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Guide to Secondary Sources of Marketing Data

This is a general guide to secondary sources of marketing data and is meant to provide a starting point in a search for market data.

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The type of data most commonly needed by market researchers is either competitive information, e.g., sales, market share, profitability, marketing spending etc., or customer information, e.g., size, demographics, psychographics etc. Further, competitive information can be at the industry, company, or product level. Therefore, this guide is structured around four broad categories of data: Industry, Company, Product, and Consumer. Because sources may contain information for more than one of these categories, sources may appear in more than one category.

You will also find additional resources, such as industry associations and a list of common marketing journals, that will be useful in your search for market information.

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A global network marketing business is defined as simply the chance that people have to expand their already existing network marketing business into additional countries. This is especially advantageous today when an increasing number of countries are becoming more business-friendly and, thus, opening themselves up to the network marketing industry. Hence, more and more people will also be interested in joining this business model of network marketing.

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To give an indication of how expansive global network marketing business is already, consider just 2 of the biggest network marketing companies, which are Amway and Herbalife. Each of these companies already does business in upwards of 80 countries. Other network marketing companies are following suit and expanding by moving into new markets in new countries. They simply understand that the market for growth exists.

A distinct attraction of global network marketing is that it is actually possible for you to construct your own business from the comfort of your own home. Thanks to the interconnectivity and reach of the Internet, nearly every person has the power to promote their products and services (their business) to any person from any country. This means that people have no need to travel in order to develop or to promote their business. They can simply rely on using instant messaging, sending out e-mails or even utilizing webinars that are low-cost. Another bonus of trying these approaches for your attempt at global network marketing is that it actually lets you save money.

The world of global network marketing is getting bigger and bigger, too, because a lot of people from different countries all across the world are trying their hand at it. These people are realizing the perks of such a business model for the exact same reason that you are trying your hand at it. They would like the liberty that owning their own business provides them with, yet they do not have the startup capital to get their business off the ground. This is a common problem for many budding businessmen out there. Another reason for peoples reluctance to start a traditional business is that they just do not feel like bothering with all the headaches that automatically accompany a traditional business. This would be aspects like employees, inventory, insurance, rent, utilities and other issues. Network marketing of a global nature solves a lot of these concerns for many people.

Global network marketing operates on the exact same principles as regular old network marketing. The only difference is that it does so on a larger scale because it involves penetration into foreign countries. Essentially, this kind of business model just involves marketing and promoting your products and services to people of other countries in addition to your home country. Thanks to the reach and the power of the Internet, you are able to get in touch with more people in foreign countries more easily. Promoting your business and its products and services can be as easy and straightforward as just sending e-mails or using webinars.

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Culture is vital to marketing when companies are planning to introduce products or services to international markets. While cultures are always in flux and are often willing to accept new products or idea, they can also become hindrances to market development if a business does not understand the culture it is trying to appeal to. Businesses often spend time and funds researching a market carefully to analyze what culture it is grounded in and what this culture will be willing to accept.

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Business Structure

A culture affects the business structure through the norms that govern typical organizational politics and processes. For instance, some cultures may value consensus and have boards that must unanimously agree on policy before putting it into action in the business. This can be very taxing to a business partner trying to agree on a marketing strategy and implement it before competitors outrace them. Likewise, in some cultures business decisions are made based on strength of personality or family rather than the normal hierarchy of business (even if it is in place), which can lead to more confusion between partners trying to agree on market initiatives.

Language

A different culture often means a different language, and this is one of the primary hindrances to marketing in foreign countries. Marketers may find that names, symbols and messages that mean one thing to them have wildly different, even insulting, meanings when translated into a different language. Even colloquial meanings, which cannot easily be taught, may change the name of a product or slogan to mean something utterly different within the same language. A business often finds the most success by setting up a marketing division within the culture it wants to enter, staffing the division with lifelong members of this culture who understand the intricacies of its language.

