• U.S President Joe Biden’s team has shown early signs that it agrees with the previous administration on several “extremely touchy” issues concerning China, said Lanhee Chen from Stanford University.
• The “early signals” show that the Biden administration “may change the tone and tenor of the conversation with Beijing — but they’re not really gonna change the policy,” said Lanhee Chen, director of domestic policy studies and lecturer at Stanford University.
• Washington has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan — which China claims as a runaway province that must eventually be reunited with the mainland. Still, the U.S. is Taiwan’s most powerful international backer and largest arms supplier.

(Source: CNBC)

• Britain's scheme for compensating consumers hit by financial company failures has set itself a billion-pound ($1.37 billion) budget for the coming year to cope with a likely surge in collapses due to COVID-19.
• The Financial Services Compensation Scheme's (FSCS) budget of 1.04 billion pounds for the 2021/22 financial year that starts in April is its highest in six years.
• The FSCS also said it would add 78 million pounds to the current year's budget - a lower than expected increase - due to more firms failing, pushing the total for 2020/21 to 700 million pounds.
• The body is responsible for compensation arrangements for the Financial Conduct Authority, which warned this month that around 4,000 financial firms in Britain were at "heightened risk" of collapsing due to fallout from the pandemic.

(Source: Reuters)

• The Government is expected to spend $3Bn to implement phase one of the coronavirus vaccine program.
• Tufton said that the sum covers, among other things, the purchase of the vaccine(s), supply chain and cold storage items, personal protective equipment (PPE), transportation, staff costs including training, and public education and sensitization.
• Jamaica has committed to vaccinating 16% of the population in phase one and will receive 935,676 doses of the approved vaccine through the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) Facility.
• Jamaica is to receive 292,399 doses starting in April, based on the COVAX vaccine delivery schedule.

(Source: JIS News)

• In STATIN’s recent December 2020 inflation report, it was noted that, for the calendar year 2020, the inflation rate was 6.4%. The same release also noted that the point-to-point inflation rate as of December 2020 was 5.2%.
• The difference between the two numbers reflected the timing of shocks that affected the CPI during 2020. In addition, these differences have resulted in some confusion as to whether the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) was successful in meeting its inflation target of 4.0% to 6.0% in December 2020.
• The inflation measure by which BOJ’s performance should be judged is the annual point-to-point as of December and not the calendar year or any other measure.
• This measure is stated in the soon-to-be gazetted law amending the Bank of Jamaica Act, which was passed by the both Houses of Parliament in December 2020.

(Source: JIS News)

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a $2.7Bn line of credit for Panama to address the coronavirus pandemic.
• The IMF’s executive board approved the two-year arrangement under its Precautionary and Liquidity Line (PLL) to serve as “insurance against extreme external shocks” that the pandemic’s economic fallout causes.
• In determining the Central American country’s eligibility for PLL, the lender cited in a statement Panama’s “sound economic fundamentals, strong institutional policy frameworks, a long track record of good economic performance and policy implementation.”

(Source: Reuters)

• Brazilian right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro on Wednesday wrote to newly inaugurated U.S. President Joe Biden that he hoped the two countries would pursue a broad free trade agreement during Biden’s tenure.
• The letter is Bolsonaro’s most amicable overture yet to Biden, a Democrat. The Brazilian president was a close ally of former Republican President Donald Trump and refused for weeks to accept the result of the Nov. 3 U.S. election, repeating baseless allegations of fraud. It took him 42 days to recognize Biden’s victory.

(Source: Reuters)

• Japan kept its forecasts unchanged on Thursday for a return to a budget surplus over the long-term, even though the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on its economy and debt pile remains uncertain.
• In its twice-yearly fiscal and economic projections, the government forecast that the primary budget, excluding new bond sales and debt servicing, would achieve a surplus of 300 billion yen ($2.9Bn) in the fiscal year starting April 2029.
• That was unchanged from its previous forecast released last July when it pushed back the projection for achieving the surplus by two years.
• The uncertainty hanging over the economic outlook due to COVID-19 is particularly painful for Japan, which is saddled with a public debt burden more than twice the size of its $5 trillion economy, the biggest among industrialized nations.

(Source: Reuters)

• Spending on payment cards in Britain last week stood 35% below pre-pandemic levels with the country in its third national COVID-19 lockdown, although the hit was not as severe as seen during parts of last year.
• The Bank of England's figures, published for the first time on Thursday, showed a sharp slowdown this month after a surge in spending during December when parts of the economy reopened temporarily even though COVID-19 cases were soaring.
• While spending during the week to Jan. 14 was running below its level during the previous lockdown in November, it was still some way above the levels during the first lockdown which began in March 2020.
• Other surveys have similarly pointed to renewed weakness in consumer confidence, with Britain likely now in a double-dip recession as it struggles to regain control of the virus, according to a Reuters poll of economists last week.

_{(Source: Reuters)}

• The Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) will maintain its dovish stance through end-2021 in an effort to support Jamaica’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Fitch Solutions forecasts that consumer price inflation will accelerate to an average of 5.8% y-o-y in 2021, up from 5.2% in 2020, due to rebounding consumer demand and higher energy prices.
• A food price shock poses upside risks to inflation and interest rate forecasts, as worse agricultural conditions than we currently expect could lead to a spike in headline inflation, causing the BOJ to hike its monetary policy rate.

(Source: Fitch Solutions)

• The inflation rate for December 2020 as measured by the All Jamaica Consumer Price Index was 1.3%.
• The inflation rate for December was mainly due to increases in the index for the divisions ‘Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages’, ‘Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels’ and ‘Transport’.
• For the month, the index for the division ‘Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages’ increased by 2.4% mainly due to higher prices for vegetables, especially tomatoes, carrots, cabbage, and sweet pepper. However, the movement in the class was tempered by lower prices for tubers such as sweet potato and yam.
• This contributed to a fiscal-year-to-date (April 2020 – December 2020) inflation rate of 5.1% and point-to-point (December 2019 – December 2020) rate of 5.2% which was near the midpoint of the inflation target range.

(Source: Statin)