April, 2016

• 20 April

  Japan exports, imports fall as economic doldrums persist

  

    TOKYO / AP Japan’s exports fell for a sixth straight month in March, sapped by weak shipments of machinery and chemicals, though a sharper decline in imports helped push the trade surplus to its highest level in more than five years. Customs data reported on Wednesday showed exports fell 6.8 percent from a year earlier to 6.46 trillion yen ...

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• 20 April

  Pakistan vows to act tough on tax evaders

    Islamabad / Bloomberg Pakistan is vowing to get tough on tax evaders who have so far shunned an amnesty program set to finally expire on April 30 after four deadline extensions. Less than 0.3 percent of Pakistan’s 3 million goods traders have participated in the programme, well below the 17 percent forecast by the government when it began in ...

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• 20 April

  Parched country: 330 million people reeling under severe drought in India

  

    New Delhi / AFP About 330 million people are suffering from drought in India, the government has said, as the country reels from severe water shortages and desperately poor farmers suffer crop losses. One of the government’s most senior lawyers PS Narasimha told the Supreme Court that a quarter of the country’s population, spread across 10 states, have been ...

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• 20 April

  Pakistan’s largest bank opens China branch

    Karachi / AFP Pakistan’s Habib Bank Limited announced it had received a licence to open a branch in China, a move that would make it the first South Asian lender to operate in the world’s number two economy. More commonly known by its acronym ‘HBL’, the bank said it would open a branch in Urumqi, the largest city in ...

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• 20 April

  Chinese electric car maker to sell buses in USA

    SHENZHEN / AP The Chinese automaker that sold more electric cars last year than Tesla, Nissan or GM is taking a back road into the American market on a battery-powered bus. Detouring around the cost and risk of consumer sales, BYD Co. has quietly built a U.S. business supplying rechargeable buses to environmentally-minded transit agencies. Its factory north of ...

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• 20 April

  UK unemployment rises, labour mkt cools

  

    Bloomberg U.K. unemployment rose for the first time in seven months and employers added far fewer jobs than forecast, suggesting the labor market is cooling. The number of people looking for work climbed by 21,000 to 1.7 million in the three months through February, the Office for National Statistics in London said on Wednesday. That left the jobless rate ...

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• 20 April

  Russia-Germany gas link divides Europe: EU energy commissioner

  

    Bloomberg A plan to expand a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany is driving a wedge into the European Union, with some eastern members feeling their needs are being overlooked by the richer and more energy-diversified west, the bloc’s top energy official said. The €10-billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline isn’t aligned with the principles of the bloc’s laws ...

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• 20 April

  New Ukrainian finance chief targets May for next IMF loan and other aid

  

    Bloomberg Ukraine’s new finance minister said the next tranche of a delayed $17.5 billion International Monetary Fund loan could arrive as early as May. A mission from the Washington-based lender may visit within a month, said OleksandrDanylyuk, appointed April 14 after weeks of wrangling over a new government. Ukraine understands its IMF commitments and will implement a delayed increase ...

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• 20 April

  Brexit vote a ‘risky bet’: US ex-treasury secretaries

  

    Bloomberg Leaving the European Union would be a “risky bet” for the U.K. and the country should not “turn inward,” according to eight former U.S. Treasury secretaries going back to the era of President Richard Nixon. The intervention in a letter to the Times newspaper in London published on Wednesday came two days before U.S. President Barack Obama is ...

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• 20 April

  Russia wins $50bn ruling in decade-old fight with Yukos

    Bloomberg Russia succeeded in its battle to overturn a $50 billion arbitration ruling after a Dutch court ruled that the panel of judges who issued the record-setting award to the former owners of Yukos Oil Co. had no right to review the dispute. The ruling by a court in the Hague on Wednesday was a sweeping victory for the ...

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