The Bangladesh Today (03-01-2018)

ECONOMY & BUSINESS WEDNESDAY,
THE
BANGLADESHTODAY
10
JANUARY 3, 2018
Bashundhara Group emerge
as champion in Bangladesh
Cup Taekwondo
DHAKA: Bashundhara Group of men's group and Agrani
Bank of women's Group emerged as champions in the
Agrani Bank 4th Bangladesh Cup Taekwondo competition
held on Monday at Shaheed Suhrawardy Indoor Stadium at
Mirpur, said a Bangladesh Taekwondo Federation (BTF),
reports BSS.
Besides, Central Taekwondo Academy finished as men's
Group runners-up in the day-long meet, organized by BTF.
Earlier, Bashundhara Group also clinched title of the 9th
National Taekwondo competition held on Sunday.
Bangladesh Krishi Bank chairman Mohammad Ismail was
the chief guest in the closing ceremony of the meet and
distributed prizes among the winners.
After the prize distribution ceremony, The BTF handed
over crest to Santona Rani, who won bronze medal in the
20th World Taekwondo Championship held in China last
year.
BP to take $1.5bn hit
on US tax reforms
LONDON : British energy major BP said Tuesday that it
expected to take a $1.5-billion (1.2-billion-euro) hit from US
President Donald Trump's tax reforms, reports BSS.
"The lowering of the US corporate income tax rate to 21
percent requires revaluation of BP's US deferred tax assets
and liabilities," the company said in a statement.
"The current estimated impact of this will be a one-off noncash
charge to the group income statement of around $1.5
billion that will impact BP's fourth quarter 2017 results."
However, the energy giant cautioned that longer-term
earnings would be "positively impacted" by the US changes.
BP is scheduled to unveil its fourth-quarter figures on
February 6.
Trump has signed into law a sweeping overhaul of the US
tax code, in what was his first major legislative victory since
taking office nearly a year ago.
The measure is expected to boost corporate profits of
banks and other companies over the medium and long term
by lowering the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35
percent.
However, several large corporations have signalled that the
law will result in a short-term hit on earnings repatriated
from overseas. The reform taxes these earnings at 15.5
percent on cash and equivalents and eight percent on real
estate and other illiquid assets.
Other large companies that have alluded to large one-time
hits for the fourth quarter include BP's key rival Royal Dutch
Shell, as well as banking groups Barclays and Credit Suisse.
Bangladesh Leasing & Finance Companies
Association (BLFCA) has recently appointed
S.M.Formanul Islam asThe Vice Chairman.
Islam has been working as the Executive
Director and CEO of Bangladesh
Infrastructure Finance Fund Ltd
(BIFFL).Which is a Non Bank Financial
Institution owned by the Government
finances PPP, Infrastructures and Green &
Environment Friendly Projects in the country.
Photo: Courtesy
Oman projects a
budget deficit in
2018 on low oil price
MUSCAT : The Gulf state of Oman adopted on Monday its
2018 budget projecting a deficit of $7.8 billion due to low oil
prices, but said the shortfall is declining, reports BSS.
Like other energy-rich Gulf states, Oman was hit hard by
the slump in oil prices since mid-2014 and joined an
agreement by oil producers to cut production in a bid to
shore up prices.
Revenues in 2018 are estimated at $24.7 billion, up just
three percent on last year, with spending projected at $32.5
billion, seven percent higher, according to a statement by the
finance ministry.
Despite measures to reduce dependence on oil, income
from crude is estimated to account for 70 percent of total
revenues, the ministry said.
In 2017, the ministry said the country posted a higherthan-expected
deficit at $9.1 billion due to cuts in oil
production in line with an agreement by OPEC and non-
OPEC members.
The ministry said the budget shortfalls have been on the
decline due to raising non-oil revenues and higher oil
income.
To finance the budget deficit, Oman last year raised $11.2
billion in debt in the form of bonds, Islamic sukuk and loans.
It plans to raise $6.5 billion this year, the ministry said.
About one-third of the budget spending this year has been
earmarked for social services, education and health, the
statement said.
Like other Gulf states, Oman has introduced a series of
austerity measures and subsidy cuts to boost non-oil
revenues.
But it has delayed the implementation of a five-percent
value-added tax which Gulf peers Saudi Arabia and United
Arab Emirates introduced on Monday.
