Philippines Financial News

Narendra Modi will also embark on his visit to Indonesia on Wednesday to attend the summits tomorrow. The forthcoming ASEAN-India Summit will be the first Summit since the elevation of ties between India and the Association of South East Asian Nations bloc of countries to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2022.

Canada’s status within the Indo-Pacific region is set to get a boost as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations prepares to make Ottawa its latest strategic partner when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visits Indonesia.

Indian stock market is expected to open lower on Tuesday following weakness in Asian markets ahead of key economic data releases in the region. The US markets were shut for a holiday. The Reserve Bank of Australia will announce its interest rate decision, while the purchasing managers index readings from China, India and Hong Kong will also be released today.

By Jamie McGeever

The Digital Dollar Project is the brainchild of former CFTC chair Chris Giancarlo, ex-CFTC chief innovation officer Daniel Gorfine and Pure Storage CEO Charles Giancarlo, who have set up a not-for-profit to encourage research and public discussion about a CBDC.The project worked with Western Union, BDO Unibank in the Philippines, and Accenture on the latest pilot, designing and configuring a platform using DLT to simulate the payments infrastructure necessary to transfer digital dollars to Philippine pesos. The partners say that they saw reduced counterparty and credit risk thanks to instant settlement.

Narendra Modi is expected to focus on safeguarding territorial integrity and freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region during his September 6-7 Jakarta visit for the Asean Summit and East Asia Summit (EAS), in the backdrop of China's 'new standard map'. Besides India, several Southeast Asian nations, including Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, have protested China's new map which focuses on the South China Sea region, Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin. India had lodged a strong protest with China. The PM is expected to send a message that territorial integrity of Indo-Pacific states must be safeguarded and pitch for inclusive nature of India's Indo-Pacific policy amid China's aggressive designs in the region, said people aware of the matter. India's steadfast commitment to freedom of navigation through the South China Sea region, where tensions have been building up, will also be in focus, said the people. The PM will also highlight India's agenda for the global south, with the Asean Summit taking place on the eve of G20 Summit in New Delhi. In June, the PM had addressed a gathering at the G20 development ministers' meeting in Varanasi and stated that «development is a core issue for the global south». «The countries of the global south were at the receiving end of the Covid pandemic.

Basketball World Cup, the United States faced their first loss, succumbing to Lithuania with a score of 110-104 in a quarter-final seeding game. This unexpected outcome came as a shock to many, considering the U.S. team's strong performance leading up to the World Cup.

Narendra Modi will visit Indonesia's capital Jakarta on September 6 and 7 to attend the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits, said the Ministry of External Affairs in an official statement on Saturday. Shoring up India's trade and security ties with the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is likely to be the focus of Modi's engagement with leaders of the bloc, according to PTI reports.

By Farah Master, Joyce Zhou and David Kirton

Manufacturing activity in Asia’s major export powerhouses slumped further in August as weak demand persisted in the region’s key trade markets, particularly in China. Factories in North Asia experienced weaker new orders, output and export sales, according to manufacturing purchasing managers’ surveys published Friday by S&P Global and au Jibun Bank. The purchasing managers’ index for trade bellwether Taiwan was little changed at a subdued level of 44.3 last month from 44.1 in July, while South Korea’s gauge slumped to 48.9 from 49.4 during the same period. Seoul reported a similarly gloomy reading on industrial production on Thursday, showing a bigger-than-expected drop in July, marking its longest stretch of output decline yet. Japan’s PMI was unchanged at 49.6, below the 50 mark that separates expansion from contraction.Southeast Asia, which until recently was a bright spot, showed the weak sentiment was rubbing off on factories in the region.

China released the 2023 edition of its 'standard map' on August 28, showing India's Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as part of its territory. The map also shows China's claims in the South China Sea over the exclusive maritime zones of countries such as Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam.

