China Southern Power Grid, a state-owned company transmits and distributes electrical power in China's five southern provinces, saw its power sales standing at 257.8 TWh during the first four months this year, up 2% year on year, according to China’s National Development and Reform Commission.

Of this, power consumption of Guangdong and Hainan rose 4.6% and 4.4% compared with the same period last year, respectively, while that of Guangxi declined 0.8%, Yunnan dropped 0.6%, and Guizhou fell 3.1%.

In April, sales of the company to the five provinces reached 69.3 TWh, down 0.8% on the year, mainly due to rainy weather in southern China and low temperature in the eastern coast.
 
http://en.sxcoal.com/0/145525/DataShow.html

India is considering setting up an independent panel to help state-owned banks negotiate settlements with big businesses on bad loans, in order to shield bankers from a populist backlash they say is hobbling efforts to clean up their balance sheets.

India's $121 billion troubled debt pile, over $100 billion of which is on the books of state-owned banks, has come under close scrutiny from prosecutors, the media and politicians. Some have blamed banks for going too easy on corporate tycoons, and do not want taxpayers propping up the struggling banking sector.

The proposal, being examined by the government and in its early stages, would give the panel power to define the "haircut" a bank should face on a loan gone sour, protecting bankers from critics who want failed Indian firms to pay back in full, two finance ministry and two central bank officials said.

Bad debt has hampered banks' ability to lend, threatening to throttle a nascent economic recovery.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made repairing bank balance sheets his administration's "top-most priority," a senior government official said.

"Banks have been very reluctant to take a haircut where they face newspaper criticism," said a second senior official, who is familiar with discussions on the panel. He declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

The second official added that the proposal had run into hurdles already, however, amid questions over how it would fit into India's existing legal framework.

A finance ministry spokesman declined to comment. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the proposal.

Fear of bad headlines was one reason why state-run banks declined to consider embattled tycoon Vijay Mallya's offer to pay up to $900 million in tranches to settle about $1.4 billion his defunct Kingfisher Airlines owed, two banking sources said.

Mallya now also faces a money laundering investigation.

Mallya told the Financial Times late last month that he wanted a "reasonable" settlement that he could afford and banks could justify. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Bad loans have piled up as subdued consumer demand hits corporate earnings, making it harder for big businesses to repay loans.

RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan has set a deadline of March 2017 for banks to clean up their books, and the government said it would inject $11 billion in state banks by March 2019 to help them repair their balance sheets.

India Ratings and Research, a local affiliate of Fitch, has said the government would have to cough up as much as $45 billion if the lenders failed to raise funds from markets to address expected future capital shortfalls.

http://www.reuters.com/article/india-banks-idUSL3N1821LL

Mining giant Rio Tinto’s incoming CEO Jean-Sébastien Jacques on Thursday told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting, in Brisbane, that his focus would remain firmly on productivity improvements. 

Jacques, who was previously employed as Rio’s copper and coal CEO, would succeed Sam Walsh when he retires in July this year. “There is no doubt these are challenging times for the sector, and for your company. The macro-economic environment is tough, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, from whichever way you look at it. 

I am under no illusions of the task and challenges ahead,” Jacques said. He added that while it would not be an ‘easy ride’ for Rio into the future, the company had significant assets on which to build its foundations. “But these attributes alone will not deliver sector leading performance. We cannot be complacent just because we have Tier 1 assets. We must always challenge ourselves to be more productive, more performance driven and more proactive in our engagement with stakeholders and society,” he said. 

Walsh on Thursday reiterated that Rio’s cost savings initiatives had delivered more than $6-billion in cost cuts since 2013, with the company releasing some $1.5-billion in working capital in 2015. “We reduced capital expenditure for 2015 to $4.7-billion and we are reducing capital expenditure to $4-billion in 2016 and $5-billion in 2017. We have not done this at the expense of future growth, but by re-assessing projects, lowering costs, and only investing in the highest returning projects,” Walsh said. 

