Portuguese private bank hikes capital, Chinese stake rises
LISBON, Jan. 9 (AFP)
Portugal's biggest private bank, BCP, on Monday announced a share sale of 1.33 billion euros ($1.41 billion) and said purchases by Fosun Industrial Holdings would see the Chinese conglomerate nearly double its stake in the firm. The cash injection will be used to pay off 700 million euros in debts to the state, the last repayment in a three-billion-euro bailout dating to 2012. The funds will also be harnessed to strengthen the balance sheet, bringing the bank's capital adequacy ratio to 11.4 percent, BCP said in a statement. Fosun, which became the BCP's biggest shareholder last November, has committed to buying more shares that will see its holding rise from 16.7 percent of capital to 30 percent, it said. Portugal's banking sector is saddled with debt and bad loans and has had to be rescued twice by the state under a plan backed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). On November 20, Fosun and BCP said the Chinese firm paid nearly 175 million euros for its stake and aimed to increase its shareholding to around 30 percent. China's largest privately-owned conglomerate, Fosun is already present in Portugal with stakes in the insurer Fidelidade and medical services group Luz Saude.
China's economy likely to grow 6.7 pct in 2016: top
economic planner BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) China's economy is estimated to grow by about 6.7 percent in 2016, the top economic planner said Tuesday. The economy would exceed 70 trillion yuan (about 10.1 trillion U.S. dollars) last year, an increase of 5 trillion yuan, Xu Shaoshi, minister in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission, told a news briefing. Steady growth and the performance of new sectors have debunked predictions that China's economy will collapse or face a hard landing, and the growth rate was remarkable among major economies, he said. Citing a report by the International Monetary Fund, he said that China may have contributed 1.2 percentage points, or over 30 percent, of the world's economic growth in 2016, while the United States might account for 0.3 percentage points. This would mean China has been the top engine of global growth for 10 years in a row. China is confident in and capable of maintaining the reasonable growth rate thanks to its economic structural reforms and emerging new sources of growth, Xu said. As China adapts to a new normal of moderate-to-high growth, it has tried to shift from an export-and-investment driven economy to one that is more sustainable and draws strength from consumption, services and innovation. In the first three quarters of 2016, the economy expanded 6.7 percent, well within the government's target range of between 6.5 and 7 percent. During that period, the service sector accounted for 52.8 percent of value-added industrial output, 13.3 percentage points higher than secondary industry, while consumption accounted for 71 percent of the growth, up 13 percentage points, Xu said. The economy is in better shape for cleaner development, with a five-percent drop of energy consumption per unit of GDP and continuous declines of major pollutant emissions, he added. Besides, the country has exceeded its annual target for job creation, adding over 13 million new jobs in 2016.