RPT-Thai cbank eyes credit market
Thailand’s central bank will focus on creating conditions for expanding debt relief and credit for firms to boost the flagging economy, the bank’s chief said, adding that already low interest rates had become a blunt tool for many policymakers.
Governor Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput also told Reuters in an interview that, while an economy under pressure from the country’s worst coronavirus outbreak yet might shrink in the third quarter from the second, he did not expect it to contract in 2021 as a whole.
Curbs to contain COVID-19 have crippled activity in Thailand’s dominant in tourism sector, which in a normal year accounts for 11-12 percent of GDP and 20percent of employment, though increased exports and fiscal measures have lent the economy some support.
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China unveils five-year plan
China has released a five-year plan to strengthen regulatory control over strategic sectors including technology and healthcare in Beijing’s latest push to assert Communist party supremacy over the world’s second-largest economy.
The party’s Central Committee and the State Council, or cabinet, jointly released a policy document late on Wednesday that would expand government legislation and build a modern regulatory environment to “meet people’s ever-growing demands for a good life.”
The plan’s release followed a series of regulatory measures that have stunned investors in Chinese business and knocked tens of billions of dollars off the valuations of some of the country’s biggest tech groups.
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India needs $100 billion FDI annually
India needs at least USD100 billion of foreign direct investment every year to reach its target of a USD5 trillion economy from the current USD2.7, the head of a top India-centric American business advocacy group has said.
The group made the observation, asserting that a major chunk of this FDI is going to come from the United States.
India needs to grow its economy from the current USD2.7 trillion to USD 5 trillion. It will need a lot of FDI coming in— at least USD100 billion dollars a year to fuel that growth, Mukesh Aghi, president of US India Strategic and Partnership Forum told PTI in a recent interview.
I believe that is going to come mainly from the US, he added.
India, he observed, needs to look at what it needs to do to get that FDI coming in and have the technology coming in, to fuel this growth.
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Bangladesh, citing economic pain, reopens amid worst covid wave yet
Nasrin Jahan woke up gasping for air. Her daughter held her in the back of a rickshaw as they motored to a nearby clinic, where she was hooked up with an oxygen cylinder. From there, an ambulance took her to one hospital, then another, looking for a bed.
“Ammu, you will be fine,” her 16-year-old daughter, Tajrin Jahan Yousha, tried to tell her, using an affectionate term for “mother.” “We are close to the hospital. They will take care of you.”
Bangladesh’s already strained health care system is buckling under the ferocity of the country’s third, and by far deadliest, wave of coronavirus infections. About 60 percent of its 23,000 virus-related deaths and more than half of its total infections have been recorded since the beginning of April. Its hospitals have been overrun. Only 4 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated.
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Japan wholesale inflation hits 13-year high
Japanese wholesale prices rose in July at their fastest annual pace in 13 years, data showed on Thursday, a sign that global commodity inflation and a weak yen were pushing up raw material import costs for a broad range of goods.
There is uncertainty, however, on whether companies will start to pass on the higher costs to households and prop up consumer inflation, which remains stuck around zero due to weak consumption, unlike in other advanced nations, analysts say.
“The pass-through of raw material costs to consumer goods prices is slow,” said Chisato Oshiba, an economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute.
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Vietnam vows to curb covid in ho Chi Minh city
Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has signed a resolution calling for urgent measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 in Ho Chi Minh City.
The government is now vowing to bring the situation in the southern commercial hub under control before Sept. 15 as the pandemic weighs on foreign investment over fears about the economy.
China’s signing of the resolution on Aug. 6 came as Ho Chi Minh City saw deaths spike since July. The fatality rate — the ratio between confirmed deaths and confirmed cases — topped 4.5 percent on Aug. 9, surpassing Indonesia, another Southeast Asian country ravaged by the pandemic, whose rate stood at 3.8 percent. Meanwhile, Thailand recorded 1 percent while Japan marked 0.1 percent on the same day.
“The COVID-19 mortality rate in the city is indeed a concern. I expect to see a higher rate in the coming weeks,” said Dr. Tuan V. Nguyen, a fellow at Australia’s National Health and Medical Research, in an interview with Nikkei Asia.
According to the resolution, the “delta variant is developing complicatedly, with strong outbreaks, rapid spread and high mortality.”
The World Health Organization also weighed in, saying in its COVID19 Situation Report issued on Aug. 1 that “Ho Chi Minh City continued to be the epic with [the] number of new cases reported this week [accounting] for 60.7 percent of the [nation’s] tally.”
The resolution allows the prime minister and the government to skip existing legal frameworks and impose strict measures to fight COVID, according to state media.
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RPT-Thai cbank eyes credit market
Thailand’s central bank will focus on creating conditions for expanding debt relief and credit for firms to boost the flagging economy, the bank’s chief said, adding that already low interest rates had become a blunt tool for many policymakers.
Governor Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput also told Reuters in an interview that, while an economy under pressure from the country’s worst coronavirus outbreak yet might shrink in the third quarter from the second, he did not expect it to contract in 2021 as a whole.
Curbs to contain COVID-19 have crippled activity in Thailand’s dominant in tourism sector, which in a normal year accounts for 11-12 percent of GDP and 20percent of employment, though increased exports and fiscal measures have lent the economy some support.