Oman is a member of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation
Council along with Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and
the United Arab Emirates, but is not a member of the oilproducing
OPEC cartel.
On January 01, 2018 First Security Islami Bank Ltd inaugurated an ATM booth at 23rd Dhaka
International Trade Fair-2018. Syed Waseque Md Ali, Managing Director of the bank inaugurated
the booth. Among others, S. M. Nazrul Islam, Head of General Services Division, Shahazada
Basunia, Head of Public Affairs and Brand Communication Division, Md. Abul Kalam Azad, Head
of Information & Communication Technology Division, Tanvir Ahmad Chowdhury, Head of Card
Division, M. M. Mostafizur Rahman, Manager, Ring Road Branch were present on the occasion.
Card holders of any bank can withdraw money from First Security Islami Bank ATM booth (Both
No. 06).
Photo: Courtesy
Tech icon ordered back to
China sends wife instead
BEIJING: A major Chinese tech
entrepreneur has defied regulators'
orders to return home, writing Tuesday
that his wife and brother would deal
with the debt woes plaguing his LeEco
conglomerate, reports BSS.
Jia Yueting, the 44-year-old head of a
tech empire that has spanned electric
cars and smartphones, posted a letter
on social media to the Beijing branch of
the China Securities Regulatory
Commission, which last week ordered
him to return to China before the end of
2017.
The one-time billionaire is believed to
be in the US, attempting to build up his
Los Angeles-based electric car company
Faraday Future. He was added to a
national blacklist of debt defaulters by
Chinese courts last month over
hundreds of millions of dollars in
unpaid loans.
"I have entrusted (wife) Ms. Gan Wei
and (brother) Mr. Jia Yuemin with full
power to exercise my rights as the public
company shareholder and fulfil my
shareholder responsibilities," Jia wrote
in the letter published on the Twitterlike
Weibo platform.
He said Gan and Jia Yuemin would
deal with the debt issues of Leshi
Internet, LeEco's main publicly traded
arm.
Separately on her own Weibo
account, Gan said she would be meeting
China futures market turnover
down 4 pct in 2017
BEIJING : The turnover of China's futures
market dropped slightly in 2017 amid tight
financial regulations, industry data showed,
reports BSS.
The total transaction value of the futures market
hit 187.9 trillion yuan (28.87 trillion U.S. dollars)
in 2017, down 3.95 percent year on year, data
from the China Futures Association showed
Tuesday. The volume of futures trading
plummeted by 25.66 percent during the period.
Hong Kong
stocks up at
noon
HONG KONG : Hong Kong
stocks ended their first
morning of 2018 on a strong
note Tuesday, with the
energy, property and
technology sectors among
the big winners, reports
BSS.
The Hang Seng Index
jumped 1.68 percent, or
502.11 points, to 30,421.26
by the break.
Hong Kong
stocks open
with gains
HONG KONG :Hong Kong
stocks kicked off the new
year with gains Tuesday,
extending a rally into a sixth
day following a stellar 2017
that saw the benchmark
index climb by more than a
third, reports BSS.
The Hang Seng Index
added 0.36 percent, or
109.14 points, to 30,028.29.
And the benchmark
Shanghai Composite Index
added 0.21 percent, or 6.86
points, to 3,314.03, while
the Shenzhen Composite
Index, which tracks stocks
on China's second exchange,
gained 0.22 percent, or 4.15
points, to 1,903.49.
Turnover at the Zhengzhou Commodity
Exchange, which trades methanol and white
sugar futures, slumped 31.14 percent.
Turnover at the Shanghai Futures Exchange,
which trades rebar futures and some other metal
futures, gained 5.83 percent to 89.93 trillion yuan,
accounting for almost half of the total market.
China Financial Futures Exchange saw total
transaction value jump by 34.98 percent to 24.59
trillion yuan.
China factory activity
accelerated in
December: Caixin
BEIJING : Chinese factory activity accelerated in December,
according to independent data released Tuesday, a positive
indicator for the world's second-largest economy to kick off
the new year, reports BSS.
The Caixin Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) -- an
indicator of conditions at small manufacturers-rose to 51.5 in
December, up from 50.8 in November and the highest
reading since August.
The official PMI indicator of 51.6 for December was
released on Sunday by China's National Bureau of Statistics
and showed a slight deceleration from November, although
it largely maintained momentum.
