Headlines

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Monday set aside a plea seeking insolvency proceedings against Ansal Hi-tech Township Ltd filed by its homebuyers of a project in Greater Noida, the Economic Times of India reported. The appellate tribunal has upheld the order passed by the Delhi-based bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), which had in January 2023 set aside the plea of homebuyers, observing that the allottees belong to different projects and does not fulfil the required criteria to file an insolvency case.

Several Chinese developers’ shares have been suspended from trading in Hong Kong starting today due to their failure to meet the deadline for publishing last year’s annual results, another sign of the turmoil in the country’s real-estate sector, the Wall Street Journal reported. Well-known names like Country Garden Holdings, Central China Management and Modern Land (China) are among the companies that failed to meet the Hong Kong stock exchange’s March 31 deadline due to an inability to sort out their financial and accounting estimates or delays in getting their accounts audited.

A months-old speech by China’s top leader has stoked speculation around aggressive liquidity boosts from Beijing. While economists have generally shrugged off such a possibility, some say that more trading of treasury bonds could bring the country’s central bank more in line with practices adopted by peers in developed markets, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Sweden’s Riksbank asked lawmakers to restore its equity after the central bank posted large losses on bonds amassed during a period of slow inflation, Bloomberg News reported. The central bank needs a capital injection of 43.7 billion Swedish kronor ($4.1 billion) to bring its equity to the basic level required by law, according to a proposal it submitted on Tuesday. The need for a recapitalization comes as central banks around the world have seen assets bought as part of quantitative-easing programs lose value.

Japan must shift its policy focus away from crisis-mode stimulus towards achieving private sector-driven economic growth, a government panel said on Tuesday in the wake of the central bank's decision to end eight years of negative interest rates, Reuters reported. In a proposal to the government's top economic council, the panel urged policy changes in the face of rising domestic prices and interest rates, as well as wage growth at a 30-year high as companies face job shortages.

South Korea’s headline inflation topped 3% for a second consecutive month in March, remaining sticky and well above the central bank’s 2% target, the Wall Street Journal reported. The latest inflation print, which came ahead of the Bank of Korea’s rate-decision meeting next week, is likely to bolster the bank’s current stance to not rush for easing but stand pat for now before it starts rate cuts. The benchmark consumer-price index rose 3.1% from a year earlier, the same pace as in February, the country’s statistics office said on Tuesday.

Fitch Ratings stripped Panama of its investment-grade credit rating as the closure of a key copper mine last year added to the country’s fiscal worries and risks undermining growth prospects, Bloomberg News reported. The Central American nation’s credit score was cut to BB+ from BBB- on Thursday, with a stable outlook. That’s in line with Vietnam, Colombia and Serbia. A downgrade by Moody’s Ratings is expected for the second half of the year, according to Morgan Stanley strategist Emma Cerda.

The Reserve Bank of Australia now feels that risks around the outlook for the economy are slightly more balanced than earlier in the year, while signaling that it isn’t ruling any policy options in or out for now, the Wall Street Journal reported. In minutes of its March 18-19 policy meeting published Tuesday, the interest-rate setting board of the RBA said that while there are ongoing risks to inflation and weak economic growth, they are largely even.

The World Bank is poised to approve $1.2 billion of budget financing to Kenya before the end of April, unlocking key financing for the East African nation that wants to cut its reliance on commercial debt, Bloomberg News reported. The amount is slightly less than the $1.5 billion that Kenyan authorities had anticipated receiving from the Washington-based lender and follows other disbursements by the International Monetary Fund as well as Trade and Development Bank, a pan-African lender. Kenya had earmarked the World Bank funds to finance its budget in the fiscal year that ends June 30.