BRICS Business

Brazil’s benchmark equity index has now soared almost 60 percent in dollar terms this year [Image: Metrofit]Goldman Sachs Group will invest 600 million reais ($184 million) in Brazilian storage company Metrofit over the next 6 years, the company said on Friday.
Metrofit, founded in 2012, is a joint venture between Brazilian real estate company TRX and U.S. company Metro Self Storage.
The terms of the agreement with the US investment bank are yet to be made public.

About 313 billion rupees of the SBI loans are under stress and two-thirds could sour, SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said in May [Image: SBI]Canadian Brookfield Asset Management Inc. aims to invest about $1 billion in a joint venture with State Bank of India, the country’s largest lender, to invest in stressed Indian assets.
The companies announced this is a joint statement on Wednesday.

Low cost carriers dominate Indian skies and account for more than 60 per cent of the flights in the country [Xinhua]Boeing Co said on Tuesday it expects Indian airlines would need 1850 new aircraft worth $265 billion over the next 20 years.
An earlier forecast had said India would need 1,740 planes in the next two decades.
Demand will be boosted by low crude oil prices and future growth of passenger demand in regional routes, said Boeing.

The Chinese Commerce ministry noted last month that the US has already imposed 161 duties for trade remedies on steel products against other countries by the end of April 2016 [Xinhua]In the light of increasing trade probes in the first half of the year, a Chinese official has expressed concern about the anti-China protectionism now rising in the west.
“Protectionism is rising,” Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Shen Danyang said during a routine press conference on Tuesday, citing a surge in trade remedy cases over Chinese products.

China has been making the transition from heavy industries to a services-led and consumption-driven economy [Xinhua]Activity in China’s services sector rose to an 11-month high in June, a private survey showed on Tuesday.
The Caixin/Markit services purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for June rose to 52.7 from 51.2 in May.
Numbers above 50 indicate improving conditions.
China has been making the transition from heavy industries to a services-led and consumption-driven economy.

Non-manufacturing PMI was at 53.7, compared with 53.1 in May [Xinhua]China’s official manufacturing gauge retreated to the dividing point between expansion and contraction in June.
The Chinese government’s manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) came in at 50.0 in June, versus 50.1 logged in May, although output hit a 12-month high, said official data released on Friday.
The government survey tracks the health of large and state-owned companies.

This is not the first time the PBOC takes measures to devalue the yuan currency [Xinhua]
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) is reportedly throwing its support behind the yuan currency’s recent post-Brexit depreciation in a bid to make Chinese exports more lucrative for foreign markets.
The yuan fell 3 per cent from its March level on Thursday to 6.6 against the US dollar. According to Reuters quoting an unnamed Beijing official source, the PBOC is willing to see the yuan drop as low as 6.8 against the dollar this year.

World markets rallied Monday and Tuesday as fears of Brexit appeared to sink in recent polls [Xinhua]
Fears of a ‘Brexit’ – or Britain voting in Thursday’s referendum to leave the European Union – appear to have subsided in recent days as Asian markets get a leg up following polls in the UK which indicated that most would vote to stay in the organization.

File photo of the C919, China’s first homemade large passenger aircraft, at a plant of Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, Ltd. (COMAC), in Shanghai, east China in November 2015 [Xinhua]Moscow claims it has informed China about commencement of work on developing a heavy aircraft engine with a thrust of 35 tons for a joint Sino-Russian long-range wide-body aircraft.

Chinese Internet giant Alibaba’s chairman Jack Ma gives a speech “Building a new Silk Road for the digital economy” during the 20th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, on June 17, 2016 [Xinhua]Chinese Internet giant Alibaba’s chairman Jack Ma said in the Russian city of St. Petersburg on Friday that the company is closely watching the development of Russia’s small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).