Aesthetics

Aesthetics refers to what a culture believes is beautiful or attractive. Some cultural groups will not consider certain products because they do not fit with the current style or ideas of beauty in the culture. Little profit lies in selling beds to a culture that prefers to sleep on mats or hammocks, for instance. Aesthetic considerations affect primarily entertainment and art industries and, like other aspects of a culture, are often in a state of constant change.

Financial and Moral Behavior

Other types of cultural mores influence behavior in a more general way. A culture that values saving money and keeping it close at hand will not respond to marketing efforts for speculative investment. Cultures may be influenced by morality and religious beliefs that proscribe buying alcoholic products or certain types of meat, which can lead to additional useless marketing activity.

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The partnership will also allow users of handsets powered by MediaTek’s Runtime Environment (MRE), the firm’s middleware technology designed for mobile developers and application providers, to deploy services and content for “Smart-Feature phones”.

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The MRE solution provides millions of users in emerging markets with the ability to enjoy rich online experiences previously available only on smartphones. MRE-enabled devices will enable many users to access leading Internet services, such as Facebook, for the first time.

“We believe this move shows that Facebook is being proactive about attracting new users and that it recognizes the impact of tapping these users longer term,” stock analysis firm Trefis wrote in a note to clients.

As the world’s largest online social network, Facebook competes with social networkingarms of Google, Yahoo and MySpace in addition to local competitors in international markets.

Why Developing Markets Matter to Facebook

Developing markets like India are central to Facebook’s future due to their population growth and wide user base. India , for example, has a population in excess of 1 billion and presents an enormous opportunity. With that population base and increasing Internet penetration, Indian Facebook users are expected to outnumber American and Indonesian in the near future, the Trefis note said.

The U.S., currently, has the largest user base, with approximately 156 million users. Indonesia and India are second and third, respectively.

Meanwhile,emerging markets would account for 60 percent of the mobile market by 2013, according to media research firm Informa Telecoms and Media. The fact that 70 percent of mobile handsets sold in emerging markets are feature phones the Facebook-MediaTek dealis expected to offerusers across the world a easier gateway to access Facebook.

Last year, phones powered by MediaTek chipsets accounted formore than40 percent of the Indian handset market. With the launch of this global partnership, MediaTek expects more than half of its customers in India to adopt its MRE solution.

“Our new partnership with Facebook further reinforces MediaTek’s focus on providing differentiated services and value for handset brands, giving them the means to offer affordable, compelling and differentiated mobile solutions to consumers in key emerging markets such as India,” said Cheng-Te Chuang, Corporate Vice President of MediaTek.

MediaTek is currently working with leading handset brands, including Spice Group and Micromax in India, Cherry Mobile in the Philippines and Nexian in Indonesia, to roll out mobile solutions in these key markets.

In emerging markets, MediaTek’s chips have been behind the ability to offer features such as color interfaces, cameras, video recorders, QWERTY keypads and dual SIM capability at compelling price points.

“With MediaTek’s new MRE solution, we are in a position to redefine the mobile landscape and give our users their first mobile browsing and social networking experience on a handset that costs less than US$50,” said Dilip Modi, Managing Director of Spice Mobility.

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The Cold War triggered a global reexamination of financial systems, not only in the former Soviet Union but around the world, Nichols says. Planned economies in Latin America failed and a new generation of Chinese leaders introduced economic reforms. “It’s amazing that so many different places were coalescing on this one change at the same time.”

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McDermott notes that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the degree and speed of the transfer of assets from government to the private sector was key to defining the characteristics of emerging markets. However, that led to problems on either end of the privatization spectrum. “Many of the measures were related to how much of the economy was in private hands. [These measures] weren’t very helpful,” he says. “Those who didn’t change were bad and those who changed really fast also blew up.”

