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Japan Trade Deficit Widens as Fossil Fuel Imports Surge: Economy

Oil Refinery Japan posted its biggest October trade deficit on record, as a revival in exports to the U.S. and China was overwhelmed by the nation’s soaring costs for imported fuel in the wake of the nuclear industry’s shutdown. The shortfall of 1.09 trillion yen ($10.9 billion) extended a record run of deficits to 16 months, and was larger than all 28 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey, a finance ministry report showed today in Tokyo . Imports (JNTBIMPY) climbed 26.1 percent from a year earlier, while exports gained 18.6 percent. The yen’s slide has helped boost profit forecasts and pushed up stock prices of exporters such as Toyota Motor Corp, while at the same time raising the cost of imports. The deficits are likely to continue and may drag on growth in the world’s third-largest economy, according to economist Norio Miyagawa . “Exports are rebounding on a pick-up […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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China on path to further reform one-child policy-spokesman

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will further ease its family planning laws after announcing last week that it would allow millions of families to have two children, a senior official from the government’s family planning commission said on Tuesday. "I can only say that the direction is definite, but as to what kind of specific strategy will be chosen, we have to wait for the experts’ verification of the situation at that time," said Mao Qun’an, the spokesman for the National Health and Family Planning Commission. The commission executes and advises the government on family planning policy, and as a senior official at the agency, Mao would be privy to the direction of the recommendations. The government said last week that it would allow couples in which one of the parents is an only child to have a second child. It was the most significant relaxation of the one-child policy […]

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Beijing Rethinks Formula for GDP

BEIJING—China is studying new ways to measure the size of its economy to reflect ambitious reform plans to make it easier for farmers to sell their land and to take into account property values. The new methods, which dovetail with an economic blueprint for reforms agreed on at a key meeting of Communist Party leaders that ended last week, are likely to increase the size of China’s economy, already the world’s second largest, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. “We need to revise the method of calculating the size of our domestic economy to make it conform with a new economic structure, the latest economic developments and…international standards,” the statistics bureau said. Officials didn’t specify how much the new calculations might change China’s headline numbers, or whether it is likely to speed up or slow growth rates. The statistics bureau will announce gross-domestic-product estimates using the new method […]

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Analysts wary as reform euphoria sweeps China markets

Trading on a loosening of China ’s one-child policy would seem relatively straightforward: buy all things baby-related. Investors did just that on Monday, sending shares in milk formula producer Yashili up almost 10 per cent and adding more than 4 per cent to crib manufacturer Goodbaby International. After almost a week during which investors lamented the lack of reform detail from China’s gathering of the Communist party leadership, Chinese equities appear to have regained their mojo. A sweeping policy package , announced late on Friday, has lifted China’s post-plenum depression. Though the easing of the one-child policy was the most headline-grabbing change, the Decision – as the document is called – included a wide variety of amendments to economic, social and financial policy, in what Dong Tao, chief regional economist at Credit Suisse, calls “the most comprehensive and ambitious reform plan in the history of the People’s Republic”. Chinese […]

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Analysts Hail China’s Plan to Overhaul Economy

If the initial summary of China’s highly anticipated economic policy plan disappointed analysts last week, the far more detailed plan that was released by the Chinese authorities late on Friday more than made up for it. The reaction among investors and analysts to the more than 21,000-character document that laid out the Chinese Communist Party’s decisions on how to overhaul the Chinese economy was overwhelmingly positive. ‘‘The breadth of the reform plan has certainly exceeded most expectations,’’ commented Wang Tao, chief China economist at UBS. The document, said the China economists at Goldman Sachs, ‘‘showed high reform conviction and lifted reform expectations and targets.’’ And Yao Wei, an economist in the Hong Kong office of Société Générale, said, ‘‘The new leaders really delivered and promised a number of concrete changes. China’s reform boat has finally set sail.’’ The stock markets echoed the overall sentiment: On Monday, the Shanghai composite […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple