The official Chinese manufacturing PMI dropped sharply to 35.7 in February from 50 in January, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Saturday.
Production, new orders and new export orders sub-indices dropped to 27.8, 29.3 and 28.7 from 51.3, 51.4 and 48.7, respectively.
Non-manufacturing PMI hit a record low of 29.6 and services PMI dropped to 30.1 from 53.1.
“The spread of the virus appears to have slowed in the recent two to three weeks and the government has shifted towards pushing for production restart and stepped up policy support,” Maggie Wei, a China economist at Goldman Sachs, wrote in a Saturday note.
“We expect more policy easing measures to be announced, and activity growth should recover meaningfully in March, though in absolute level terms it will likely remain below the January level.”
Caixin manufacturing PMI, which focuses on small and medium-sized enterprises, dropped to 40.3 in February from 51.1 in January, the lowest reading since April 2004, when the index was created.
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HNA Group’s listed entities said in stock exchange filings that the Hainan province has put together a team to help push forward “risk disposal work” at the troubled Chinese conglomerate, although the local government team will not take over the company.
HNA will not sell its flagship Hainan Airlines, onshore media reported, following recent rumours that the aviation assets under the group will be split up and sold to other Chinese airlines.
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The Chinese Securities Law, updated last December, went into effect on March 1. The updated draft features two main changes.
First, the updated draft added regulations on the registration-based system for IPOs and company bonds. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) will also work to push the ChiNext board on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange to adopt the registration system.
The registration-based system will also be applied to public company bond issuance in the exchange markets, the CSRC said. Company bonds are issued by non-financial institutions in the exchange market and are regulated by the CSRC and the National Development and Reform Commission.
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The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said last week it has approved another $2m of funding to help developing countries in Asia Pacific contain the coronavirus outbreak. The money will be used by the countries to update and implement their pandemic response plans, according to the supranational.
ADB had already provided $2m of funds last month. They were used to strengthen the immediate response capacity in Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, according to a press release.
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The latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that the population in mainland China grew by 4.67m in 2019 to reach just over 1.4bn by the end of the year.
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Tencent-backed WeDoctor, an online health-care startup in China, has hired John Cai from the AIA Group as its new chief financial officer, Bloomberg reported on Friday. He will oversee a listing in Hong Kong and potentially a pre-IPO financing round, according to the newswire. Cai will join WeDoctor officially “in a few weeks”. The company is expected to pick underwriters over the next few months.
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China has issued a record number of force majeure certificates to companies as domestic exporters struggle to fulfil contractual agreements with foreign buyers, the Financial Times reported.
The China Council for the Promotion of International Trade has issued 4,318 force majeure certificates with a contract value of Rmb330.8bn ($47.3bn) to companies so far, Chinese local media reported.
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China’s custom service has announced it will require all inbound and outbound travellers to fill in health declaration forms, Lin Wei, head of the Department of Health Quarantine, said on a press conference on Wednesday.
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Seven securities houses and two banks have received a licence as ‘securities investment advisor businesses’, the state-owned Securities Times reported on Sunday evening. Previously, no bank or securities houses have received the licence.
The seven securities houses are: China International Capital Corporation, China Galaxy Securities, CSC Financial, Guotai Junan Securities, Guolian Securities, Huatai Securities and Shenwan Hongyuan Securities. The two banks are China Merchants Bank and Ping An Bank.
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The People’s Bank of China said the shift of the benchmark rate to a loan prime rate (LPR), introduced last August, was initiated as planned on March 1. The transition period will last for six months until August 31.
Existing loans priced under the old one year lending rate must be repriced on LPR or switched into fixed rate loans.
Outstanding mortgage loans will not be affected by the change.
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The PBoC conducted a Rmb5bn central bank bills swap with a tenor of three months and a coupon rate of 2.35% on Friday.
The central bank bills swap programme provides liquidity support for banks’ perpetual bonds. Primary dealers in the Chinese interbank bond market can swap perpetual bonds with more liquid central bank bills.
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The Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) will not implement a blanket extension of deadlines for companies to report their financial results but it will give out extensions on a case-by-case basis, chief executive Charles Li said during a Legislative Council meeting on Monday.
Li added that out of the 1,781 listed companies that are feeling some impact from the Covid-19 outbreak, 1,304 are set to publish their results on time. There were 2,466 companies listed in Hong Kong at the end of February, including the main board and the smaller growth enterprise market.
The HKEX and the Securities and Futures Commission said in early February they would consider such extensions because of the epidemic.