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New Delhi / AFP India’s government is expected to deliver on promises to overhaul the tax regime and ramp up public spending in its budget on Monday, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi bids to shore up his sagging reputation as a reformer. The business-friendly premier came to power almost two years ago with promises to overhaul Asia’s third-largest economy and ...

Shanghai / AFP G20 finance ministers gather in Shanghai from Friday with the global economy assailed on multiple fronts, from China’s slowing growth to weak commodity prices, amid simmering disagreements over how best to face the challenges. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday warned risks of a “derailed recovery” are growing, citing China’s faltering economy, falling oil and commodities ...

Tokyo / AFP Money-losing Sharp on Thursday accepted a multi-billion-dollar bailout from the parent of Taiwan’s Foxconn, ending speculation over its uncertain future with the first foreign takeover of a major Japanese electronics firm. Sharp — which has teetered on the edge of bankruptcy for years — had been mulling rival offers from Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision, better known as ...

Bangkok / AFP Thai exports fell by nearly nine percent in January, their worst drop in more than four year as economic woes continue to pile up on the kingdom’s military rulers, government figures released Thursday showed. Once one of Southeast Asia’s most vibrant and successful economies, Thailand has struggled with lacklustre growth fuelled by more than a decade of ...

Say it ain’t so, Doug. From 2009 to early 2015, Douglas Elmendorf was the widely respected director of the Congressional Budget Office, where he repeatedly warned lawmakers that chronic deficits are unsustainable, pose long-term dangers — and that shrinking them sooner rather than later would make the task easier. Now, economist Elmendorf, who has become dean of the Kennedy School ...

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), made a pertinent point when she described tax as “the lifeblood of modern states”. Addressing finance ministers at the recent Arab Fiscal Forum in Abu Dhabi, she drove home the idea of introducing Value Added Tax (VAT) to shore up GCC economies. Her call for the Gulf states to introduce ...

Call it the new normal for European bank earnings. Standard Chartered shares plunged by the most in more than three years on Tuesday after the bank posted a “surprise” 2015 pretax loss of $1.5 billion, somewhat different from the $1.37 billion average profit estimate from 20 analysts. On Monday, HSBC delivered a “surprise” fourth-quarter pretax loss of $858 million, rather ...

Four years into the Obama administration’s “Asia-Pacific Rebalance” and on the eve of a tumultuous national election, questions about the coming consistency of U.S. foreign policy are at the forefront of every policymaker’s mind. Yet even without these disruptive factors, there is one area in which the United States should continue to provide coordination, collaboration, and commitment with allies and ...

Last November, in a bid to internationalize its currency, China’s yuan was successfully admitted to the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket of reserve currencies, joining the Euro, the US dollar, Japanese yen and British sterling in the cohort of elite currencies. The yuan’s ascension is an economic milestone for China and a political victory for the world’s ...

Mobile World Congress 2016 has given us a glimpse into the innovations that will hit our stores this year. From the looks of things we will get much more than just thinner handsets. Many phone manufacturers have flooded the event with gadgets and accessories that can be bundled with phones. These include virtual reality headsets, 360-degree cameras, and a digital ...