Fri, Jan 01, 2016 page15

• World Business Quick Take

  • Agencies
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  ECONOMY

  S Korea CPI increases 2.4%

  Consumer prices in South Korea increased the most since August 2014 as the impact of the oil market rout began to wash out of year-on-year comparisons and the cost of food and clothing rose. Consumer price index rose 1.3 percent last month from a year earlier, beating estimates for a 1.1 percent gain, according to figures released by Statistics Korea yesterday. Core CPI, which excludes oil and agricultural products, increased 2.4 percent. The improvement last month still leaves inflation well below the Bank of Korea’s new target of 2 percent. The annual rate for last year was 0.7 percent, the lowest on record since the agency started compiling data in 1965.

  TRADE

  Tadawul plans IPO

  Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange, the Arab world’s largest, aims to sell shares in an initial public offering in 2018. The Saudi Stock Exchange, or Tadawul, seeks to offer shares after completing a “readiness exercise and obtaining the necessary approvals,” a statement issued yesterday said. The planned listing follows the worst year for Saudi stocks since 2008, even after the bourse allowed foreign investors to trade stocks directly for the first time in June. The kingdom’s finances have been under pressure after its main source of revenue, oil, sank to the lowest level in 11 years and as the nation leads an expensive war in Yemen.

  ECONOMY

  Brazilian wages to increase

  The Brazilian crisis-hit government on Wednesday said it would raise the minimum wage by more than the rate of inflation in the new year, despite the delicate state of its public accounts. The office of leftist President Dilma Rousseff said in a statement the minimum wage would rise by 11.67 percent to 880 Brazilian reais a month — still equivalent to only about US$227. That was higher than this year’s forecast inflation rate of 10.57 percent, which is aggravating hardship in the world’s seventh-largest economy.

  INVESTMENT

  Australian real-estate slows

  Home loans to Australian landlords grew at the slowest pace in 17 months as a regulatory crackdown forced lenders to raise interest rates and tighten lending standards. Investor housing credit expanded 9.1 percent in the 12 months to Nov. 30, the weakest pace since June 2014, according to data from the Reserve Bank of Australia. Growth has slowed for the fifth consecutive month, the data showed. An increase in home loans to owner occupiers partially offset the slowdown in loans to landlords, the data showed. The measure climbed 6.5 percent in November, the most since February 2011, and marked the sixth consecutive month of increase.

  MOBILE PHONES

  India hits 1 billion users

  India notched up its 1 billionth mobile phone subscriber in October, the nation’s telecoms regulator said, underscoring the importance of its fast-growing mobile market, the world’s second-largest after China. The number of mobile subscribers rose by nearly 7 million in October from the previous month to surpass 1 billion, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said on Wednesday, hitting a milestone that China reached in 2012. However, the figures do not indicate that India has 1 billion individual mobile phone users as many people have more than one connection.

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