Power assured during dry season
Power supply will meet the anticipated surge in demand during the dry season this year, said Dang Huy Cuong, director of the Electricity Regulatory Authority of Viet Nam.
Chinese bank lending shrank in February from the previous month, official data showed Friday, despite moves to ease credit restrictions and boost economic growth.
State-owned lenders issued 710.7 billion yuan (US$112.6 billion) in new loans last month, compared with 738.1 billion yuan in January, the People's Bank of China said in a statement.
The figure was more than 32 percent higher than a year earlier but below the 773 billion yuan forecast in a survey of economists by Dow Jones Newswires.
Last month Beijing cut the amount of money banks must keep in reserve – effectively boosting their lending firepower – for the second time in three months as it moves cautiously to open the credit valves.
The figure, combined with other data released Friday showing the world's second largest economy is slowing, may prompt policymakers to further loosen their grip on credit as they seek to prevent a sharp slowdown in the economy.
China's inflation rate slowed sharply in February and factory output eased in the first two months of the year, as the export-driven economy faces headwinds over Europe's debt crisis and sluggish growth in the United States.
The consumer price index rose 3.2 percent in February – the lowest since June 2010 – compared with 4.5 percent in January, when spending before the Chinese New Year holiday drove up retail prices, the government said.
Before January, inflation had eased for five straight months after hitting a more than three-year high of 6.5 percent in July and analysts had expected the downward trend to resume in February as the economy continued to slow.
Hong Kong-based Royal Bank of Canada strategist Brian Jackson said he expected the slowdown to continue during the first half of the year before stabilising.
"As a result, we do not expect a big shift in monetary policy settings in the near term, with any move to ease liquidity conditions likely to take the form of further cuts in banks' reserve requirements rather than lower policy rates," he said.