PROPERTY
HK plans vacancy tax
Hong Kong’s government unveiled details of a planned tax on unsold new apartments, including potential jail time for developers who defy the rules. Developers would be required to submit reports annually on the status of apartments, with false statements punishable by a fine and a year in prison, a document submitted to the Legislative Council late on Tuesday proposed. Under the plan, a tax amounting to double an apartment’s annual rental value would apply after six months of vacancy. The proposal also plugs a loophole: Developers cannot beat the tax simply by selling a new apartment to an associated company. The government plans to introduce a bill containing the measures before the end of the legislative year in July.
PROPERTY
Evergrande faces fund gap
Hui Ka Yan (許家印), China’s second-richest man, has 17 billion reasons to keep him awake at night. His property developer, China Evergrande Group (恒大集團), has debt maturing in 12 months or less that exceeds its cash by 114 billion yuan (US$17 billion), its full-year report released late on Tuesday showed. The yawning gap is partly the result of a drop in its cash buffer in the second half of last year. The giant funding gap indicates that Hui’s efforts to whittle down a US$100 billion debt pile and put the firm on a more solid financial footing still have some way to go. It might also explain why the company was willing to pay yields as high as 13.75 percent on bonds it sold in October last year — an issue Hui personally invested US$1 billion in.
INTERNET
Line, Mercari join forces
Line Corp and Mercari Inc are joining forces on mobile payments as Japan’s Internet companies race to dominate cashless transactions in the world’s third-largest economy. The operator of Japan’s most popular messaging platform and the used-goods online marketplace app would let users shop and pay for purchases at stores that accept each other’s systems, they told reporters in Tokyo yesterday. They also launched an alliance to welcome other mobile payment providers.
AIRPORTS
Group buying GMR stake
A consortium including India’s Tata Group, a unit of Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and SSG Capital Management, is to invest 80 billion rupees (US$1.2 billion) to buy a stake in GMR Airports Ltd. The deal would pump 10 billion rupees into GMR Airports, a unit of GMR Infrastructure Ltd and purchase 70 billion rupees of the airport unit’s equity shares from the parent, according to a statement. GMR operates Delhi International Airport Ltd, the nation’s biggest airport. The deal values GMR Airports at 180 billion rupees, the company said in a filing. After the purchase, Tata would hold 20 percent in the airport unit, while GIC would get 15 percent and SSG would own 10 percent.
MACROECONOMICS
Downside risks remain: ECB
European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi said that risks to the eurozone’s economic outlook remain tilted to the downside and a pickup in inflation is delayed, warranting a continued accommodative monetary policy that includes negative interest rates. “If necessary, we need to reflect on possible measures that can preserve the favorable implications of negative rates for the economy, while mitigating the side effects, if any,” Draghi said. “That said, low bank profitability is not an inevitable consequence of negative rates.”
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
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