Headlines

India’s Supreme Court allowed lenders to resume classifying delinquent debt as bad loans, reversing a ruling that delayed disclosure of soured credit in an economy already saddled with stressed assets, Bloomberg News reported. A three-judge panel headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan delivered the verdict on Tuesday, supporting a request from the federal government and central bank, which had sought to overturn a September order that barred the categorization of loans as non-performing.

In normal times, Ziad Hassan, a grocery store manager in Beirut, would get a daily email from his chain’s management telling him which prices needed to be adjusted and by how much. But as Lebanon’s currency has collapsed, sending the economy into a tailspin, the emails have come as often as three times a day, ordering price increases across the store, the New York Times reported. “We have to change everything,” an exasperated Mr. Hassan said, adding that his employees often weren’t even able to finish marking one price increase before the next one arrived.

The Bank of Canada provided the greatest guidance yet into how it plans to slow purchases of government bonds as the economic recovery accelerates, fueling expectations it could begin doing so as soon as April, Bloomberg News reported. In a speech on Tuesday, Deputy Governor Toni Gravelle said that the central bank is winding down emergency liquidity programs it deployed to grease markets when the coronavirus hit last year, including programs to buy provincial and corporate debt.

Germany has extended its lockdown measures by another month and imposed several new restrictions, including largely shutting down public life over Easter, in an effort to drive down the rate of coronavirus infections, the Associated Press reported. Speaking early Tuesday after a lengthy video call with the country’s 16 state governors, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that restrictions previously set to run through March 28 will now remain in place until April 18.

As Hong Kong residents move overseas to escape China's political crackdown, real estate companies see new opportunities in areas such as assisting with visa applications and brokering property transactions, Nikkei Asia reported. Interest in leaving Hong Kong is the highest since the lead-up to the former British colony's 1997 return to China, said Andrew Lo, a local emigration consultant who has worked in the industry for over three decades. "This is the biggest emigration boom in Hong Kong's history," he said.

The Central Bank has raised further concerns about the Government’s new shared equity loan scheme for struggling home-buyers, suggesting it is unlikely to elicit more supply, the Irish Times reported. The regulator’s director of economics and statistics, Mark Cassidy, said “the main effect” of the proposed scheme was likely to be on demand as there seems to be “some sluggishness” around how supply reacts to changes in the market. The implication being that the initiative could trigger further price inflation.

Hundreds of Brazilian economists, including former finance ministers and central bank presidents, urged the Brazilian government in an open letter published on Monday to speed up vaccination and adopt tougher restrictions to stop the rampant spread of COVID-19, the Associated Press reported. The signatories of the letter decried the “devastating” economic and social situation in Latin America’s largest nation. They also attempted to debunk President Jair Bolsonaro’s assertion that lockdowns and restrictions would inflict greater hardship on the population than the disease.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year pushed through new laws that would reduce the government’s role in agriculture, aimed at fixing a system that has led to huge rice surpluses in a country that still grapples with malnutrition, the New York Times reported. But the laws would reduce the role of government-run markets for grain, which the farmers fear would eventually undermine the price subsidies that make their work possible. If that happens, the livelihoods of millions of people who depend on the land could be in jeopardy.

Germany aims to borrow 240.2 billion euros ($286 billion) this year, taking on just over 60 billion euros more debt than initially planned to help mitigate the impact of the coronavirus crisis, Bloomberg News reported. Heavy government spending is set to continue as the country grapples with a fresh wave of the pandemic.