China set a growth target of around 5% for 2024 on Tuesday.

China’s Premier Li Qiang announced the goal in his work report during the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress.

Li promised steps to transform the country’s development mode and projected a budget deficit of 3% of GDP.

The government also plans to issue 1 trillion yuan in special ultra-long term treasury bonds. It set the consumer inflation target at 3% and aims to create 12 million urban jobs this year.

The government also vowed to improve policies supporting childbirth and raise basic pensions for the elderly.

China’s President Xi Jinping has urged ministries and local governments to develop new productive forces tailored to local conditions to achieve high-quality development.

Xi emphasized the importance of implementing new quality productive forces during a discussion with the delegation of Jiangsu province as part of the National People’s Congress.

He also stressed the importance of leveraging new technologies to upgrade traditional industries.
 

China’s factory activity shrank for a fifth month in February, official data showed on Friday.

The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index fell to 49.1 in February from 49.2 in January, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The 50-mark separates expansion from contraction.

Zhao Qinghe, senior statistician of the NBS attributed the drop to the Lunar New Year holiday lasting from Feb.10 to Feb.17.

Medium- and small-sized factory activity all contracted last month while that of large enterprises remained flat.

New orders index came in at 49, unchanged from January.

 

Hong Kong’s retail sales rose 0.9% in the 12 months to January, official estimate by the Census and Statistics Department said on Friday.

The value of total retail sales in January reached 36.5 billion Hong Kong dollars according to the department’s provisional estimate.

The revised estimate of the volume of total retail sales in December 2023 increased by 4.8% compared with a year earlier.

Online sales only accounted for 6.5% of total retail sales and was down by 20.9% compared to a year earlier.
 

China’s lottery ticket sales jumped 73.3% in January from last year, official data showed on Sunday.

The sales reached 57.56 billion yuan in January, data from the Ministry of Finance showed.

Sales of lottery tickets supporting the welfare system surged 81.6% while those supporting the sports sector rose 69.2%.

The US House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a spending bill to fund the federal government through the current fiscal year.

The $467.5 billion bill provides funding for agriculture, energy, housing and veterans’ affairs.

The bill now goes to the Senate for passage by Friday.

South Korea’s inflation rate rose faster in February compared with the previous month, official data showed on Wednesday.

The consumer price index (CPI) rose 3.1% in February from a year earlier, up from 2.8% in January.

Core inflation which excludes volatile food and energy prices rose 2.5%, unchanged from that in January.

 

Australia's gross domestic product (GDP) edged up 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2023, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed on Wednesday.

Annual GDP growth slowed to 1.5% last year, the data showed.

Household spending didn’t add to add to economic growth at all.

 

UK’s Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt announced that it would cut taxes for works ahead of a general election this year.

Hunt said he would cut National Insurance, a payroll tax paid by workers and employers that funds state pensions and some benefits, by 2%.

The tax advantages for foreign earnings of British residents who are foreign nationals will also be abolished.

 

The European Union hit tech giant Apple with an antitrust fine of over 1.8 billion euros.

In a statement, the European Commission said it found Apple applied restrictions on app developers preventing them from informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app, which is illegal under EU antitrust rules.

The Commission said Apple’s practice “amounts to unfair trading conditions”.

The EU said the 1.8 billion euros lump sum fine was necessary as a significant part of the harm caused by the infringement consists of non-monetary harm and it was sufficient to deter Apple from repeating the same or a similar infringement.