Over the next two years, Rio was targeting to cut operating costs by a further $2-billion, and would also remove $3-bilion in capital expenditure, compared with its previous guidance, while implementing a new dividend policy. “These actions are designed to ensure we maintain our balance sheet strength and deliver shareholder returns commensurate with the economic environment and supported by the quality of our world-class assets,” Walsh said.

http://www.miningweekly.com/article/rios-new-boss-focused-on-cost-savings-2016-05-05

Mark Mobius is piling into commodity stocks in China, saying that a rebound in raw-material markets is only getting started after prices sank too far and that gains may be extreme.

Templeton Emerging Markets Group will add more raw-material stocks from Asia’s top economy, according to Mobius, executive chairman of the group, who’s been investing in emerging markets for more than four decades. Many of them will be good holdings for the long term, he said in an e-mail interview, without identifying particular companies.

China’s commodity producers, which were the worst mainland equity investments over almost a decade, have led this year’s rebound as China boosted stimulus and local investors swarmed into the nation’s futures markets, with bets on everything from steel bars to cotton. The Bloomberg Commodity Index rallied for a second month in April, and assessments are stacking up that the worst of the rout is now over, including from industry veteran Tom Albanese, a former head of Rio Tinto Group.

“We have already seen how both commodity prices and the commodity stock prices went down too far, beyond realistic assessments,” Mobius said. “We can now expect movement on the upside to be extreme in percentage terms. If there is a move down, there is a good chance that we would increase.”

http://www.mineweb.com/news/mining-finance-and-investment/mobius-says-buy-commodity-stocks-as-rebounds-just-beginning/?platform=hootsuite

The crusading federal judge behind Brazil’s explosive corruption investigation, facing the limits of his mandate and signs of political pushback, sees his role in the case winding down by the end of the year, a turning point in a probe that has helped push the president to the brink of impeachment.

For more than two years, Judge Sergio Moro and his team of prosecutors and police in the southern town of Curitiba have tracked the $1.8-billion graft scandal across four continents. They uncovered a crime ring so epic that it shattered Brazil’s political and economic leadership and helped tip the nation into its worst recession in a century.

Now, legal challenges are chipping away at Moro’s jurisdiction over executives amid criticism that he’s over-reaching. Brazilian law also bars him from going after sitting politicians accused of graft. So he expects significantly fewer new operations under his watch starting next year, according to three top officials who asked not to be named relaying details from private conversations. The press-shy judge declined to comment.

That doesn’t mean corruption investigations will end but it probably means a substantial drop in their intensity and speed. The Supreme Court has sole jurisdiction over lawmakers. Its exhaustive caseload, political ties and past aversion to prosecuting legislators are the foundation for a long-held belief that crooked leaders are all but untouchable in Brazil. While that’s beginning tochange, there’s no doubt that the top court -- responsible for ruling on everything from impeachment challenges to state debt relief -- won’t be as steadfast in its pursuit of corruption as the dogged 43-year-old judge with jet black hair.

“Moro is a judge with a single focus -- extremely capable, very disciplined and efficient,” said Floriano Azevedo Marques, a professor of law at Sao Paulo University. “That’s why he’s been so fast.”

Publicly, the Federal Police and prosecutors say the investigation known as Carwash will go on come hell, high water, or impeachment. Inside legal circles, however, there’s a sense that when Moro wraps up his investigation into the state-run oil giant Petrobras -- the key case under his purview and the epicenter of Carwash -- it will mark a major slowdown.

In Brazil’s justice system, a judge is responsible for overseeing Federal Police probes, approving accusations by prosecutors, reviewing the evidence and deciding if a defendant is guilty or innocent. Other elements of the scandal thrown off by Carwash are already being sent to other federal judges.

Curitiba, about an hour’s flight from the financial hub of Sao Paulo, is called Brazil’s green capital, but these days it’s better known as ground zero for the sprawling corruption scandal. It’s here that police investigators, working in a modern glass-and-concrete building, first connected an infamous money laundererto a Petrobras executive. From there, they pieced together an elaborate bribery scheme involving the nation’s biggest builders, lucrative public works projects and top politicians, tracing alleged million-dollar kickbacks to campaign coffers and Swiss bank accounts.

