Asia

Bank Indonesia (BI) directly purchased Rp 1.7 trillion (US$108 million) worth of sharia sovereign bonds during an auction held by the government on Tuesday, the first such direct purchase since the government issued the COVID-19 stimulus playbook. The central bank acted as a noncompetitive bidder during the auction and only bought “a small portion” of the bonds in order to maintain low inflation levels, BI Governor Perry Warjiyo said. The government pocketed a total of Rp 9.98 trillion of proceeds from the auction to finance the country’s widening budget deficit. “BI acts as the last resort when the market is unable to absorb all of the offers,” Perry told reporters during a regular media briefing on Wednesday. “We projected that most of the bonds would be absorbed by the market and the ce...

MUMBAI: It’s not only direct investments like in HDFC in which the neighbouring country’s People’s Bank of China (PBoC) now has 1% stake. China, through its other investment arms China Investment Corp (CIC) and State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), has been investing in India for years now.These institutions have been investing through the foreign portfolio investment (FPI) route as well as through the more opaque participatory note (P-Note) route, institutional dealers and fund managers said. Another China government arm that’s also showing interest in India is the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). In the past few years, these investment arms have also been investors in some of the exchange-traded funds (ETFs) floated by global fund managers, they said.In India,...

When it comes to companies exposed to emerging markets -- most notably China -- investors should beware the lack of visibility into their books, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton said Tuesday. Foreign jurisdictions aren’t maintaining adequate standards of investor protection, and the U.S. has little control over that, Clayton and other officials said in a strongly worded statement. The group also underlined a longstanding point of conflict: that the main U.S. accounting watchdog can’t inspect the work that Chinese auditors do for companies that sell stock in American markets. “In many emerging markets, including China, there is substantially greater risk that disclosures will be incomplete or misleading” and substantially less access to recourse in the event of i...

WASHINGTON — The retirement savings program for federal and military personnel is preparing to more than double the number of countries represented in its investment fund that tracks international stock markets. One of the countries to be added is China — and that's a problem for some people. Eight former senior military leaders have issued an open letter seeking to prevent the change, which is set to take effect in the second half of this year. The letter has rekindled a controversy that has flared several times since the Thrift Savings Plan first committed to broadening its international stock fund, called the I Fund. The result, the letter said, will be that a portion of money in the fund will be invested in Chinese companies including "weapons manufacturers, U.S.-sanctioned entities an...

YANGON—The Myanmar government will allow only factories that have set up preventive measure to combat COVID-19 to resume operation on April 30, according to the Ministry of Labor, Immigration and Population. On Sunday, the Ministry of Labor issued an order saying that the country’s factories would be permitted to reopen after they have set up COVID-19 preventive measures in line with the instructions of the Ministry of Health and Sports (MOHS). Factories stopped operations from April 12-19 for the Thingyan New Year public holidays and the government has currently ordered all factories to remain closed for 10 more days until April 30. The health and labor ministries say they will inspect factories to assess whether they have adopted measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. However, facto...