India in rejecting China's new national map, issuing strongly worded statements accusing Beijing of claiming their territory. China published a new version of its national map on Monday to correct what Beijing has in the past referred to as «problematic maps» that it claims misrepresent its territorial borders. India on Tuesday lodged a strong protest with China over its so-called «standard map» laying claim over Arunachal Pradesh and the Aksai Chin, and asserted that such steps only complicate the resolution of the boundary question. The External Affairs Ministry also rejected China's claims as having «no basis». «Just making absurd claims does not make other people's territories yours,» External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said while reacting to the Chinese move. The Philippine government on Thursday slammed China's 2023 edition of its so-called «standard map» that still shows swaths of Philippine features in the West Philippine Sea. The Chinese Ministry of Natural Resources issued on August 28 a controversial map that includes the nine-dash line, now a 10-dash line, that supposedly shows China's boundaries in the South China Sea. «This latest attempt to legitimise China's purported sovereignty and jurisdiction over Philippine features and maritime zones has no basis under international law, particularly the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS),» Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Ma.

A fire has killed 15 people in a small apparel factory in a Philippine residential area, where flooding, traffic and a wrong address delayed firefighters

Reuters. China Railway has suspended several major train lines and Shanghai halted trains heading to Guangdong, according to local media.

HYBE, the makers of the current most popular boy band BTS, is looking for a new girl band. The company held worldwide auditions in association with the USA's Geffen Records to create a new global girl group. This is being done on a big scale for Netflix as a docuseries and also on YouTube. The two record companies recently announced the 2024 series and also a companion-piece online show that will begin on Thursday, August 30, as part of their The Debut: Dream Academy. The selection process for the girl group started in November 2021, when 120,000 applications of girl group potentials were screened. The worldwide hunt resulted in 20 candidates being selected. The females come from countries as diverse as Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, Sweden, Japan, Belarus, Switzerland, Slovakia, the Philippines, South Korea, and the USA. Now, in the docuseries, fans will be able to follow the selected contestants through the final stages of the auditions.

2023 FIBA World Cup. The game will be held at the Smart Araneta Coliseum and will begin at 8:30 p.m. Philippines/Hong Kong time. It has been a mixed bag for Italy so far as they won their first game against Angola but lost to the Dominican Republic in the second game. But host Phillippines have lost both of their games in the 2023 FIBA World Cup.

India, and they would need to focus on education and infrastructure to take advantage of the demographic dividend, according to the latest report by Moody's Investor Service. «The ability of sovereigns to address these challenges will determine the extent to which their large populations can take advantage of opportunities to enhance long-term economic growth,» the ratings and research firm said in a report released Monday. While it appreciated the efforts made by India and the Philippines on infrastructure and governance, the firm noted that considerable work needed to be done on parameters like education and labour force participation. «There remains a considerable gap in the quality of education between Pakistan, Bangladesh and India compared with China and other peers in Southeast Asia, which contributes to labour-force participation imbalances,» the report said. The report pointed out that while the six large economies would contribute to a third of the global population increase over the next two decades and contribute significantly to the global labour pool, it said that «population growth unaccompanied by adequate job creation is likely to exacerbate sovereigns' exposure to social risks. According to the United Nations, India crossed China this year to become the most populous country in the world, and its population shall take another 40 years to reach its peak.

FIBA Basketball World Cup, the USA have registered two initial wins, cruised past Greece, and have clinched the group round. Canada defeated France, who were eliminated on Sunday after yet another defeat at the hands of Latvia. Steve Kerr has coached Team USA and led by Anthony Edwards, Jalen Brunson, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Mikal Bridges led them. The US finished seventh in 2019 and they hope for a better result this year.

New Delhi: Consumer goods company Procter & Gamble India, maker of brands like Ariel, Whisper, and Gillette, on Monday announced the appointment of Mukta Maheshwari as the company’s chief marketing officer (CMO), effective 1 September. Along with leading the marketing function at the company, Maheshwari will also head the fabric care category for P&G India.

MANILA (Reuters) — China's «aggressive behaviour» in the South China Sea, including the use of water canon by its coast guard against a Philippine vessel, must be challenged and checked, the commander of the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet said on Sunday.

By Samuel McKeith