Aurelia Butler

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. government likely awarded about $5.4 billion in COVID-19 aid to people with questionable Social Security numbers, a federal watchdog said in a report released on Monday.The watchdog, the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), said it “identified 69,323 questionable Social Security Numbers (SSNs) used to obtain $5.4 billion from the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (COVID-19 EIDL) program and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).”The loans were disbursed between April 2020 and October 2022, the watchdog said in its report, which comes ahead of a scheduled Wednesday hearing by the Republican-led House of Representatives Oversight Committee on fraud in pandemic spending.About 57,500 Paycheck Protection Program forgivable loans worth $3.6 billion were disbursed by August 2020, the report added. The United States is probing many fraud cases pegged to U.S. government assistance programs, such as the Paycheck Protection Program, unemployment insurance and Medicare. In May 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland launched a COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force.Last year, the U.S. Justice Department tapped federal prosecutor Kevin Chambers to lead its efforts to investigate fraudsters who used the pandemic as an excuse to bilk government assistance programs.The report demonstrates “the significant fraud and identity theft that occurred under the prior administration due to the lack of basic anti-fraud controls, as well as how consequential were the Biden administration’s quick actions to reinstate strong anti-abuse measures in these emergency small business programs,” Gene Sperling, a senior adviser to President Joe Biden said in an emailed statement. The watchdog report mentioned that in 2021 the U.S. Small Business Administration made improvements to its assistance program controls. Biden took office in January that year.In September, the inspector general for the U.S. Labor Department said fraudsters likely stole $45.6 billion from the United States’ unemployment insurance program during the coronavirus outbreak by applying tactics like using Social Security numbers of deceased individuals. Also in September, federal prosecutors charged dozens of defendants, who were accused of stealing $250 million from a government aid program that was supposed to feed children in need during the pandemic. More

SINGAPORE, (Reuters) – Like many rich Chinese, graduate student Zayn Zhang thinks Singapore could be ideal to park his family’s wealth.He’s hoping that studying at a university in the Asian financial hub will lead to permanent residency and while the 26-year-old hits the books, his wife is out looking for a S$5-7 million ($4-5 million) penthouse.”Singapore is great. It is stable and offers a lot of investment opportunities,” Zhang told Reuters at a business and philanthropy forum here late last year. His family might establish a Singapore family office to manage its wealth in the future, he added.Hosting discussions on topics like family wealth and sustainable investing, the forum at Singapore’s Shangri-La hotel was attended by hundreds of wealthy people, many bedecked in designer gear from Hermes belt buckles to monogrammed Gucci shawls and the latest Dior bags. Several Chinese attendees said they had recently relocated to Singapore or were thinking of doing so.With its tax-friendly regime and seen as politically stable, Singapore has long been a haven for ultra-rich foreigners. But it has seen a fresh influx of wealth since 2021 after it became one of the first Asian cities to significantly ease pandemic restrictions and as many Chinese became disillusioned with their country’s draconian COVID policies.That disenchantment propelled Zhang, who gained Hong Kong residency in 2021, to look at Singapore.”We just lost patience over time,” he said, describing the lengthy quarantines he had to endure when travelling between Hong Kong and mainland China. Political turmoil in Hong Kong has also been disheartening, he added.FAMILY OFFICE BOOM Singapore’s number of family offices – which handle investments, taxation, wealth transfer and other financial matters for the super rich – surged to about 700 in 2021 from 400.Well-known Singapore family offices include those set up by James Dyson of vacuum cleaner fame, hedge fund manager Ray Dalio and Zhang Yong, founder of China’s Haidilao hotpot restaurant chain.Though fresher statistics are not available, those involved in the industry said interest in family offices picked up in 2022 and is expected to continue unabated this year. China’s abandonment of zero-COVID policies is not expected to change the trend, given concern among the country’s rich about President Xi Jinping’s common prosperity drive that aims to reduce inequality, they added.Chung Ting Fai, a lawyer who helps set up family offices, said in late 2022, he had one enquiry a week from people who want to move at least $20 million into Singapore. That’s up from about an enquiry a month in 2021, while in January this year, he received two enquiries a week.Many are parents looking to obtain permanent residency for their children, he said, noting