Markets in Asia

摘要

Orders from Chinese buyers had still not picked up by the end of April and reduced activity due to the holidays of Mayday week obscured the market picture for the immediate future. China's banking authority compounded the effect ahead of the holiday, on April 28, by issuing an ambiguous, or at least a misunderstood directive to commercial banks not to increase lending. When the story spread that this was an order to freeze lending it was taken as a draconian reinforcement of the order of a few days earlier requiring a rise in cash reserves, aimed at restricting liquidity. Panic rippled through stock exchanges around the world, depressing the share price of every prominent supplier of raw materials and manufactures to China. Next day the authorities issued a hasty clarification, and even called for more lending for coal production and infrastructure links such as roads and ports - a promise of steel-intensive projects that must have been music to the ears of any steel exporter and their shareholders.