On Wednesday, Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States, taking over the leadership of a country racked by COVID-19, deep socio-economic divisions and facing challenges to its global leadership role. Biden has proposed $1.9 trillion in stimulus with a commitment for $1,400 stimulus checks. Markets have cheered his win but are watching for clarity on spending and tackling the pandemic. The S&P 500 has risen in the first 100 calendar days of eight out of the last 10 presidential terms, but Biden’s first 100 ...

China’s industrial output rose at a faster-than-expected rate of 7.3% in December from a year ago, data showed on Monday, expanding for the ninth straight month as the vast manufacturing sector, aided by strong exports, continues its post-COVID recovery. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected annual industrial output growth to have eased to 6.9% in December from 7.0% in November. China’s retail sales edged up 4.6% last month from a year earlier, missing analysts’ forecast for 5.5% growth, in contrast to 5.0% growth in November. Fixed asset investment increased 2.9% ...

China’s industrial output rose at a faster-than-expected rate of 7.3% in December from a year ago, data showed on Monday, expanding for the ninth straight month as the vast manufacturing sector, aided by strong exports, continues its post-COVID recovery. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected annual industrial output growth to have eased to 6.9% in December from 7.0% in November. China’s retail sales edged up 4.6% last month from a year earlier, missing analysts’ forecast for 5.5% growth, in contrast to 5.0% growth in November. Fixed asset investment increased 2.9% ...

Sentiment among Japanese manufacturers stabilised in January to the least pessimistic in more than a year from the impact of COVID-19, but service firms grew gloomier just as new lockdowns hit most of the population, the Reuters Tankan poll found. Manufacturers in the world’s third-biggest economy were the least pessimistic since July 2019, though the outlook, especially for services, is clouded by a pandemic state of emergency covering Tokyo and other population centres through Feb. 7. Driving the improvement for manufacturers were upbeat views in the chemical, metal products and ...

The Reserve Bank of India is likely to propose stricter regulatory norms for shadow banks in a bid to strengthen solvency and sustainability of a sector that has been showing signs of stress in recent years, two sources said. RBI began trying to move towards tighter norms for the sector after Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services, the largest NBFC, went bankrupt in 2018, and Dewan Housing Finance Corp and Altico Capital defaulted on payments in 2019. The RBI is expected to set out its proposals in a discussion paper next ...

The European Union needs a “masterplan” to move euro financial services from London to the bloc if it wants to expand the single currency’s role in a global economy dominated by the U.S. dollar, a senior EU lawmaker said on Monday. Markus Ferber, a senior member of the European Parliament, said if the EU wants to compete with the greenback, it needs a financial system to match it. “We need a clear step-by-step masterplan that helps key financial sector businesses move from the United Kingdom to the European Union,” Ferber ...

Demand for remote workers in Britain tripled over the course of 2020 as businesses grew more willing to let staff work from home during the coronavirus pandemic, figures from a recruitment consultancy showed on Monday. Some 80,700 jobs that allowed remote working were advertised in November, up from 26,600 in November 2019, recruiters New Street Consulting Group said, based on industry data provided by analysts Emsi. Official data showed 547,000 job vacancies in Britain in the three months to November, down almost a third on a year earlier. For now, ...

The German economy is managing to stay afloat but could suffer a “sizeable setback” if coronavirus curbs are extended again, the Bundesbank said on Monday. Germany has taken increasingly tight measures, such as closing some schools and shops, to curtail movement and gatherings since the autumn as it battles a second wave of infections. Chancellor Angela Merkel wants “very fast action” to counter the spread of COVID-19 mutations and has brought forward a meeting with regional leaders to this week to discuss tougher restrictions. The central bank said the economy ...

China’s geopolitical rise over the past four decades has been fueled by sizzling economic growth that regularly featured years of double-digit percentage-point gains. In 2020, China advanced its aspirations by simply emerging with its growth intact from a brutal year when a pandemic shook the world economy. On Monday, Beijing said its gross domestic product rose 2.3% last year. While that is the weakest annual rate of growth since the Mao era, it was enough to make China the only major world economy to gain any ground at all last ...

The European Central Bank’s new policy package will have little effect on the euro zone’s coronavirus-ravaged economy, according to the forecasts of a Reuters poll of economists, who nearly halved their outlook for first-quarter growth. Despite the ECB’s decision to top up its pandemic emergency purchases by half a trillion euros to 1.85 trillion euros and extend the programme for nine months, the bloc’s economic outlook remains bleak. The Reuters poll consensus of over 80 economists forecast the euro zone economy shrank 2.5% last quarter after expanding 12.5% in the ...

Marian Croak has a unique way of looking at the world. It probably explains why the inventor of one of 2020’s most essential technologies – Voice over Internet Protocol – and Google’s Vice-President of Engineering has hundreds of patents to her name. The COVID-19 pandemic, has in her view, ‘gifted’ the world with increased awareness of inequities – and the chance to do something about them. “If we can zero in on that gift we’ve been given to see what the world is truly like and where the gaps are… ...

China’s economy picked up speed in the fourth quarter, with growth beating expectations as it ended a rough coronavirus-striken 2020 in remarkably good shape and remained poised to expand further this year even as the global pandemic rages unabated. Gross domestic product grew 2.3% in 2020, official data showed on Monday, making China the only major economy in the world to avoid a contraction last year as many nations struggled to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. And China is expected to continue to power ahead of its peers this year, with ...

The overall impact from the current COVID-19 resurgence on China’s economy is controllable, the statistics bureau chief Ning Jizhe said on Monday, even as rising cases in some localities weighed on consumer spending. China has experience and capacity to control the virus, Ning told reporters at a press conference, adding that authorities estimate that many favourable conditions will sustain the economic recovery this year. Source: Reuters (Reporting by Gabriel Crossley and Stella Qiu; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

Despite occasional outbreaks reported in some areas, the world’s second-largest economy has got back on its feet again as its triumphs in containing the pandemic boost its share of global trade and investment. /CFP China’s economic ascent has been moving ahead at full steam barely a year after the onset of COVID-19 nudges the world’s major economies into turbulence and negative territory. Despite occasional outbreaks reported in some areas, the world’s second-largest economy has got back on its feet again as its triumphs in containing the pandemic boost its share ...

The U.S.-China trade pact signed a year ago is being credited for improving business conditions for some American companies, even if a cornerstone of the deal — China’s commitment to greatly increase purchases of U.S. goods — has fallen short. Under the deal brokered by the Trump administration, China agreed to purchase about $159 billion in U.S. goods by the end of 2020. Through November, China’s actual purchases were about $82 billion, or about 52% of the target goal, according to an analysis by Chad Bown, a senior fellow at ...