While President Dilma Rousseff has not been accused in the scandal, it has undermined her political support and she’s now facing impeachment on allegations that she used accounting to mask the size of a budget deficit.

Along the way, Moro became a folk hero. Masks of the judge were a favorite in Carnival celebrations; he was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people. And protesters in March waved balloons of Moro dressed as Superman that stood in stark contrast to the inflatable likeness of Rousseff and her mentor, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in striped prison garb.

But he has picked up detractors, too, especially after releasing transcripts from a taped phone conversation between Lula and Rousseff which suggested that she wanted to name Lula a minister to shield him from investigation.

Following the transcript’s release, thousands of Brazilians poured into the streets from Sao Paulo to Brasilia to protest. The backlash by some of Brazil’s political and legal elite was just as fierce. Supreme Court Justice Marco Aurelio Mello, in an interview with Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, said Moro’s “show of force” overstepped his limits, and the Rio de Janeiro branch of Brazil’s bar association branded it illegal.

In Brasilia, meanwhile, the political stand-down that has crippled Rousseff’s government is reaching its culmination, too. A special congressional committee is analyzing the request to oust her. If a simple majority of senators vote as early as next week that she should stand trial, Rousseff would be forced to step aside, at least temporarily. Her successor, Vice President Michel Temer, is already assembling an administration that investors hope will quickly address Brazil’s economic woes.

Moro’s investigation entering a new phase is “pretty good news for Temer,” said Christopher Garman, who analyzes Brazil for Eurasia Group in Washington. “For a Temer government, the real window of risk is over the next four to five months. There are still shoes to drop in Moro’s investigation. If you get past this phase, then the risk for Temer’s government starts to diminish. The bar to undermine his administration is higher than it was under Rousseff.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-04/crusading-judge-who-rocked-brazil-says-his-days-are-numbered-too

In November 2013 bosses from nine of China's largest copper smelters sat down over a weekend to discuss the state of the local market.

They did so because they had lost faith in the official copper production figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The NBS had just reported record output in the month of October, equivalent to an annualised run rate of 6.8 million tonnes.

The smelters weren't convinced, suspecting the statistical agency was double-counting production at parent and subsidiary companies and incorrectly labeling some intermediate products such as copper blister as refined metal.

Actually, it was more than mere suspicion. The smelters were themselves supplying the raw data to the agency in the first place, so had a good idea of what the resulting production figures should look like.

Nor was this a case of statistical nit-picking.

The smelters were poised to engage with international miners on terms for the supply of copper concentrates the following year and knew that the "official" production figures would be a core discussion point in the negotiations.

The moral of the story is that it's not just Western analysts who struggle with the reliability of Chinese statistics.

And it's a timely reminder that inconsistent data can have very real-world effects because right now there is no data at all.

The NBS has suspended the publication of detailed metals production figures since October last year.

Which means that everyone is now largely in the dark as to what is happening in the world's largest metallic economy.

It's not just the monthly base metals production figures that have gone missing.

Data on oil products such as liquefied petroleum gas, naphtha and fuel oil have been withdrawn. So too have regional figures for coal, steel and electricity output.

This has little or nothing to do with the sort of inconsistencies in the NBS data picked up by the country's copper smelters.

Rather, it results from an anti-corruption investigation into the agency by the Central Commission of Discipline Inspection (CCDI).

http://www.reuters.com/article/china-statistics-ahome-idUSL5N18137W

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Attached Files

The European Commission has given details of how it will define high-frequency trading (HFT) as part of its new approach financial markets regulation, the revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II).27 Apr 2016

• Financial services regulation 
• Banking & Restructuring 
• Banking reform 
• UK
• Europe 
• Germany 
• France

A high-frequency trader will be defined as one sending at least two messages per second for a single instrument on any trading venue, or at least four messages per second in respect to all instruments being traded on a venue, the Commission said in proposed regulations published this week.

Markus Ferber, the rapporteur for the MiFID II legislation in the European Parliament, welcomed the decision, saying that the EU now had a clear and coherent set of rules.

