Bloomberg The Hong Kong government is scrapping an extra stamp duty levied on commercial property purchases in an effort to bring the lackluster market back to life. The government will abolish the additional duty for non-residential properties effective from Thursday, Chief Executive Carrie Lam said during a speech. The levy of as much as 8.5% of a property’s value was ...

Bloomberg The Philippines has set a price cap for Covid-19 swab tests amid complaints of exorbitant and wide price disparity, Health Secretary Francisco Duque said. The price for real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction or RT-PCR test is capped at 5,000 pesos ($104) in private hospitals and 3,800 pesos in government laboratories, Duque said in a briefing. Some testing centres ...

Bloomberg Fears that a civil war raging in neighbouring Ethiopia’s northern Tigray Region will reverberate across eastern Africa are playing out in Sudan, which is contending with a massive influx of refugees who’ve fled the fighting. More than 40,000 people have streamed across the border from Tigray into eastern Sudan since November 7, the United Nations said. Sudan itself is ...