Asia, Global Economy | featured news

China delivered a surprise interest rate cut on Thursday to combat faltering growth, underlining concern among policymakers worldwide that the euro area's deepening crisis is threatening the health of the global economy.

Concerns over a slowdown in the world's biggest economies hit world markets on Friday, with weak indicators out of China and Europe's financial turmoil unsettling investors ahead of a crucial U.S. jobs report.

India’s problems have dampened hopes that it, along with China and other non-Western economies, might help revive global growth.

China's factories faltered in May as export orders fell to two month lows, a private sector survey showed on Thursday, suggesting surprise weakness in April's hard economic data persists even as policymakers seek to shore up growth.

A further lifting of U.S. sanctions on Myanmar, which could come during a visit by officials to Washington this week, would be crucial to opening its long-isolated economy, a senior Myanmar government official said.

China's central bank cut the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves on Saturday, freeing an estimated 400 billion yuan ($63.5 billion) for lending to head-off the risk of a sudden slowdown in the world's second-largest economy.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's economy stuttered unexpectedly in April with lower than expected output data, softening retail sales and easing prices suggesting economic headwinds might be stiffer than thought, requiring more robust policy responses to counter them.

After several official predictions that India would grow by 7-8% in 2011-12, the finance minister finally admitted in his Budget 2012 speech that the growth would be 6.9%. The actual figure may be lower at 6.5%, thanks to the statistical error in sugar production, which dragged down January's industrial production growth figure from 6.8% to 1.1%.

Taiwan snapped two straight quarters of contraction, but an uncertain outlook for its major trading partners prompted Taipei to revise growth forecasts for the year.