Ctrip senior management to take pay cuts

CHINA’S largest online travel firm Ctrip said yesterday that senior management of the company would take a pay cut of up to half their salary to cope with the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the firm, according to a letter reviewed reporters.

Chairman James Liang and chief executive officer Jane Sun will stop taking salaries from March onwards, the letter said. In addition, merit increases for most of its employees will also be put on hold until situation improves, the letter said.

Developers report declining sales amid epidemic

PROPERTY developers in China saw sales decline in February amid the novel coronavirus outbreak, an industry report showed yesterday.

Sales of the surveyed 100 major property developers marked a monthly decline of 43.8 percent and a drop of 37.9 percent year on year, according to data from CRIC, a property research institution. The contracted sales of China Vanke, one of the country’s biggest property developers, totaled about 28.03 billion yuan (US$4 billion) in February, down 35.1 percent year on year, according to the company. China’s major developer Poly Developments and Holdings Group Co., also known as Poly Real Estate, saw its February sales down 39.94 percent year on year to 20.06 billion yuan.

German exports to China slump

GERMAN exports to China fell by 6.5 percent on the year in January, Germany’s Federal Statistics Office said yesterday, but it added that the drop could not yet be linked to the coronavirus that took hold in the Chinese economy at the start of the year.

Imports from China fell by just 0.5 percent on the year in January. “However, no clear effects of the coronavirus can be deduced from the results available to date,” the office said in a statement.

Local govts. to beef up ‘new infrastructure’

LOCAL governments in China have set out for “new infrastructure” projects to offset the economic impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak and cultivate new growth drivers.

A total of 25 provincial-level regions have so far put “new infrastructure” projects in their government work reports, with 21 intending to advance 5G network construction, according to yesterday’s Securities Daily. Guangdong Province has arranged 1,230 major projects this year with a total investment of 5.9 trillion yuan, focusing on 5G telecom networks and inter-city transit systems.