McDermott has done research into development patterns in Eastern Europe and Latin America and found that differences in economic progress can be linked to what he calls “transnational integration regimes,” such as membership in the European Union or participation in NAFTA. These systems have different characteristics which may offer better insights into the potential for economies to join the club of developed nations, which is generally thought of as the members of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD).

A More Sophisticated Approach

According to Wharton management professor Witold Henisz , emerging economies recently have begun to revise their approach to the global economy, particularly as resource-rich nations gain clout with today’s booming commodity markets. They are still willing to integrate with international markets and will allow foreigners in to help build their economic infrastructure, but are demanding a greater share of the benefits. Unlike earlier periods of Colonialism, these countries are not claiming to be exploited. The approach is now more sophisticated, he says.

“The countries are saying, ‘We’re still going to work with you, but we will do it on our terms.’ It’s more like the U.S. [style of approaching other countries],” says Henisz. “They’re working to play by the same rules as we do.”

Henisz cautions there is not a single moment when countries “emerge.” “It’s not a zero-one switch. The forces we’re talking about that make a country different are shades of gray,” he says. “There is no force in Russia or Brazil that doesn’t exist in the U.S. It’s just a question of the impact they have and how the institutions of the country moderate uncertainties.”

While enormous attention has been paid to rapid growth in India and China, those two countries are nowhere near ready to graduate from the emerging camp, according to Wharton faculty and analysts. While India and China both enjoy pockets of glittering prosperity, national wealth is unevenly distributed and most of the population in these countries lives in poverty.

Wharton management professor Marshall Meyer says many Chinese cities seem to be as sophisticated as any in Europe or North America, but rural areas of China remain desperately poor. Household income is 10 times higher in urban coastal cities, like Shanghai, compared to rural inland provinces, he notes. “Has China graduated?” asks Meyer. “If you look at capital formation and fixed asset investment, it looks that way. If you look at disposable income in households, it doesn’t.”

Nichols, too, says India and China are not ready to move up from emerging status. He explains that as an outsider, he would be completely comfortable entering a contract in Singapore, but not India or China. “If I were to do business in India or China, I would be really careful that I establish the rules, rather than just relying on institutions that say they are open to strangers,” says Nichols. “China is definitely moving toward formally-run institutions and the same is true of India. But you would be pretty foolish to just rely on a contract, although India is farther along than China.”

Countries that make it into the top rungs of economic progress can slip backwards, too. Guillen notes that in the first part of the 20th century, Argentina was one of the richest nations in the world. After decades of Peronist rule and decline, Argentina became a star in the 1990s march toward privatization, only to stumble into a financial crisis in 2001. With a well-educated population and wealth of resources, Guillen says, “Argentina is one of the biggest mysteries.”

Lebanon is another example. In the 1960s, it was considered to be the Switzerland of the Middle East, with strong trade and high per capita incomes before it descended into Civil War, never to recover its economic place in the world.

“There are many examples of African countries that were doing reasonably okay and then got into trouble,” adds Guillen.

Forever Emerging?

Even with their weaknesses, emerging economies are clearly a rung up the economic ladder from many other countries, including most of sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, along with Bangladesh and Myanmar, Guillen says.

At the same time, some countries seem to have gotten solidly stuck in the emerging markets category. Guillen points to South Korea, where per capita income is $20,000 — well above most countries in Latin American and South and East Asia. More important, the economy has transformed from a heavy industrial base to a strong focus on knowledge and technology. “One thing that intrigues me is these countries seem to be emerging forever,” he says. “It’s about time we think of South Korea as a fully developed economy.”

Guillen is careful to emphasize that there is no one path to economic prosperity. “All countriesstart indifferent positions. If they succeed, they do so in different ways,” he says.

Bert van der Vaart, CEO of Small Enterprise Assistance Funds, a global investment firm providing capital and support to 29 emerging markets, says the sector is increasingly recognized as an investment class that should command 5% to 15% of total assets. “Growth in these countries is likely to be trending positively and in excess of the OECD average. In a sense, these economies are ‘catching up.’ At some level, whether we add the adjective ‘investment-worthy’ to ‘emerging markets’ could be surplus.”

