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PBOC suspends reverse repos

China's central bank suspended open market operations on Tuesday, in a sign of policy tightening. The People's Bank of China withdrew 70 billion yuan ($10 billion) from the market on Tuesday, as reverse repurchase agreements matured. Reverse repos is a process by which central banks purchase securities from banks with an agreement to sell them back in the future. "There was an increase of fiscal spending at the end of last month and liquidity in the banking system remains at a moderate level. The central bank will not conduct reverse repos on Tuesday," according to a statement on the PBOC's website. The central bank has conducted open market operation reverse repos for nine consecutive days.

Yuan weakens against US dollar

The central parity rate of the renminbi, or the yuan, weakened 25 basis points to 6.8956 against the US dollar on Tuesday, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System. In China's spot foreign exchange market, the yuan is allowed to rise or fall by 2 percent from the central parity rate each trading day. The central parity rate of the yuan against the US dollar is based on a weighted average of prices offered by market makers before the opening of the interbank market each business day.

Five major banks' profits increase

China's top five State-owned banks, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Bank of Communications, posted stable profit growth of 1.68 percent year-on-year in the first quarter. Profits of the five banks totaled 267.5 billion yuan ($38.8 billion) in Q1, official data showed. ICBC posted profit volume of 75.786 billion yuan, leading all four lenders in amount, while given the profit growth from a year earlier, China Construction Bank led with an increase of 3.03 percent. Despite slight profit growth on the back of business restructuring, the asset quality of the banks was up in the January-March period. They managed to control bad loan rates, with ICBC's bad loan rate edging down 0.03 percentage points and ABC down 0.04 percentage points compared with the end of last year.

ANZ posts strong H1 performance

Australian banking giant ANZ has posted strong profits for the first half of the year on Tuesday, after engaging in a divestment process aimed at reshaping its business model. The bank reported an after-tax first-half statutory profit of A$2.9 billion ($2.18 billion), which was a 6-percent increase, while cash profit stood at A$3.4 billion, a 23-percent increase on the comparable period last year. ANZ Chief Executive Officer Shayne Elliott said that the strategy that was employed by the bank over the past year was critical to the successful results that they were able to report. "We also saw significant financial benefits emerging from the strategic and tactical decisions we took in 2016 to simplify the business, improve productivity and increase capital efficiency," Elliott said.

GM's net earnings soar 34 percent in Q1

Driven by sales of profitable trucks and SUVs, strong performance in China and growth for GM Financial, General Motors Co's net income in the first quarter soared nearly 34 percent to a record of $2.61 billion, according to the company's financial statement. The company said earnings per share totaled $1.7, well ahead of analyst calls for $1.48 a share. The company earned $1.26 a share in the quarter a year ago. "Our first-quarter results reflect our resolve to grow profitably and demonstrate the strong earnings power of this company," said GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra.

South Korea reports consumer prices rise

South Korea's consumer prices rose 1.9 percent in April from a year earlier, hovering at a relatively high level on expensive crude oil, a government report showed on Tuesday. The headline inflation, which stayed below 1.5 percent in 2016, rebounded above 2 percent in January, according to Statistics Korea. Since then, the inflation bobbed in and out of 2 percent for the next three months. Costly crude oil led the accelerated inflation. Oil product prices advanced 11.7 percent in April, raising the overall inflation by 0.48 percentage points. Prices for gasoline and diesel jumped 9.5 percent and 14.1 percent each. Prices for agricultural, livestock and fishery prices added 4.5 percent in April, after gaining 5.8 percent in the prior month. Livestock product prices rose 8.7 percent, but vegetable prices declined 6 percent.

Loan delinquency ratio declines

The loan delinquency ratio among South Korean banks turned downward in March as banks resolved delinquent loans by the quarter-end, financial watchdog data showed on Monday. The percentage of bank loans overdue more than a month came in at 0.51 percent of the total as of the end of March, down 0.06 percentage points from a month earlier, according to the Financial Supervisory Service. The ratio gained from 0.47 percent in December last year to 0.53 percent in January and 0.57 percent in February, before turning downward in March. Banks resolved the overdue loans to make their books more sound than usual ahead of the quarter-end. Most local banks disclose balance sheets when they announce quarterly earnings. The delinquent loans reduced from 8.1 trillion won ($7.1 billion) in February to 7.3 trillion won in March.

US manufacturing activity cools down

US manufacturing activity expanded at a slower pace in April, as new orders and employment pulled back in the month. The manufacturing index, also known as the purchasing managers index, registered 54.8 in April, down from the reading of 57.2 in March, the Institute for Supply Management said in a report on Monday. A reading above 50 indicates the sector is generally expanding, while a reading below that level indicates contraction. The new orders index dropped 7 points from the previous month to 57.5; employment index also plunged 6.9 points to 52 while production index went up one point to 58.6. Of the 18 manufacturing industries, only apparel industry reported contraction in April.

Austria announces drop in jobless

Austrian unemployment saw a renewed year-on-year drop of 2.6 percent in April to 413,683 people without work, local media reported on Monday. The new figures from the Social Affairs Ministry show a 41.1 percent increase in the number of registered available jobs compared with April 2016. Also notable was a 16.1 percent year-on-year drop in youth unemployment, along with a drop in the jobless figures for foreign nationals of 2 percent, that goes against a long-standing trend in the opposite direction. Still a problem area, however, was unemployment for persons aged 50 and over, their numbers increasing 4.9 percent to 102,520.

Myanmar to export beans to India

Myanmar's western Rakhine state plans to export 10,000 metric tons of matpe beans to India in the 2017-18 fiscal year, official media reported on Tuesday. Accordingly, arrangements are under way to plant matpe beans in the state during the coming rainy season and it will export the surplus to the neighboring country, Rakhine State Minister of Planning, Revenue and Commerce U Kyaw Aye Thein was quoted as saying. The matpe beans are likely to be shipped directly from the state's Sittway Port instead of Yangon to boost trade in Rakhine state.

China Daily-Agencies