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ABU DHABI / WAM The UAE Central Bank has announced that gross bank assets, including bankers’ acceptances, rose by 0.6 percent, climbing from AED2958.6 billion at the end of June 2019 to AED2975.8 billion at the end of July 2019. Gross credit increased by 0.7 percent from AED1692.7 billion at the end of June 2019 to AED1704.9 billion at the ...

Bloomberg Japan signaled it wanted to lay to rest the threat of new auto tariffs before agreeing to a final trade deal with US President Donald Trump, after he left the door open for slapping levies on the nearly $50 billion sector. Trump said he was not considering imposing punitive duties “at this moment,” after he and Prime Minister Shinzo ...

Bloomberg Indonesia has a raft of stimulus options available to bolster Southeast Asia’s biggest economy if global conditions worsen, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said. The government is prepared to boost spending and “re-activate” measures used during the global financial crisis if domestic growth needs a boost, Indrawati said on Tuesday in an interview in Jakarta. The administration could both ...

Bloomberg Pakistan’s budget deficit rose to the highest in almost three decades, ahead of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) first quarterly review of a bailout program that sought to curtail a fiscal blowout. The deficit increased to 8.9% of the nation’s gross domestic product in the year ended June compared with 6.6% a year earlier, according to provisional numbers released ...

Bloomberg Thailand is jump starting a decades-old plan to create a Southeast Asia electricity super-grid, and wants to be the power-trading hub at the center of it. The nation is set to triple the amount of electricity from Laos that it resells to Malaysia, while encouraging infrastructure upgrades stretching from Cambodia to Myanmar necessary for cross-border power trading, said Wattanapong ...

Bloomberg Singapore firms are likely to see more soured debt as the trade-reliant economy takes a hit from US-China tensions. That’s the view of debt restructuring experts, for whom more bad debt could mean increased business. Singapore’s government cut its forecast for economic growth this year to almost zero, and weak export data have stoked fears of a recession. The ...

Bloomberg India is considering relaxing local sourcing norms for foreign companies that sell only their own brand, a move that is likely to encourage Apple Inc. to set up stores, people with knowledge of matter said. According to the proposal, export of goods from a foreign company’s factory in India will be accounted as local sourcing, the people said, asking ...

Bloomberg South Africa’s government could decide that Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. must sell some of its coal-fired power stations as part of the restructuring of the power utility, National Treasury said. This could be done through a series of auctions where Eskom would sell the power stations itself, along with all its power station-specific obligations, such as staff contracts, coal-supply ...

Bloomberg A deal that will save Mexico $4.5 billion has been reached with three pipeline companies to carry natural gas throughout the country, according to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Carlos Slim’s Grupo Carso SAB was the first to reach agreement with the country’s Federal Electricity Commission, or CFE, Lopez Obrador said during his morning news conference on Tuesday. Sempra ...

Bloomberg For American retailers, what Trump giveth, Trump taketh away. President Donald Trump’s administration, which said just 10 days ago it would delay until December some of its new tariffs on Chinese goods, has hit the retail sector with a new blow: The new levies will be raised to 15% from 10% as retaliation after China threatened to impose additional ...