ASIA: South-east Asia poised for sustainable bond lift-off

While 2023 was a slowdown year for the sustainable bond market worldwide, the Asean+3 region (the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus China, Japan and South Korea) slowed down less than most. Thanks mainly to higher interest rates, global sustainable bond issuance declined from $896.1bn in 2022 to $846.2bn last year, or a 5.9 per cent drop, according to the Asian Development Bank’s Asia Bond Market March 2024 report.

But the Asean+3 region saw only a 1.4 per cent decline in sustainable bond issuance year-on-year in 2023, allowing the region’s share of the world’s market to inch up from 27.4 per cent in 2022 to 28.6 per cent in 2023. Sustainable bond issuance in Asean+3 totalled $242bn in 2023, only slightly below the eurozone’s $288.8bn.

1 November 2024

HONG KONG: Hong Kong, Turkey agree on double taxation avoidance in boost for Belt and Road Initiative

Hong Kong has signed an agreement with Turkey to overcome double taxation issues in cross-border trade and investment, a move that also helped widen the city’s cooperation with more jurisdictions

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31 January 2024

UK: IMF advises UK against further tax cuts

Britain’s government should refrain from making further tax cuts given the long-term strains on the country’s public finances, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

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13 December 2024

ASIA: Korea postpones crypto taxing again. What’s next?

South Korea has postponed its cryptocurrency trading tax for the third time, following a last-minute agreement between opposing parties just a month before the policy’s scheduled implementation.

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18 July 2025

GERMANY: Berlin Says Still Backs Global Minimum Tax For Multinationals

Germany still supports an agreement to impose a 15-percent global minimum tax on multinational companies’ profits despite an exemption agreed for US multinationals, Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil

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