ASIA:

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) raised its FY22 growth forecast for India to 12.5% from 11.5% estimated earlier in January, even as a resurgent Covid spread threatens to undermine the country’s economic recovery. The Washington-based global financial institution, in its annual World Economic Outlook ahead of the annual Spring meeting with the World Bank, said the Indian economy is expected to grow by 6.9% in 2022. China, the only major economy to have a positive growth rate in 2020 of 2.3%, is expected to grow by 8.6% in 2021 and 5.6% in 2022.

The major Asian stock markets had a mixed day today:

• NIKKEI 225 increased 34.16 points or 0.12% to 29,730.79
• Shanghai decreased 3.34 points or -0.10% to 3,479.63
• Hang Seng decreased 263.94 points or -0.91% to 28,674.80
• ASX 200 increased 42.10 points or 0.61% to 6,928.00
• Kospi increased 10.33 points or 0.33% to 3,137.41
• SENSEX increased 460.37 points or 0.94% to 49,661.76
• Nifty50 increased 135.55 points or 0.92% to 14,819.05

The major Asian currency markets had a negative day today:

• AUDUSD decreased 0.00248 or -0.32% to 0.76385
• NZDUSD decreased 0.00253 or -0.36% to 0.70338
• USDJPY decreased 0.11 or -0.10% to 109.65
• USDCNY decreased 0.00003 or -0.00% to 6.54254

Precious Metals:

• Gold decreased 2.81 USD/t oz. or -0.16% to 1,740.76
• Silver increased 0.013 USD/t. oz or 0.05% to 25.183

Some economic news from last night:

Japan:

Foreign Reserves (USD) (Mar) decreased from 1,379.4B to 1,368.5B

South Korea:

Current Account (Feb) increased from 7.06B to 8.03B

Australia:

AIG Construction Index (Mar) increased from 57.4 to 61.8

Services PMI increased from 53.4 to 55.5

New Zealand:

ANZ Commodity Price Index (MoM) increased from 3.3% to 6.1%

Indonesia:

FX Reserves (USD) (Mar) decreased from 138.80B to 137.10B

Some economic news from today:

China:

FX Reserves (USD) (Mar) decreased from 3.205T to 3.170T

Japan:

Coincident Indicator (MoM) (Feb) decreased from 2.9% to -1.3%