"The 2010 flash crash in New York has shown what can happen if high frequency trading gets out of control. Such an incident must never happen in Europe. This delegated act is an important step to reign in HFT, but … if the calibration goes wrong, the regime will be undermined. Therefore, we need to get it right the first time," Ferber said, in documents emailed to Out-Law.com.

HFT would now be subject to more control and transparency rules, and "the European Parliament will look very closely to check that the rules cannot be circumvented," Ferber said. 

The European Parliament and Council have three months to study the proposals. 

Oh this sounds too good to be true. Just print the money! Well to be honest, a politician – and a central banker – should admit that increasing joblessness must be paid for somehow.

1.     Raising taxes (not lowering them, Donald) is one way.

2.     Issuing more and more debt via the private market is another (not a good idea either in this highly levered economy).

3.     A third way is to sell debt to central banks and have them finance it perpetually at low interest rates that are then remitted back to their treasuries.

Money for free! Well not exactly. The Piper that has to be paid will likely be paid for in the form of higher inflation, but that of course is what the central banks claim they want. What they don’t want is to be messed with and to become a government agency by proxy, but that may just be the price they will pay for a civilized society that is quickly becoming less civilized due to robotization. There is a rude end to flying helicopters, but the alternative is an immediate visit to austerity rehab and an extended recession. I suspect politicians and central bankers will choose to fly, instead of die.

Private banks can fail but a central bank that can print money acceptable to global commerce cannot. I have long argued that this is a Ponzi scheme and it is, yet we are approaching a point of no return with negative interest rates and QE purchases of corporate bonds and stock. Still, I believe that for now central banks will print more helicopter money via QE (perhaps even the U.S. in a year or so) and reluctantly accept their increasingly dependent role in fiscal policy. That would allow governments to focus on infrastructure, health care, and introduce Universal Basic Income for displaced workers amongst other increasing needs. It will also lead to a less independent central bank, and a more permanent mingling of fiscal and monetary policy that stealthily has been in effect for over 6 years now. Chair Yellen and others will be disheartened by this change in culture. Too bad. If there is an answer, the answer is that it’s just that way.

Investment implications: Prepare for renewed QE from the Fed. Interest rates will stay low for longer, asset prices will continue to be artificially high. At some point, monetary policy will create inflation and markets will be at risk. Not yet, but be careful in the interim. Be content with low single digit returns

~Bill Gross.

 

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Attached Files

Glencore Plc’s zinc and copper production fell in the first quarter as the company curbed mine output following last year’s slide in commodity prices. It maintained output forecasts for all products except oil, which it reduced.

Zinc output totaled 257,100 metric tons in the three months through March, down 28 percent from a year earlier, the Baar, Switzerland-based miner and trader said in a statement on Wednesday. Copper output slipped 4 percent, while coal production declined 17 percent. The company cut its oil-output target by 300,000 barrels.

Glencore has said it plans to reduce copper output by about 7.5 percent this year and cut zinc supply by a quarter. Some of the biggest miners have been forced to shutter unprofitable operations, trim costs and sell assets to reduce debt in response to slowing demand from top user China. The Swiss firm, led by billionaire Ivan Glasenberg, has surged in London this year after ending 2015 as the second-worst performer in the FTSE 100 Index.

Glencore is the world’s biggest zinc miner and the move to reduce output of the metal is bringing the market closer to deficit. It’s the second-largest producer of refined copper and has suspended operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and curtailed output in Zambia.

While copper output dropped because of curtailments in Africa, production was partly offset by increases in South America, the company said.

In other commodities, Glencore’s nickel production advanced 16 percent to 27,600 tons as coal production fell to 29.7 million tons.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-04/glencore-s-zinc-copper-coal-output-declines-after-cutbacks

Chinese authorities are training their sights on a new set of targets: economists, analysts and business reporters with gloomy views on the country’s economy.

Securities regulators, media censors and other government officials have issued verbal warnings to commentators whose public remarks on the economy are out of step with the government’s upbeat statements, according to government officials and commentators with knowledge of the matter.