A PMI figure above 50 represents growth while anything
below points to contraction.
Caixin's index focuses on economic activity at small and
medium sized enterprises, and its continued strength may
reflect the resilient global demand for many of these
exporting firms.
China's exports saw solid growth during the final months
of last year.
"Manufacturing production continued to increase across
China at the end of 2017" Caixin said in a statement with data
compiler IHS Markit.
"Manufacturing operating conditions improved in
December, reinforcing the notion that economic growth has
stabilised in 2017 and has even performed better than
expected" Caixin analyst Zhengsheng Zhong wrote.
"We should not underestimate downward pressure on
growth next year due to tightening monetary policy and
strengthening oversight on local government financing."
Caixin said firms used existing inventories of finished
items to satisfy some new orders and cut slightly their
inventories of finished goods.
creditors to "resolve the debt problems".
The 33-year-old Gan, an actress and
producer on several feature films, said
her husband owed 6.9 billion yuan ($1
billion) on loans connected to pledged
shares. He has paid 1.7 billion yuan
($267 million) in interest on related
loans since 2014, she wrote Tuesday.
Leshi Internet's filings show that
nearly all of Jia's shares were pledged to
back loans, though a Beijing court said
last month that it had seized more than
one billion shares-Jia's entire holding-of
Leshi Internet to repay creditors.
The court also seized Jia's two homes
in Beijing and $200,000 from a bank
account.
"Jia Yueting has no other bank
deposits available, no other home
registration records, and no vehicle
registration records," the Beijing First
Intermediate Court said at the time.
Gan said in a New Year's Eve Weibo
post she had "returned to complete a
mission". Her location was tagged as
Beijing airport.
Leshi Internet had a market
capitalisation of roughly $9.4 billion in
April last year, but it has suspended
trading in its shares since then.
Investment firms have already
marked down their holdings. If the
company were to delist completely, it
could be one of the largest failures of a
Chinese publicly traded companypossibly
wiping out the investments of
its 185,000 shareholders.
Jia in his letter blamed LeEco's debt
woes on one bank which sued him after
he was "only a mere two weeks overdue
on a 30 million interest payment".
Afterwards, in July, as creditors began
to swarm, "the production and
operation of non-public companies
came to an abrupt halt", he wrote.
"Over 10,000 employees were forced
to be dismissed, and the only thing left
for the company was to sell its assets to
repay the debt."
Jia founded the troubled
conglomerate in 2004 as an online
video streaming platform, but pushed
the tech company into a variety of new
business lines-from gaming to sports
and more recently, cars.
He brought in hundreds of small-time
investors to fund the rapidly growing
list of projects, publicly announcing
more than $3 billion in funding for the
far-flung projects, which now appears in
jeopardy.
Jia's Los Angeles-based electric car
company Faraday Future has said it is
in the process of raising $1 billion to
start production of electric cars.
The "US FF company (Faraday
Future) financing has already achieved
major progress," Jia wrote.
"At present there is much work to be
done for me to push it forward."
Budget apartments
to sell well in
Vietnam
HANOI : Demand for lowcost
apartments with a price
tag of below 1.5 billion
Vietnamese dong (around
66,000 U.S. dollars) will
continue to increase this
year, local experts said,
reports BSS.
Vietnam's realty market in
2018 will thrive in the lowend
and mid-end segments,
meeting demand of low and
medium-income earners in
urban areas, according to the
Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate
Association on Tuesday.
Higher demand for
affordable apartments will
make many property
developers lower prices of
high-end apartments, local
realty experts said, noting
that they are paying more
attention to building low-cost
commercial houses.
Foreign investment in
Vietnam's real estate sector
will increase to around 3
billion U.S. dollars a year in
the next five years, the
experts predicted, noting that
foreign investment in the
sector stood at 2.5 billion U.S.
dollars in 2017.
Since Vietnam adopted the
Law on Housing in 2014,
some 2,000 foreigners have
been granted certificates of
land use right, house
ownership and other
properties associated with
the land in the country,
according to statistics from
the Ministry of Construction.
The number of foreigners
seeking to buy villas and
apartments in Vietnam's big
cities is on the rise.
The number of residential
property transactions in
Hanoi capital and Ho Chi
Minh City in November 2017
stood at 3,000. By the end of
November 2017.