enquiries also came from Japanese and Malaysian potential clients in addition to Chinese.Part of Singapore’s attraction for the rich is its government-administered global investor programme under which people who invest at least S$2.5 million in a business, a fund or a family office can apply for permanent residency.Grace Tang, executive director at Phillip Private Equity which operates one of two global investor programme funds in Singapore, said her new year has been filled with meetings with potential investors, most of them Chinese.While some are setting up family offices, others are setting up business headquarters in Singapore or investing in funds domiciled in Singapore, she said.WEALTH MANAGEMENT HUBSingapore’s assets under management grew 16% to S$5.4 trillion in 2021 – the latest year for which data is available. More than three-quarters of that originated outside Singapore, with just under a third coming from other Asia-Pacific countries. GRAPHIC: Singapore’s assets under management jump – https://www.reuters.com/graphics/SINGAPORE-ECONOMY/WEALTH/byvrlrxblve/chart.png The influx of wealth is part of a wider trend of people returning to Singapore after an exodus of ex-patriates during the pandemic. Last year, the city had 30,000 more permanent residents and 97,000 more foreigners on a work or other long-term visa, boosting its population to 5.64 million.Singapore’s new additions sent rents surging 21% in the first nine months of last year. Home prices have also jumped over the past two years with mainland Chinese buyers continuing to be the top foreign buyers of expensive private properties.Another telling sign of how private wealth is flowing in is skyrocketing golf club memberships. The cost of membership to Singapore’s prestigious Sentosa Golf Club has hit S$880,000 for foreigners, more than double 2019 levels, according to club membership brokerage Singolf Services.Desmond Teo, Asia Pacific family enterprise leader at consulting firm EY said the inflows of money support Singapore’s financial services sector and startups, creating a “rich ecosystem” that makes the country more attractive to new stakeholders. “When you hit a certain critical mass, the critical mass itself is an attraction,” he said. ($1 = 1.3110 Singapore dollars) More

TOKYO (Reuters) – From inflation allowances to the reskilling of workers, firms in Japan are stepping up efforts to help employees fight rising prices and a labour crunch, even though some cannot afford pay hikes that do more than offset cost-push inflation.As annual “shunto” labour talks get into full swing, momentum from both labour and management is growing for firms to offer such hikes to cushion, even if not beat, consumer inflation, which hit a 41-year high of 4% in December.At the spring session of the labour talks, set to wrap in mid-March, major firms, such as Toyota Motor (NYSE:TM) Corp, negotiate with in-house unions to set wages for the coming fiscal year from April.Labour shortages and rising consumer inflation, which is double the central bank’s target of 2%, are spurring cautious firms, with a 500-trillion-yen ($3.85 trillion) hoard of internal reserves, to hike wages.About a quarter of Japanese firms have offered inflation allowances or plan to do so, said corporate credit research firm Teikoku Databank. Such allowances range from 6,500 yen ($50) for monthly payments to 54,000 yen in lump sums, on average. “I received the money just when we had our second baby,” said Shinichiro Mori, who received a one-off allowance of 150,000 yen last summer from groupware developer Cybozu Inc, one of about 800 employees to do so. “I appreciated the money,” Mori, 41, told Reuters. “We spent it on baby goods, utility bills and other living expenses, as we stayed home all day taking care of our baby.”News that Fast Retailing Co, operator of the Uniqlo clothing chain, will revise its pay system for employees, with raises as much as 40%, provides another example.The private sector expects the drive to help boost productivity, meshing with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s “new capitalism” initiative on wealth distribution that put a top priority on wage hikes.Such demands by Japanese policymakers come against the backdrop of 15 years of grinding deflation that saw firms shelve hikes in base salary from the early 2000s to the early 2010s, when rounds of stimulus spending failed to spark economic growth, but piled up public debt instead.SUSTAINABLE PAY HIKESOECD data shows Japanese workers’ wages have grown about 5% over a period of 30 years from 1990, during which U.S. pay rose 1.5 times and pay for South Koreans doubled.Takahide Kiuchi, a former member of the board of the Bank of Japan, called for wage hikes to be sustained over time so that cumulative pay rises could offset price hikes in the long run.”Bonuses or inflation allowances would have only a limited impact on easing the pain of cost-push inflation, as consumers tend to save one-off payouts rather than spend,” added Kiuchi, now an executive economist at the Nomura Research Institute.The government and the central bank say inflation must grow in tandem with wage growth to fuel private consumption, which accounts for more than half the economy, paving the way for the Bank of Japan