The stepped-up censorship, many inside and outside the ruling Communist Party say, represents an effort by China’s leadership to quell growing concerns about the country’s economic prospects as it experiences a prolonged slowdown in growth. As more citizens try to take money out of the country, officials say, regulators and censors are trying to foster an environment of what party officials have dubbed “zhengnengliang,” or “positive energy.”

In the past, Chinese authorities have targeted mainly political dissidents while commentary about the economy and reporting on business has been left relatively unfettered in a tacit acknowledgment that a freer flow of information serves economic vitality.

But Beijing has moved to reassert control of the country’s economic story line after policy stumbles that contributed to selloffs in China’s stock markets and its currency last year fed doubts among investors about the government’s ability to navigate the slowdown.

Lin Caiyi, chief economist at Guotai Junan Securities Co. who has been outspoken about rising corporate debt, a glut of housing and the weakening Chinese currency, received a warning in recent weeks, officials and commentators said. It was her second.

The first came from the securities regulator, and the later one, these people said, from her state-owned firm’s compliance department, which instructed her to avoid making overly bearish remarks about the economy, particularly the currency.

Pressured by financial regulators bent on stabilizing the market, stock analysts at brokerage firms are becoming wary of issuing critical reports on listed companies. At least one Chinese think tank, meanwhile, was told by propaganda officials not to cast doubt on a planned government program to help state companies reduce debt, economists familiar with the matter say.

While evidence of the clampdown is anecdotal, it appears widespread. Government departments didn’t respond to requests for comment or declined to comment.

During the past two months, the Communist Party leadership has been talking up the economy to try to reassure global markets.

This message control risks further constraining information about the world’s second-largest economy, thereby deepening the anxieties of investors who already doubt the reliability of official statistics and statements.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-presses-economists-to-brighten-their-outlooks-1462292316#:ZRmrzWquXN9OKA

China’s official manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) stood at 50.1 in April, easing from March's 50.2 and barely above the 50-point mark that separates expansion in activity from contraction, showed the data from the National Bureau of Statistics on May 1.

It showed that activity in China's manufacturing sector expanded for the second month in a row in April, but only marginally. The findings raised doubts about the sustainability of a recent pick-up in the world’s second largest economy.

The output and new order sub-index stood at to 52.2 and 51 in April, compared with last month’s 52.3 and 51.4, respectively.

The sub-index of new export orders, a proxy for the trade industry, stood at 50.1 in the month, compared with 50.2 in March, data showed.

The sub-index for employment edged down 0.3 to 47.8 from the month prior, signaling a slightly faster contraction of labors in manufacturing enterprises.

Separately, the private Caixin/Markit purchasing managers' index released on the same day showed factory activity dropped to 49.4 in April from March’s 49.7.

http://en.sxcoal.com/0/145363/DataShow.html

Activity in China's manufacturing sector unexpectedly declined further in April, a private survey showed Tuesday, reviving doubts over the health of the world's second-largest economy.

The Caixin Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) fell to 49.4 in April from 49.7 in March, according to Markit, which compiles the index. A reading above 50 indicates expansion; one below indicates contraction.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a reading of 49.9.

The Caixin PMI, which focuses on smaller and medium-sized enterprises, was last in expansionary territory in February 2015. The official PMI, which targets larger companies, printed at 50.2 in April, the second successive month of expansion, figures released over the weekend showed.

The survey findings follow recent economic data that appeared to suggest that China's economy was slowly regaining its poise after a torrid 12 months. China's exports rose at their fastest clip in a year in March, while industrial profits also picked up in the first quarter.

A flurry of rate cuts and easing of reserve requirement have helped bolster sentiment, while the capital outflows that had unnerved sentiment at the start of the year have slowed.

The Caixin survey, however, cast a more somber picture. Respondents reported stagnant new orders, while new export work fell for a fifth month running. Companies shed staff as client demand was muted.

"The fluctuations indicate the economy lacks a solid foundation for recovery and is still in the process of bottoming out. The government needs to keep a close watch on the risk of a further economic downturn," said He Fan, chief economist at Caixin Insight Group.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/02/china-caixin-manufacturing-pmi-contracts-in-april.html

China stats bureau halts some commodity data amid probe

China has suspended the release of output data for several key commodities amid a crackdown on the illegal sale of state statistics by government officials, raising further concerns about transparency in the world's second-largest economy.