Asia markets begin 2018
on positive note, led by
Hong Kong rally
HONG KONG: Asian stocks mostly kicked off the year
with gains on Tuesday as traders drifted back to work
after the festive break, with Hong Kong the standout
performer, though the dollar faced fresh pressure from
most other currencies, reports BSS.
Regional investors shrugged off dips in New York on
the last day of 2017, instead building on the healthy
advances fuelled by strong data, improving corporate
profits and hopes Donald Trump's tax cuts will fire US
growth.
They were also keeping an eye on the release of key US
jobs figures at the end of the week, which will provide
fresh clues about the strength of the world's biggest
economy.
Hong Kong led Tuesday's rally, jumping two percent to
its highest level since late 2007, while Shanghai ended
1.2 percent higher, boosted by data showing
manufacturing activity in China continued to expand in
December.
The news comes as China's leaders look to handle a
tricky transition of the economy from state investment
and exports to one driven by consumer demand, while
also addressing a growing debt mountain and fighting
pollution.
And Rajiv Biswas, chief Asia-Pacific economist at IHS
Markit in Singapore, warned that Beijing's success in
this would have consequences around the world.
"Risks to the Chinese economy will remain among the
key risks to the global growth outlook in 2018, with the
Asia Pacific region particularly vulnerable to the shock
waves from a slowdown," he told Bloomberg News.
Among other markets, Singapore rose 0.8 percent after
figures showing the city-state's economy beat estimates
in the final three months of last year.
Seoul added 0.5 percent, with some optimism seen
after North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un said he was
open to talks with the South. On Tuesday the
government in Seoul proposed holding high-level talks
with Pyongyang on January 9.
Taipei was up 0.6 percent but Sydney slipped 0.1
percent. Tokyo and Wellington were closed for public
holidays.
In early European trade London fell 0.2 percent,
Frankfurt shed 0.1 percent and Paris was flat.
On currency markets, the dollar suffered further
selling, with analysts pointing to profit-taking after the
passage of the much-anticipated US tax cuts, as well as
expected monetary tightening by other central banks
that will align them with the Federal Reserve.
Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at AxiTrader,
said the euro was rising as "traders are making the bet
that the (European Central Bank) will simply follow the
Fed in the year ahead and end quantitative easing and
then move toward rate hikes".
The single currency was above $1.20 and sitting at
levels not seen since September, while the pound was
also at around three-and-a-half-month highs.
However, bitcoin was down from its late Monday levels
as the cryptocurrency struggles to bounce back from a
recent sell-off fuelled by profit-taking.
It had soared 25-fold over 2017 to a record high above
$19,500 on December 18 before tumbling to just above
$12,000 less than a week later.
It was sitting at $13,345 in Asia on Tuesday.
Oil prices edged up on the back of a weaker dollar,
unrest in crude giant Iran and a pause in the number of
rigs coming online in the United States.
"There is some momentum for oil at the moment and
that could continue," Ric Spooner, a Sydney-based
analyst at CMC Markets, said. He added that marketwatchers
felt an increase in US shale output appeared
not to be as big as expected.
The increase comes after both main contracts enjoyed
a second year of rises in 2017, largely thanks to an output
freeze by Russia and OPEC.
Singer New Year
Special Offer at
Dhaka Trade Fair
To celebrate the New Year and Dhaka International Trade
Fair, Singer Bangladesh has launched 'Singer New Year
Special Offer'. The campaign will continue from January 1 till
January 31, 2018, says a press release.
Under this campaign, there will be lucrative gifts and
discounts on Kitchen Appliances, Furniture, Laptops,
Washing Machines, LED, Refrigerator and many more
products. On the occasion of Dhaka International Trade Fair,
attractive discounts and free gifts on Kitchen Appliances and
Microwave Oven will also be available at the Singer
Bangladesh Premier Stall (Premier Stall no.-2).
Customers can purchase Singer Washing Machines from
any Singer outlets across Bangladesh and get a chance of
winning free Washing Machines, attractive discounts or free
gifts through scratch cards. Customers will also get attractive
discounts for buying a new Singer LED TVs in exchange of
their old TVs. Dell and HP laptops can be bought with
convenient installments. Singer is also offering 12 months
interest-free benefits without any credit card. Moreover, all
products will be available for 12 months easy installments.