Passenger travel would likely fall 45% on-year during the 40-day travel season that ends Feb. 18, Liu Xiaoming, a vice minister at the transport ministry, said at a briefing in Beijing Saturday. Between Jan 25. and Feb. 14, airlines carried an average of 470,000 people a day, only a quarter of last year’s volume. Passenger numbers from Feb. 15-23 are estimated to be one 10th of the peak period, said Li Jian, deputy head of the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
ECONOMY
Next month will see the formal launch of negotiations on a new relationship after Britain left the EU at the end of January.
Investing.com – Attention remained on China and the coronavirus this week as stocks and commodities swung on differing reports of the numbers of new cases.
Britain formally left the European Union at the end of January but a transition period is in effect until Dec. 31, during which time little changes.
BENGALURU (Reuters) – The European Central Bank’s negative interest rate policy is not harming the euro zone economy but will not succeed in bringing inflation up to the central bank’s target, a Reuters poll of economists found.
The decision reported late on Saturday and confirmed to Reuters by an MEA source on Sunday drew criticism including from the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) whose leader, former foreign minister Gebran Bassil, called the move illegal.
The far-right Alternative for Germany representative was railing about negative interest rates — and while enduring bluster is par for the course for ECB presidents, the Feb. 6 encounter in the European Parliament also illustrated how politically charged that stimulus tool has become.
BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungary will cut taxes on labor and for small firms, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Sunday as he warned of tough times ahead for a domestic economy hobbled by stagnation in the euro zone.
The People’s Bank of China offered 200 billion yuan ($29 billion) of one-year medium-term loans on Monday. The rate was lowered by 10 basis points to 3.15%, the lowest since 2017. The central bank also added 100 billion yuan of funds via 7-day reverse repurchase agreements, resulting in a net 700 billion yuan withdrawal of money from markets as some 1 trillion yuan of reverse repos matured on Monday.
The comments were made in the leading Communist Party theoretical journal Qiushi.