With Chinese economic growth at a 25-year low, the lack of such data makes it increasingly difficult for economists to gauge the strength of local demand as Beijing tries to avert a faster slowdown.

Key monthly output numbers for several oil and metal products over the first quarter have still not been published, and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has also failed to release regional data for products like coal, steel and electricity since the turn of the year.

Officially, the NBS only releases a few key commodities statistics through its website (www.stats.gov.cn), though more detailed numbers have been made available through unofficial channels, including third-party distributors and industry consultancies.

Most of those numbers have now dried up after China's corruption watchdog, the Central Commission of Discipline Inspection (CCDI), launched a probe into "disciplinary violations" at the NBS last October.

The bureau head, Wang Baoan, was removed from his post in late February after being put under formal investigation.

CCDI said last week that hundreds of staff working for the statistics bureau had been using official data for personal gain.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-commodities-statistics-idUSKCN0XU0BF

The Panama Papers leak was for appetizers. The real leak, one which took place quietly and under the radar a few days ago, and may have exposed far more wealthy and important individuals, was that of the Qatar National Bank - the Middle East's largest lender by assets - where a massive 1.5 GB data dump posted online last week exposed the personal data of thousands of clients.

According to IBT, the massive data dump appears to contain hundreds of thousands of records including customer transaction logs, personal identification numbers and credit card data.Additionally, dozens of separate folders consist of information on everything from Al Jazeera journalists to what appears to be the Al-Thani Qatar Royal Family and even contains a slew of records listed as Ministry of Defence, MI6 (the UK foreign intelligence service) and Qatar's State Security Bureau, also known as "Mukhabarat".

The bank told Reuters it had taken immediate steps to ensure customers would not suffer any financial loss after the security breach although it was not clear how the bank planned to protect accounts whose details, including customer names and passwords, have already been published.

"We are taking every measure to protect the privacy of our customers and have engaged an external third party expert to review all our systems to ensure no vulnerabilities exist," the bank said in a statement on Sunday. "All our customers’ accounts are secure."

Except, of course, all those thousands whose data is already in the public domain.

According to Reuters, the 1.5GB trove of leaked documents posted online included the bank details, telephone numbers and dates of birth of several journalists for satellite broadcaster Al-Jazeera, supposed members of the ruling al-Thani family and government and defense officials.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-01/british-spies-among-thousands-names-exposed-following-massive-leak-largest-mid-east-

Iraq declared a state of emergency in Baghdad after supporters of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr breached Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone and stormed parliament to protest against corruption and the country’s political paralysis.

Mobile-phone video footage broadcast on Iraqi televisions showed hundreds of al-Sadr’s supporters inside the legislature on Saturday. Al-Sadr earlier accused lawmakers of sectarianism in their selection of ministers and ordered his bloc to withdraw from the parliament session where members were preparing to finish voting on a new cabinet.

Iraqi protesters cheer after breaking into Baghdad’s Green Zone on April 30.
Photographer: Haidar Mohammed/ALI/AFP/Getty Images

Storming parliament and the Green Zone, which houses ministries and foreign embassies, marks an escalation in a crisis that has undermined Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi ’s reform push and stymied efforts to defeat Islamic State militants. Abadi’s plan to set up a cabinet of technocrats has so far failed as parties fight to preserve a system of patronage.

“The situation in Iraq has become very dangerous,” said Wathiq al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based political analyst. “No one will be able to control thousands of angry protesters while the rest of residents in Baghdad are in panic and living in real fear.”

Almost two years after Islamic State captured Mosul, the country’s biggest northern city, government forces are struggling in the fight against the militant group. The war, as well as the plunge in oil prices have battered the finances of OPEC’s second-largest producer. The government is in talks to secure a loan from the International Monetary Fund, which expects the nation’s non-oil economy to contract for a third year in 2016.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-30/iraq-declares-bagdhad-emergency-as-protesters-storm-parliament