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Govts & policies

Caixin manufacturing PMI rises to 51.7

Expansion in China's manufacturing activity gained momentum in February as producers revved up output to meet an increase in new orders that were mainly bolstered by rapidly growing foreign demand, an industry survey sponsored by Caixin showed on Wednesday. The Caixin China General Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index rose to 51.7 last month from 51.0 in January. The February reading tied with that recorded in July 2014 as the second-strongest in more than four years. The official manufacturing PMI came in at 51.6 percent in February, 0.3 percentage points higher than that recorded in January, according to data released on Wednesday by the National Bureau of Statistics.

China expands trials of crop rotation system

China will expand its trials of crop rotation and fallow systems this year as part of efforts to facilitate the green development of agriculture.

Arable land covered under crop rotation measures will increase to 10 million mu (667,000 hectares), mainly in northeastern and northern areas where corn, soybeans and oil crops are grown, according to a press conference of the Ministry of Agriculture on Tuesday. The fallow system will cover 2 million mu of farmland affected by environmental problems, including heavy metal pollution and desertification, in North China's Hebei province, Central China's Hunan province, and some western regions.

Hunan to build more maglev lines

Central China's Hunan province is preparing to build more middle-to-low speed magnetically levitated (maglev) rail lines after the successful launch of the first domestic line in the province in 2016. The first Chinese middle-to-low speed maglev rail line started operation in May in the provincial capital, Changsha. It travels between Changsha's south railway station and the airport, with a maximum speed of 100 km per hour. Changsha plans to build another maglev line in the city's Xiangjiang New Area, the first State-level new area in central China, according to the city's development and reform commission earlier this month.

Companies & markets

Project generates trillion kwh of electricity

The Three Gorges power plant, the world's largest hydropower project, has generated 1 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity following 14 years of operation. Power generation reached the 1-trillion-kwh mark at 12:28 pm on Wednesday, equivalent to 7.1 times the electricity consumption in 2015 by China's largest city, Shanghai, according to an announcement of the China Three Gorges Corp. The Three Gorges Project has reduced standard coal consumption by 319 million metric tons and reduced carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide emissions by 858 million tons and 8.99 million tons respectively, compared with thermal power generation.

Airline to launch air route to Mexico

China Southern Airlines has announced that it will launch an air route between Guangzhou and Mexico on April 10. The flights link Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, with Mexico City via Vancouver. It will be the first route to Mexico operated by a domestic Chinese airliner. Currently, AeroMexico operates flights from Shanghai to Mexico City. The new flights, coded CZ377/378, leave every Monday, Thursday and Saturday from Guangzhou and return from Mexico City every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday.

New indices covering China bonds launched

Bloomberg announced on Tuesday night that it launched two new hybrid fixed income indices, which include yuan-denominated Chinabonds on top of the global indices under the Bloomberg Barclays Benchmark Fixed Income Index family. This has marked Bloomberg as the first index provider to include China bonds in its global indices offering. The two new indices are: Global Aggregate + China Index, which combines the Global Aggregate Index with the treasury and policy bank component of the China Aggregate Index. EM (Emerging Market) Local Currency Government + China Index, which combines the EM Local Currency Government Index and treasury component of the ChinaAggregate Index.

Australian firm in bottled water play

An Australian bottled water company has its sights set on the Chinese market after launching on the ASX on Tuesday. Tianmei Beverage Group Chairman Tony Sherlock said that his company has supply deals with nearly a thousand retailers in Guangdong province to stock their premium range of water. Tianmei has plans to sell bottled water, locally sourced in China, that is slightly alkaline with trace elements of lithium and selenium, to take advantage of the growing concerns about sugary products in Chinas booming middle class. "Around the world there's a recognition that sugar in drinks is undesirable," Sherlock said.

Around the world

France's February CPI at 1.2 percent

France's consumer price index stood at 1.2 percent in February, slightly down from 1.3 percent in January, the national statistics bureau Insee, said on Tuesday. "This slight slowdown is expected to be the result of a sharp decline in the prices of manufactured products, largely offset by an acceleration in the prices of tobacco and energy and a more moderate one for food and services," the report said. Costs of manufactured products were set to decrease by 1.6 percent while energy prices would sharply grow by 11.4 percent over the period, Insee's provisional data showed. On monthly basis, the CPI, the country's main inflation gauge, is expected to inch up by 0.1 percent due to a rebound in services prices.

Greek winter sales down by 20.2 percent

The turnover during Greece's winter sales season ending on Tuesday declined by 20.2 percent compared with the previous season, according to a National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce survey. Sales went down from the beginning of the sales period on Jan 9 to Feb 28, although one in two businesses offered discounts up to 40 percent, according to the ESEE's survey conducted through email. Small-sized businesses seemed to have been suffering the most. The 35 percent of the traders surveyed with an annual turnover of less than 30,000 euros ($31,760) reported losses above 40 percent compared with their previous winter sales turnover.

New Zealand's terms of trade strengthen

Rising milk powder prices and falling consumer electronics prices helped drive the largest rise in New Zealand's terms of trade for more than three years in the last quarter, the government statistics agency said on Wednesday. The terms of trade - a measure of the purchasing power of a country's exports - in the quarter ending December 2016 were up 5.7 percent, according to Statistics New Zealand. It was the largest quarterly increase since the September 2013 quarter, when the terms of trade for goods rose 7.5 percent.

South Korea's exports jump 20.2 percent

South Korea's exports jumped 20.2 percent in February from a year earlier, keeping a double-digit growth for two months in a row, a government report showed on Wednesday. The exports, which account for about half of the export-driven economy, were $43.2 billion in February, up 20.2 percent compared with a year ago, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. It was the fastest increase in five years since February 2012. The shipments grew faster after rising 11.2 percent in January. Daily average exports advanced 9.3 percent last month, marking the third consecutive month of expansion.

China Daily - Agencies

(China Daily USA 03/02/2017 page14)