China’s CPI inflation remained unchanged at 4.5% year-on-year in December, according to data published by the National Bureau of Statistics on Thursday. In November, the country’s CPI inflation jumped because of a surge in pork price.
In December however, pork price inflation moderated to 97% from November’s 110.2%. That didn’t last very long though. Inflation in pork prices has gone up again in early January this year, just ahead of Chinese New Year at the end of January, Zhennan Li, a China economist at Goldman Sachs, wrote in a Thursday note.
Inflation in vegetables went up to 10.8% year-on-year in December from 3.9% in November.
Non-food CPI inflation edged up to 1.3% last month from 1% in November. Producer price index saw a 0.5% deflation in December.
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Beleaguered Baoshang Bank has potentially got a buyer, local media Caixin reported. Inner Mongolia-based Baoshang Bank was put under the control of the People’s Bank of China and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission in May last year. The two regulators tasked China Construction Bank with running Baoshang Bank during the one year takeover period.
Anhui-based and Hong Kong-listed Huishang Bank issued a stock exchange filing on Tuesday outlining its plan to invest in a “new provincial-level commercial bank”. Huishang Bank added that it will make a one-time capital contribution of no more than Rmb3.6bn, which in turn will give it a 15% ownership in the new bank. Caixin reported that the new bank should be the restructured Baoshang Bank, citing sources.
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Industrial and Commercial Bank of China will raise Rmb80bn in bonds to replenish its capital, according to a filing on Wednesday. The bank will issue foreign currency-denominated perpetual bonds worth up to Rmb40bn offshore and Rmb40bn of tier two renminbi-denominated bonds onshore.
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China’s foreign currency reserves edged up by 0.4% to $3.108tr as of December, according to a State Administration of Foreign Exchange statement on Tuesday.
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Tencent Holdings has to take a step back from its dominant position in China’s mobile payment industry, Caixin reported. Tencent has agreed to integrate its QR code system with that of China UnionPay, a state-owned payment solution system. Currently, vendors have to generate two separate QR codes for the two payment services. The integration will happen sometime in 2020, Caixin reported.
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Standard Chartered has made a strategic investment into Linklogis, the largest business-to-business focused supply chain financing platform in China.
“Our strategic investment into Linklogis not only allows us to better serve our clients by being a part of their integrated ecosystem, it also reinforces our efforts to support China’s opening by facilitating the flow of capital, particularly for the Greater Bay Area,” Benjamin Hung, regional chief executive officer for Greater China and North Asia at the bank, said in a Thursday press release.
Standard Chartered first initiated the process by signing a memorandum of understanding with Linklogis in February to jointly develop a supply chain platform.
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Standard Chartered’s Renminbi Globalisation Index (RGI) – the bank’s tracker for renminbi internationalisation – fell for a second month in November, according to a research note on Friday.
The RGI dropped to 1,939 in November from 1,974 in October. The dip was mainly because of a 1.3 percentage point decline in the cross-border payments component of the index. However, the bank pointed out that the cross-border usage component has rebounded and that foreign holdings of onshore assets also increased by 0.3 percentage point.
The bank expects the momentum in foreign holdings of Chinese onshore assets to keep rising in 2020.