Brussels / AFP India’s prime minister will hold talks with EU leaders in Brussels, seeking to boost investment from his country’s biggest trading partner and deepen cooperation on counterterrorism. Narendra Modi was to meet European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in Brussels for the 13th EU-India summit, held little more than a week after deadly ...
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Mallya offers to repay $904mn of defunct airline loans
MANILA / AP Vijay Mallya, the former Indian billionaire now hounded by creditors, offered lenders as much as 60 billion rupees ($904 million) as settlement toward debt owed by the failed airline he founded, Bloomberg TV India reported, citing his lawyers. India’s Supreme Court was informed on Wednesday that he will pay about 40 billion rupees ($603 million) by the ...
Read More »Nepal asks India to supply 15k tonnes of LPG
Kathmandu / DPA Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) has written to the Indian government requesting a supply of another 15,000 tonnes of cooking gas for next month as the country continues to suffer from a crippling shortage even one and a half months after the end of the embargo. Cooking gas shipments from Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) are expected to reach ...
Read More »Samsung launches mobile payment service in China
Seoul / AFP South Korea’s Samsung announced the launch of its mobile payment service in China, where it is likely to struggle in an already crowded market that arch-rival Apple entered nearly six weeks ago. The world’s second largest economy is also the world’s biggest smartphone market, and Samsung Pay has a powerful partner in China — bank card provider ...
Read More »Asia economy to grow 5.7%: ADB
MANILA / AP Softer growth prospects for China and a weak recovery in major industrial economies are expected to push down economic growth in developing Asia to 5.7 percent this year and next, below projections, the Asian Development Bank said on Wednesday. The gross domestic product of the region, made up of 45 countries, grew 5.9 percent in 2015. China’s ...
Read More »Yellen in control of Fed message with stress on gradual approach
Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen spelled out what she means by data dependence, asserting her leadership of the U.S. central bank with a clear message that interest rates will be raised at a cautious pace. In one of her most detailed policy discussions this year, Yellen gave investors a list of conditions they need to watch for future rate ...
Read More »A mystery bond in Venezuela has traders scratching their heads
Bloomberg Bond investors in Venezuela have made a dispiriting discovery. Last week, traders started quoting prices on a $3 billion note issued by the nation’s state-owned oil company. While the eight-year securities were first sold in October 2014 under New York law, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, not much else is known. The bonds don’t trade on any U.S. ...
Read More »Brazil real drops as top bank weakens currency
Bloomberg Brazil’s real led losses among its most-traded peers as the central bank stepped in to weaken the currency, extending a program announced this month after three years of trying to support the real. The real fell 0.3 percent to 3.6388 per dollar on Tuesday in Sao Paulo, the only drop among 16 major currencies, after earlier falling as much ...
Read More »Mexico’s first power auction awards 1,720 MW of wind, solar contracts
Bloomberg Renewable energy developers won contracts to produce 1,720 megawatts of power in Mexico during the country’s first-ever private auction, after the government ended a decades-long state electricity monopoly in 2013. Seven wind and solar companies including Enel Green Power, SunPower Systems Mexico and Recurrent Energy won 15-year contracts to rights to provide the state-owned Comision Federal de Electricidad with ...
Read More »Despite corn and soybeans’ pile-up, US farmers plant more
Bloomberg Illinois farmer David Erickson admits that what he and many U.S. farmers are about to do doesn’t seem to make much sense. With bulging stockpiles of corn and soybeans left over from last year’s harvest, they’re planting more in 2016 — even though the crops probably won’t be profitable. “It’s hard to get your head around the idea of ...
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