Singapore Financial News

rise in new orders and output pushed manufacturing activity to the second-strongest pace in three years. The seasonally adjusted S&P Global India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rose to 58.6 in August compared with 57.2 in July, according to data released Friday. «Robust and accelerated increases in new orders and production suggest that the sector looks set to provide a strong contribution to second quarter (fiscal) economic growth,” said Pollyanna De Lima, Economics Associate Director, S&P Global Market Intelligence. »The PMI results for India painted a vibrant picture of the nation's manufacturing landscape in August," De Lima further added. India’s economic growth strengthened to a four-quarter high of 7.8% in the first quarter, data released earlier this week showed, as the services sector pushed activity. The growth in manufacturing was less pronounced at 4.7% in Q1FY24, compared with 6.1% in the similar quarter last year. Demand strength pushed the new orders to the fastest pace since January 2021, helped by better export performance. «Not only did new export orders increase for the seventeenth month running halfway through the second fiscal quarter, but also to the greatest extent since November 2022,» the release stated, noting that members reported new work from Bangladesh, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and the US. Buying levels rose to the fastest level in nearly 12 years, even as input costs rose faster. The increase in charge inflation, or selling prices, was not as fast as input prices as they tried to retain competitiveness.

Google Doodle on Friday celebrated Singapore's first presidential elections in over a decade with a special illustration. The elections to the largely ceremonious position are being viewed as a show of support for the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) amidst a rising cost of living crisis and rare political scandals. The incumbent, Halimah Yacob, ran unopposed for her six-year term in 2017, but the election to replace her is a three-way contest between former deputy prime minister and finance minister in the PAP government, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, and two political outsiders.

Cryptoasset businesses in the United Kingdom could now begin withholding certain crypto transfers to comply with the new Travel Rule for crypto that came into effect on Sept. 1.

CME Group, a leading global derivatives marketplace, in collaboration with CF Benchmarks, a prominent provider of cryptocurrency benchmark indices, has announced the launch of two new APAC-specific reference rates for Bitcoin and Ether. These rates, named the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate APAC (BRRAP) and CME CF Ether-Dollar Reference Rate APAC (ETHUSD_AP), are set to be introduced on September 11. They will offer a daily reference rate for the U.S. dollar value of these two digital assets, with the publication time slated for 4 p.m. Hong Kong/Singapore time.

HUAWEI CLOUD, the cloud service division of global technology titan Huawei, has officially entered into a «Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)» with COBO, a frontrunner in digital asset custody solutions. This landmark announcement was made during an exclusive, closed-door event.

Malaysia is celebrating its 66th Independence Day on August 31 in Putrajaya with fanfare and festivities. This day marks its independence from colonial rule. It will be followed by Malaysia Day on September 16, to mark the day when the peninsular state of Malaya merged with Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore to form Malaysia in 1963. It will be celebrated in Kuching in the state of Sarawak.

Bank messaging network SWIFT has recently shared a report highlighting how SWIFT can connect with blockchains and solve the issue of interoperability between different blockchain networks.

Bill Maldonado (pictured), CEO of Eastspring Investments

Sea Ltd. is bringing back one of its top mobile games in India a year and a half after it was banned, a boon for the internet company’s effort to revive its growth. Now called Free Fire India, the game will be available Sept.

Top local and international banks in Singapore have found themselves entangled in one of the city-state’s biggest money-laundering scandals, encompassing over $740 million. 

Vistara Airlines, a joint venture of Tata Sons Private Limited and Singapore Airlines Limited (SIA), will be launching its second daily flight service to Mumbai from the state capital on September 1, the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport Ltd (TIAL) said on Thursday. The new flight service would depart from Thiruvananthapuram at 8.30 AM and reach Mumbai at 10.45 AM, TIAL said in a statement. The return flight would leave Mumbai at 8.25 PM and reach here at 11 PM, it said. The flight will operate from the domestic terminal (T1) at Shanghumugham, the statement said. «The convenient timing of the flight provides connection to various domestic points and also to/from international destinations including Europe, UK, US, Middle East and South-East Asia.

Portfolio Advisors, LLC is partnering with Vontobel to help the Swiss-based global investment firm offer private markets investments to selected clients.

We Founder Circle, a platform for angel investors, is wooing high networth individuals (HNIs) from the smaller towns of India into its fold. The community, with 6500 investors last year, has grown to 10,000-plus investors in 2023 indicating that startups continue to be a viable asset class despite the prolonged funding winter worldwide.

Asian stock markets are mostly lower after Japanese factory activity and Chinese service industry growth weakened

Garena on Thursday announced the relaunch of Free Fire India, an Indian version of its popular battle royale game Free Fire, over a year and a half after it was blocked. The Sea Ltd-owned game has been relaunched just a few months after the most popular game in the Indian esports ecosystem, Krafton’s Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), returned from a government block on a three-month trial basis late in May. BGMI had roughly 100 million registered users in the country pre-block. Free Fire, a battle royale game where multiple players fight each other in a set location to “survive”, was one of the most popular online games in India before it was blocked, according to executives in the gaming industry. Garena is employing servers run by Yotta, a unit of the Hiranandani group, to provide cloud hosting and data storage services, the firm said in a statement.

HPCL/IOL: Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Hardeep Singh Puri stated on 30 August that the government would bear the cost of the promised ₹200 price decrease on household cooking gas cylinders, relieving the oil marketing companies of the impending loss of ₹7,500 crore. As a gift for the women in advance of Raksha Bandhan, the Union Cabinet on Tuesday lowered by 200 rupees the price of a 14.2 kilogramme LPG cooking gas cylinder. The decision was made as criticism of the Centre for its handling of rising inflation has grown.

Before the tax leaks scandal broke this year, PwC was the dominant professional services group in the country.

Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin took advantage of smaller rivals and overseas carriers relinquishing their landing slots at Australia’s largest airport during the pandemic, soaking up more than 500 new slots at Sydney Airport compared to 2019, according to previously unreported data.

Singapore are becoming embroiled in one of the city-state's largest money laundering cases involving over S$1 billion ($740 million) of assets. In charge sheets seen by Bloomberg News, some of the individuals who were arrested and charged this month held funds totally millions from unlicensed moneylending in China and illegal gambling in United Overseas Bank Ltd. and the local units of Citigroup Inc. and RHB Bank Bhd.

NEW DELHI : India on Wednesday permitted exports of limited quantities of non-basmati white rice to Bhutan, Mauritius and Singapore, according to a notification by Directorate General of Foreign Trade. Bhutan will get 79,000 tonnes, Mauritius 14,000 tonnes and Singapore 50,000 tonnes, even as the export ban imposed on 20 July remains in place. The export will be done through National Cooperative Exports Ltd, a government export body which was set up under the Multi-State Cooperative Societies (MSCS) Act, 2002 to export agriculture produce and allied items.

white rice to Bhutan, Mauritius and Singapore, and allocated export quotas for the kitchen staple. The Directorate General of Foreign Trade, in a notification, said that exports of 79,000 metric tons of non-basmati white rice would be allowed to Bhutan, 50,000 tons to Singapore and 14,000 tons to Mauritius. “Export of non-Basmati white rice…to Bhutan, Mauritius and Singapore is notified,” the DGFT said in a notification. Last month, India prohibited the export of non-basmati white rice but said that exports will be allowed on the basis of permission granted by the government to other countries to meet their food security needs and based on the request of their governments. The exports have been permitted through National Cooperative Exports Limited. India exported $2.2 billion of non-Basmati white rice in FY23 of which $87 million worth of the staple was shipped to Nepal and $38 million to Singapore.