New index to gauge services sector growth

    CHINA’S services sector growth continued to pick up in the first two months of 2017, official data showed yesterday.

    The new Index of Services Production grew 8.2 percent year on year in the January-February period, 0.1 percentage point faster than that in December 2016, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). This is the first time the NBS has rolled out a comprehensive index to evaluate services sector development, according to NBS spokesperson Sheng Laiyun.

    China investment firm to buy 42% of Kumho Tire

    AN equity investment fund from the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao has agreed to buy 42.01 percent of South Korea’s Kumho Tire.

    In a statement filed to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange yesterday, Qingdao Doublestar said a subsidiary of Qingdao Xingwei Equity Investment Fund signed a deal Monday with Korea Development Bank to pay 955 billion won (US$830 million) for about 66.37 million shares the bank and others hold. Founded in 1960, Kumho Tire is the second-largest tire maker in South Korea.

    No ‘bottom line’ for yuan or FX reserves

    CHINA’S central bank does not have a “bottom line” for either the yuan exchange rate against the dollar or foreign exchange reserves, a senior official told Reuters in a Friday interview.

    A fall in reserves below US$3 trillion earlier this year raised questions in markets over the central bank’s pain threshold for bolstering the yuan. But, Zhou Xuedong, director of the business management department in the People’s Bank of China, denied this was a concern. “As far as I know, China has never set a bottom line for the yuan exchange rate or the size of foreign reserves. The markets will guess about which level the yuan will reach, which then creates expectations,” Zhou said.

    Consumer complaints hit record high in 2016

    THE country’s nationwide industry and administrative units received more than 8.08 million consumer complaints, reports and inquiries in 2016, representing year-on-year growth of 3.9 percent, local authorities said yesterday. Of these cases, the number of consumer complaints increased by 29.1 percent year on year to 1.667 million in 2016, hitting a record high, according to figures released by China’s State Administration for Industry & Commerce. Product quality, contract problems and after-sales services were the top three complaints, though down from previous years.