to achieve its inflation target in a sustainable, stable fashion.But one-off payments do not make consumers more confident about increasing spending, although a rise in base pay, a salary component that is hard to reverse, is more likely to boost such confidence and set workers spending more.Real wages fell 2.5% in November, down for the ninth straight month, following the previous month’s decline of 3.8%, the latest data shows.Mori’s employer, Cybozu, has offered employees a record pay hike in the upper reaches of the 1% to 10% range this year.That would surpass the 3% target of Kishida’s government, and even the 5% sought by the Japan Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), while Japan’s biggest business lobby Keidanren urged companies to offer positive wage hikes, including base pay.”We always feel the need to respond to labour shortages of engineers, in particular,” said Yumika Nakane, the firm’s human resources head. “We set pay scales as we’re fully aware salary is one of the keys to attract workers.”Despite a jobless rate of 2.5% in November that reflects the tight labour market, and steady job availability, at a ratio of 1.35 per seeker, policymakers complain about the absence of demand-pull inflation that entails wage growth.  LABOUR TALKSAt this year’s shunto talks, large firms are likely to offer the biggest pay hikes in 26 years, or an average of 2.85% for the financial year starting in April, a poll of 33 economists by the Japan Economic Research Center (JERC) showed.However, small firms, which employ seven of every 10 workers, face a severe situation, and more than 70% of them have no plan to raise wages, a separate poll by the Jonan Shinkin Bank and the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper showed.To push small firms in this direction, authorities want to improve labour productivity and encourage more workers to switch to industries with better prospects for growth, provided that they will not lack for employment.Kishida’s government plans to tap 1 trillion yen over the next five years in human resources, providing new support for firms hiring mid-career workers as well as for reskilling efforts to spur labour turnover.Workers have high expectations from this year’s labour talks, which they hope will counter cost-push inflation while tackling the tight labour market to help boost the economy.Some companies are ready to take the initiative.For instance, Internet media firm Cyberagent’s “reskilling centre” has trained 200 information technology engineers, upgrading their skills to match its needs, besides wooing engineers from outside.From this spring, it will also raise the starting salary for new graduates by 12% to 420,000 yen.”As the IT industry faces a lack of engineers, we can contribute to resolving the labour crunch by cultivating human resources, which is our strength,” said Hiroto Minegishi, the firm’s general manager for technical human resources.”As a result, we can help wages growth and enhance productivity across the IT industry.”($1 = 129.9700 yen) More

The government survey is likely to say that growth is seen at 6.5% for 2023-24 under the baseline scenario, the person said, declining to be named as the matter was confidential. This would be the slowest in three years. Nominal growth is likely to be forecast at 11% for 2023-24, the source added.Growth in the financial year beginning April 1 will remain strong relative to most global economies, led by sustained private consumption, a pick-up in lending by banks and improved capital spending by corporations, the survey will likely say, the source said.An economic survey by Chief Economic Adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran will be tabled in the parliament on Tuesday by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, a day before she presents the budget for the next fiscal year.The Economic Survey is the government’s review of how the economy fared in the past year.India’s economy has rebounded since the COVID-19 pandemic, but the Russia-Ukraine conflict has triggered inflationary pressures and prompted central banks, including India’s, to reverse the ultra-loose monetary policy they adopted during the pandemic.The survey will likely take note of above-target inflation in India, estimated by the central bank at 6.8% in 2022/23, but is likely to argue that the pace of price increases is not high enough to deter private consumption or low enough to weaken investment.The survey will likely caution that pressure on the Indian rupee could continue due to the tightening of monetary policy, the source said. India’s current account deficit (CAD) may also remain elevated as imports could remain high due to a strong local economy while exports ease due to weakness in the global economy, the survey will likely caution.India’s CAD was 4.4% of GDP in the July-September quarter, higher than 2.2% a quarter ago and 1.3% a year ago, as rising commodity prices and a weak rupee increased the trade gap.Even growth of 6.5% could keep India among the fastest growing economies in the world, despite losing pace from an estimated 7% in the fiscal year that ends on March 31. It has grown at 8.7% in the previous year mainly due to pandemic-related distortions.The survey will likely point to an improvement in employment conditions in India due to stronger consumption but add that a further pick-up in private investment is essential for job creation. The government’s increased spending on infrastructure in the last two years should help, the document will argue.Unemployment in India had soared during the pandemic. The government’s economic research department will also likely point to improvement in the financial health of the Indian banking sector as a factor aiding economic growth. More

