Economy

Paetongtarn Shinawatra also told reporters she hoped for economic growth of more than 3% next year. The government has said it wants to raise the daily minimum wage to 400 baht ($11.72) nationwide to help drive the economy.However, the wage committee on Monday decided to raise the daily minimum wage by 2.9% to between 337 baht and 400 baht ($9.9 to $11.7), varying in each region, effective Jan. 1.The top end of that range will apply only to the provinces of Phuket, Chachoengsao, Chon Buri and Rayong, and the holiday island of Samui.Paetongtarn said the government also approved tax breaks to boost consumption, but gave no details.Deputy Finance Minister Julapun Amornvivat said the government would offer a tax deduction of up to 50,000 baht based on proven spending, but excluding domestic travel. The tax breaks will be introduced between Jan 16 and Feb 28, he added.The prime minister said the cabinet had approved the second phase the handout scheme worth 40 billion baht for four million elderly people who would receive payments by January.The first phase of the signature $14 billion scheme was launched in September, with about 14.5 million people having so far received payments of 10,000 baht each. The government plans to distribute the handouts to about 45 million people overall.($1 = 34.1300 baht) More

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The Japanese companies are considering joining forces to survive in a rapidly changing auto industry, but auto history is filled with troubled and failed marriages.The Japanese automakers Honda and Nissan are discussing a possible merger, in a bid to share costs and help themselves compete in a fast-changing and increasingly competitive industry.But a merger, even of two companies from the same country, is no guarantee of success, and the history of automotive deals is littered with failures and disappointments.Combining two large, global manufacturing operations is an incredibly difficult feat that involves reconciling different technologies, models and approaches to doing business. A merger’s success rests on getting ambitious managers and engineers who have spent decades competing with one another to cooperate. Teams and projects have to be scrapped or changed, and executives must cede power to others. In some cases, the merging companies are hamstrung by elected leaders who force them to keep operating money-losing factories.Thomas Stallkamp, an automotive consultant based in Michigan, was involved in the struggles of one of the biggest auto mergers, the 1998 merger of Chrysler and the German company Daimler. Mr. Stallkamp spent years in senior roles at Chrysler and DaimlerChrysler.“Car companies are big, complicated organizations, with large engineering staffs, manufacturing plants all over the world, hundreds of thousands of employees, in a capital-intensive business,” Mr. Stallkamp said. “You try to put two of them together and you run into a lot of egos and infighting, so it’s very, very difficult to make it work.”Honda and Nissan announced plans this year to work together on electric vehicles, and on Monday they formally began talks about extending that cooperation to a merger that could also include Mitsubishi Motors, a smaller manufacturer that works closely with Nissan. A pairing would unite Japan’s second- and third-biggest automakers, after Toyota, and create a company that would be the third largest in the world by number of cars produced, after Toyota and Volkswagen.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

TOKYO (Reuters) – Bank of Japan policymakers agreed in October to keep raising interest rates if the economy moves in line with their forecast, but some stressed the need for caution due to the uncertain outlook, minutes of the meeting showed on Tuesday.The central bank left interest rates steady at 0.25% at the Oct. 30-31 meeting but projected inflation to move around its 2% target in the coming years, signalling that it was on track to hike borrowing costs in the near-term horizon.The nine-member board shared the view that the BOJ would continue to raise interest rates if its economic and price projections are met, the minutes showed.But many members also stressed the need to continue scrutinising risks surrounding overseas economies, including that of the United States, and still-unstable markets.”We must guide monetary policy cautiously given heightening uncertainty at home and abroad,” one member was quoted as saying in explaining why the BOJ should stand pat in October.The BOJ kept rates unchanged at a subsequent meeting in December to await more data on whether wages would retain their upward momentum next year, and to gain more clarity on U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s policies. More

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The central bank had kept its benchmark cash rate unchanged at 4.35% during the December 9-10 meeting, and had given scant cues on when it could potentially begin trimming interest rates. The RBA noted that inflation had eased largely in line with its expectations in recent months, although underlying inflation still remained well above the central bank’s 2% to 3% annual target, and is not expected to fall within the target until at least 2026. The RBA minutes showed that policymakers judged that the risk to inflation returning more slowly to its target range had diminished, with a bulk of this notion being driven by weak gross domestic product growth. Private consumption had also slowed, amid weakening wage growth. But on the flip side, strong spending during the Black Friday sales event and resilience in the labor market kept policymakers wary over inflation, as did signs of sticky inflation in international economies. Still, the minutes showed that policymakers acknowledged that if they gained more confidence that inflation was easing in line with their targets, it would be “appropriate to begin relaxing the degree of monetary policy tightness,” marking the first time since its recent rate hike cycle that the RBA has acknowledged the possibility of easing. But until the RBA was able to gain such confidence, it signaled that rates will remain unchanged.Analysts expect the central bank to begin cutting rates only by the second quarter 2025 in a shallow easing cycle.  More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Federal Reserve said on Monday it was considering major changes to its annual bank “stress tests” in light of recent legal developments, including allowing lenders to provide comment on the models it uses, in a major victory for Wall Street banks.The Fed said it may also allow lenders to provide input on the hypothetical scenarios it uses for the annual bank health checks, and it may also average results over two years to reduce annual volatility in how much capital banks must set aside to absorb potential losses.Created following the 2007-2009 financial crisis, the tests assess whether big lenders could weather an economic shock. They are core to the U.S. capital regime, dictating how much cash lenders must put aside to absorb losses, and how much they can return to shareholders.The Fed said the proposed changes were not designed to affect overall capital requirements, but followed recent court rulings that have significantly changed the framework of administrative law in recent years. “The (Fed) Board analyzed the current stress test in view of the evolving legal landscape and determined to modify the test in important respects to improve its resiliency.” In June, the Supreme Court dealt a major blow to federal regulatory power by overturning a 1984 precedent that had given deference to government agencies in interpreting laws they administer. That precedent arose from a ruling involving oil company Chevron (NYSE:CVX) that had called for judges to defer to reasonable federal agency interpretations of U.S. laws deemed to be ambiguous. While the 2010 Dodd-Frank law passed following the crisis broadly requires the Fed to test banks’ balance sheets, the capital adequacy analysis the Fed performs as part of tests, or the resulting capital it directs lenders to set aside, is not mandated by law. Analysts have said the overturning of Chevron makes the stress tests more vulnerable to litigation.Wall Street banks and their Washington trade groups have been quietly lobbying this year to try to increase the transparency of the stress tests, according to industry sources and public records of meetings industry groups had with the central bank. Those discussions were part of a massive industry effort to water down the so-called Basel Endgame capital hikes, over which Wall Street banks had taken the unusual move of threatening to sue the Fed and the two other federal regulators working on the draft rules. Both the Basel standards and the tests help set bank capital.Banks have in the past been extremely reluctant to sue federal banking regulators, but have grown bolder as conservative-leaning U.S. courts have proved increasingly receptive to industry litigation arguing federal agencies are overstepping their authority.The Bank Policy Institute, an industry trade group that has been a vocal critic of the tests, said in a statement Monday’s announcement was the “first step towards transparency and accountability.” “We are reviewing it closely and considering additional options to ensure timely reforms that are both good law and good policy,” said BPI President and CEO Greg Baer. More