APR News

The Chinese government will roll out a series of incentives to make financing more accessible and affordable for small and micro businesses to promote cost-cutting in the real economy, the State Council’s executive meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang decided on June 20.
In China, SMBs contributed to 80 percent of employment, some 70 percent of patent ownership, over 60 percent of GDP and more than 50 percent of tax revenue, China’s central bank Governor Yi Gang said last week.
The prudent and neutral monetary policy will continue to be in place, and the government will work to keep liquidity sufficient and appropriate, maintain financial stability, strengthen policy coordination to boost market confidence and ensure the economy performs within a reasonable range.
The meeting approved a series of fiscal, tax and financial incentives. The volume of re-financing and re-discounts for small and micro businesses, and for rural areas, agriculture and farmers will be raised. The re-financing interest rates for small and micro businesses will be lowered. Evaluation for financial institutions will be improved to make sure that businesses with a credit quota of 10 million yuan and below can enjoy faster year-on-year loan growth than other types of credit recipients.
Between Sept 1 this year and the end of 2020, the credit quota for small and micro businesses with loans that are eligible for VAT exemptions on interest revenue will be raised from 1 million to 5 million yuan. Meanwhile, the state financing guaranty fund will cover no less than 80 percent of the financing guarantee for small and micro businesses.

Thailand’s economic outlook is improving. Growth is estimated at 3.9 percent in 2017—the fastest pace on an annual basis since 2013—but it has yet to become broad-based. To secure growth that benefits everyone, the country will need to implement key reforms to raise domestic demand and prepare for the impact of an aging population, said the IMF in its latest annual assessment.

The number of South Koreans in the agrofisheries sector is continuing to decrease amid a rapid aging and urbanization trend in the country, government data showed Friday.
Households engaging in the farming business totaled 1.04 million last year, down 2.5 percent from 1.07 million tallied a year ago, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea.
The number of farmers also dropped 3 percent on-year to 2.42 million. In the fishing sector, the number of families fell 0.4 percent on-year to 53,000 last year, with the population retreating 3.1 percent to 122,000.
The families involved in the agriculture sector accounted for 5.3 percent of the country's total households in 2017, down from the previous year's 5.5 percent.

Indonesia and China have signed five contracts worth US$23.3 billion as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The contract, signed in Beijing late on last Friday was signed by companies from both countries and consists of a $2 billion hydropower plant in Kayan, North Kalimantan, a $700 million contract to develop facilities to convert coal to dimethyl-ether and a $17.8 billion joint venture to build a hydropower plant on the Kayan river.
Additionally, the contract includes a $1.6 billion joint venture to build a power plant in Bali and $1.2 billion to develop a steel smelter.

On Wednesday China's central bank governor fleshed out at the Boao Forum for Asia annual conference measures and disclosed a timetable to further open up the financial sector.
China will encourage foreign investors to enter its trust, financial leasing, auto finance, money brokerage and consumer finance sectors, a move to take effect before the end of this year, said Yi Gang, governor of the People's Bank of China, at the Boao Forum for Asia annual conference in the southern Hainan Province.
No foreign ownership limits will be set for new financial asset investment and wealth management companies initiated by commercial banks, he said.
China will also "substantially expand the business scope of foreign banks," and impose no restrictions on the business scope of joint-venture securities companies, Yi said.
In addition, the country will remove the requirement that foreign insurance companies must have had representative offices for two years before they set up businesses in China, he said.

Singapore was tops in attracting and developing talent in the Asia-Pacific region for the fifth straight year and No. 2 globally, according to a new report.
It measured the ability of 119 countries to lure, develop and retain talented people.
Western countries continued to dominate the annual Global Talent Competitiveness Index, with Switzerland at the top spot and the United States at No. 3. Second-placed Singapore was the only Asia-Pacific country in the top 10.
Five other Asia-Pacific countries ranked in the top 30 - Australia at 11, New Zealand (12), Japan (20), Malaysia (27) and South Korea (30).

The Office of the United States Trade Representative announced on April 12, 2018 that it is reviewing the eligibility of India, Indonesia, and Kazakhstan in the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) based on concerns about the countries’ compliance with the program. The reviews are based on the Trump Administration’s new GSP country eligibility assessment process as well as GSP country eligibility petitions.
“GSP provides an important tool to help enforce the Trump Administration’s key principles of free and fair trade across the globe. The President is committed to ensuring that those countries who receive GSP benefits uphold their end of the bargain by continuing to meet the eligibility criteria outlined by Congress,” said Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Jeffrey Gerrish. “We hope that India, Indonesia, and Kazakhstan will work with us to address the concerns that led to these new reviews.”

CIMB says there are more winners than losers in ASEAN – among Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand (MIST) – in the escalating trade war between US and China.
Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand are particularly well placed to benefit from the displacement of demand for product categories in which it competes with China and US. These include electronics and electrical (E&E), machinery, chemicals, aircraft parts, rubber tyres and medical equipment.

The workshop for the Russian companies interested in doing business with China was held in Moscow on 11 April 2018. The event was organized by the National Coordination Center for Developing Economic Cooperation with the Countries of Asia-Pacific Region (NCC APR) and NCC APR intellectual partner – KPMG.
The discussion focused on work with Chinese partners as well as main risks Russian companies face when entering the Chinese market or cooperating with Chinese partners across Russia and the CIS. The main focus was made on informational preparations before entering the Chinese market and working peculiarities in tax sphere in China.

The Russian Export Centre held a networking event in HCM City on April 10, 2018, to enable Vietnamese and Russian business executives to meet each other and improve the business relationship between the two countries. Held at the Rex Hotel, it was attended by around 20 businesses from the two countries.
Robert Kurilo, chief representative of the Russian Export Centre in Hà Nội, said: “Việt Nam is good at agriculture, medical products and tourism, which Russia has high demand for”. “However, trade between the two countries has not been as good as we would hope”.