China’s central bank is promising pro-growth conditions this year to support struggling entrepreneurs, but says it will stay prudent amid complex global conditions and inflation pressures.
The announcement following a weekend government planning conference comes as Beijing is promising to channel lending to entrepreneurs who have been battered by weak global demand while keeping consumer prices and surging housing costs in check.
The weekend conference, held to make plans for financial industries for the next five years, ended with no major reform initiatives announced.
At the meeting, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) promised more support to the “real economy” — a reference to efforts to channel money to productive businesses while preventing credit from fueling stock and real estate speculation.
The People’s Bank of China echoed that, pledging to “optimize the credit structure to support the real economy” and “especially small and micro-enterprises.”
Still, the bank emphasized it would stick to a “prudent monetary policy” and be ready to fine-tune its approach.
Policymakers face conflicting forces, including slowing export growth, Europe’s debt crisis and pressure for Chinese prices to rise, central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan (周小川) said in an interview with Xinhua news agency.
“Overall, in 2012, the world economy has relatively more difficulties and uncertainties,” Zhou was quoted as saying on Sunday after the planning meeting.
The central bank promised to improve operations and risk management in China’s banking industry. However, it made no mention of reforms that economists say are needed, such as allowing market forces to play a bigger role in bank decisions about who can borrow and at what interest rate.
Zhou warned against moving ahead at this point with letting market forces set interest rates, citing uncertain global conditions and decisions by other central banks to hold down interest rates.
“From this perspective, currently it still is not a good time to promote ‘interest rate marketization,’” Zhou said.
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Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained