The Asian equity benchmarks ended in green on Friday, amid a global rally with Japan’s index jumping on a weaker yen and Chinese shares surged to a four-year high. Japanese government bond prices held mostly firm with two-year yield hitting a record low and yields up to four years staying below zero on expectations of a bond shortage next week, ahead of a large redemption. The Bank of Japan voted to hold monetary policy stable in an 8 to 1 board vote, maintaining a pace to buy 80 trillion yen of government bonds annually. Bank of Japan struck a slightly more upbeat view of the world’s number three economy, saying exports were showing signs of picking up while factory output has started to bottom out. The rate review was the first since Abe’s landslide victory in a December 14 election that gave him a fresh mandate to continue efforts to pull Japan out of 15 years of grinding deflation.
China has revised up the estimated size of its economy for 2013 by 3.4% to 58.8 trillion yuan ($9.5 trillion), the National Bureau of Statistics stated but the revision will not affect economic growth this year. That marks an increase of 1.9 trillion yuan, or $305 billion, in the size of the Chinese economy that year, slightly below the entire gross domestic product of Malaysia during the same period.
Asian Indices | Last Trade | Change in Points | Change in % |
Shanghai Composite | 3,108.60 | 51.08 | 1.67 |
Hang Seng | 23,116.63 | 284.42 | 1.25 |
Jakarta Composite | 5,144.62 | 31.28 | 0.61 |
KLSE Composite | 1,715.99 | 16.04 | 0.94 |
Nikkei 225 | 17,621.40 | 411.35 | 2.39 |
Straits Times | 3,279.53 | 35.88 | 1.11 |
KOSPI Composite | 1,929.98 | 32.48 | 1.71 |
Taiwan Weighted | 8,999.52 | 120.89 | 1.36 |