The Biden administration has stopped providing US companies with licences to export to Huawei as it moves towards imposing a total ban on the sale of American technology to the Chinese telecom equipment giant.Several people familiar with the discussions inside the administration said the commerce department had notified some companies that it would no longer grant licences to any group wanting to export American technology to Huawei. The move marks the latest prong in Washington’s campaign to curb the Shenzhen-based tech company, which US security officials believe helps China engage in espionage. Huawei denies any involvement in spying. The Trump administration in 2019 imposed tough restrictions on exporting American technology to Huawei by adding the group to a blacklist called the “entity list”. The move was part of a strategy to crack down on Chinese companies that Washington believed posed a risk to US national security.But the commerce department continued to grant export licences for some companies, including Qualcomm and Intel, to provide Huawei with technology that was not related to high-speed 5G telecom networks. Over the past two years, President Joe Biden has taken an even tougher stance on China than Donald Trump did, particularly in the area of cutting-edge technology. In October, he imposed sweeping restrictions on providing advanced semiconductors and chipmaking equipment to Chinese groups.Alan Estevez, head of the commerce department’s bureau of industry and security, has been leading a review of China-related policy in an effort to determine what further steps the administration should take to make it harder for the Chinese military to use US technology to develop weapons.The officials reviewing China policy include Thea Kendler, a former prosecutor who was involved in a criminal case that the US brought against Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei. Meng was detained in Canada for three years following a request from Washington, but she later reached a deal with US prosecutors that allowed her to return to China.In December, the Biden administration placed several dozen more Chinese companies on the entity list, including Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC), a flash memory company that has emerged as a Chinese national champion.The Financial Times last year reported that the Biden administration was investigating claims that YMTC had violated US export controls by providing Huawei with chips containing American technology for its most advanced smartphones.Republicans on Capitol Hill, led by Michael McCaul, who recently became head of the House foreign affairs committee, have called on the Biden administration to stop providing export licences for Huawei.Martijn Rasser, a technology expert at CNAS, a think-tank, said the latest action was a “really significant move”. He said Huawei had branched out into new areas, such as developing undersea cables and cloud computing, over the past few years, raising fresh national security concerns.“The actions by the commerce department are partly driven by the fact that Huawei as a company is a very different animal than it was four years ago when it was focused on 5G,” said Rasser, a former CIA official.The development comes as secretary of state Antony Blinken prepares to travel next week to China in the first visit to the country by a member of Biden’s cabinet.The latest move on Huawei comes as the US steps up efforts with allies to slow China’s push to develop cutting-edge technology such as semiconductors that are used for everything from artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons modelling to the development of hypersonic weapons.

Washington last week reached a deal with Japan and the Netherlands that would see the US allies put restrictions on companies in their countries to prevent them exporting certain chipmaking equipment to China. The US in October imposed unilateral restrictions on American companies to stop them exporting semiconductor manufacturing tools.Estevez late last year suggested that the US was looking at a number of other areas. Asked about reports that the administration was considering restrictions on quantum and biotechnology, he told the CNAS think-tank: “If I was a betting person I would put down money on that.”A formal decision on whether or not to implement a total ban on the export of chips with US technology to China has not yet been taken. The commerce department declined to comment on the halting of licences but said the agency, along with other government departments, would “continually assess our policies and regulations and communicate regularly with external stakeholders”. Huawei declined to comment. Follow Demetri Sevastopulo on Twitter More