Reuters Riyadh-based ACWA Power is keen to buy assets from Saudi Electricity Co (SEC) if the state-controlled utility be broken up as planned, a senior executive said. Saudi Arabia’s utility regulator said last month that SEC would be split into several firms by the end of 2016 to increase efficiency. Political pressure for the long-contemplated change has increased greatly since ...

Singapore / Bloomberg Singapore said it will adopt an expansionary fiscal budget to boost growth, reducing pressure on the central bank to provide more support for the economy weeks before its next policy decision. Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat, presenting his first budget to Parliament, pledged support for companies that are facing labour constraints and a faltering global outlook, promised ...

Taipei / Bloomberg Taiwan cut its benchmark rate for a third consecutive quarter as an export slump showed no signs of recovering and has begun weighing on the labor market. The central bank lowered the benchmark discount rate by another 12.5 basis points to 1.5 percent, it said in a statement Thursday in Taipei. Twenty-five of 26 economists surveyed by ...

TOKYO / Reuters Some Japanese firms, facing the possibility of negative interest rates on their deposits, would consider stuffing their cash in a safe rather than pay to keep it in the bank, a Reuters poll found, in what would be an unintended and unwelcome side-effect to the country’s new monetary policy. While the bulk of companies in the Reuters ...

Kathmandu / AFP Nepal has secured a deal for China to supply it with fuel, as the energy-starved Himalayan nation seeks to deepen ties with Beijing and reduce its reliance on India. The agreement was signed during a visit by Nepali Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli to Beijing, following months of frosty relations with New Delhi, traditionally the sole supplier ...

Bandar Seri Begawan / DPA The Bruneian government will continue to ensure job security of locals in the oil and gas sector amid the gloomy global economic situation, said Minister of Energy and Industry at the Prime Minister’s Office Col. (Rtd) Mohammad Yasmin Umar. In his closing remarks at the 12th Legislative Council (LegCo) session yesterday (March 23), Mohammad Yasmin ...

Hanoi / AFP Vietnam’s inflation rate rose sharply in the first quarter of 2016 according to official figures released Thursday, a turnaround for the communist country which saw inflation dwindle to zero last year. Year-on-year consumer price inflation was 1.25 percent in the first quarter, the General Statistics Office (GSO) said in a statement posted on its website, a sharp ...

New Delhi / Bloomberg India is proposing stringent new rules to crack down on waste from discarded electronics that will require those who make and sell the units to be responsible for collecting old devices that otherwise would end up in landfills. The rules are aimed at preventing toxic chemicals included in electronics from leaching into the environment. For the ...

China and the United States are almost finished with negotiations over a key investment treaty, former Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming said on Wednesday. If successfully concluded, the bilateral investment treaty (BIT) could substantially increase Chinese and U.S. investments in each other’s markets. A BIT between China and the United States has been in the works for eight years. In ...

One of the biggest stories in science right now is the fight over the Crispr patents. Crispr is a gene editing technique that promises to allow previously unthinkable feats of bio-engineering. It was discovered in stages, like most scientific breakthroughs, by multiple teams working at various universities and research institutes around the world. The final, key advancements were made more-or-less ...