coffee chain's business, Reuters reported. Founded in 2017, Xiamen-based Luckin had positioned itself as a homegrown challenger to U.S. coffee giant Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O), but the much-hyped company almost collapsed in 2020 after findings that about 2.2 billion yuan ($337.31 million) in 2019 sales was fabricated.

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.

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.