His definition excludes a number of poorer countries whose governments are not willing to adopt true market reforms, or where the ruling elite are doing well enough that they do not care about attracting a broad range of private investment.Zimbabwe, for example, despite all its human and physical resources, falls short of being an “emerging market,” van der Vaart says.

More than a quarter century after he christened the term “emerging markets,” van Agtmael, now CEO of Emerging Markets Management in Arlington, Va., which manages $20 billion in institutional investment, says he has seen tremendous change. “We are in the midst of a huge shift in the global economy toward emerging markets, as many are no longer poor, but are becoming middle class. The emerging markets consumer is becoming increasingly important, infrastructure spending in emerging markets now exceeds that in the U.S. or Europe, and a steadily larger group of companies is becoming world class.”

According to van Agtmael, in the next 10 years there will be one billion more consumers in emerging markets, and in 25 years the economies of these countries will surpass the combined economies of the developed countries.

In recent years, Goldman Sachs has contributed to the economic name game. In 2001, the firm began calling Brazil, Russia, India and China the “BRIC” countries and forecast that by 2010, they would make up more than 10% of global GDP. By 2007, they already accounted for 15%. Then in 2005, Goldman Sachs introduced another moniker, the Next Eleven (N-11), identifying another set of populous countries with the potential to have an impact on the global economy, similar to the BRIC nations. The N-11 are Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam.

Van Agtmael says he has heard some new terms — “middle-income emerging markets” or “graduating emerging markets” — tossed around to describe countries moving up the continuum. “Now most investors simply realize there’s money to be made in these markets — not just the portfolio investors, but also major corporations. The name is now less important than the fact that people recognize this is a part of the world that is no longer a backwater and no longer peripheral, but an increasingly important part of the world.”

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Harish Manwani , Unilever ‘s COO, is undeterred by the slowdown in emerging markets. He tells ET that while economic centres are shifting to developing markets, dependence on long-term planning would take businesses nowhere. Excerpts:

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Looking at the current uncertainty in the global economic scenario what is the strategy for big businesses to survive?

As far as businesses are concerned, the most important thing for us to ensure is that we build enough flexibility in our plans to manage and tackle any scenario. The last few years have actually taught us how we can run an agenda of business as usual on growth, but unusual on costs. We have to manage our planning cycles more dynamically, and with flexibility.

The days of long-term planning and plans cast in stone are over. It can provide a context, but if you’re operating a business on the basis of long-term business plans, that model is not valid any more. You have to have clarity in terms of destination, be clear about strategic thrusts, but operating plans have to be really flexible.

What’s your view about the economic future of emerging markets like India, which is seeing some slowdown in growth, and has to tackle the beast of inflation?

Unilever is very clear; the future in developing markets is bright. There is no doubt that the economic centre of gravity is shifting to emerging markets. In spite of everything, these markets will continue to grow. What’s the big question? Is it going to be 9% or 8% or 7.5% growth in India?

Or if you take China, is 8% good enough, or will it be 9%? Unilever has 50% of its revenues coming from developing markets and just fewer than 50% from developed markets, in 10-12 years, 70% of our business will come from developing markets.

What are some of the challenges?

We live in interdependent world, the economic crisis and slowdown will cast a shadow. Secondly, we have to reckon with the balance that all developing markets have to seek, between growth and inflation. My own view is that when you’re a developing market, you have to lead from growth and manage the inflation. Not manage inflation and hope for the best on growth.

Inflation is not easy to manage in a situation where global demand for commodities is going through the roof.

We have a situation here. Demand from developing markets is going to put pressure on global commodities. If developing markets begin to consume like developed markets, we’ll need three planets. You start consuming like the US, you need five planets.

In the short and medium term this puts pressure on commodities, particularly food. The demand for food will go up by 50% in the next 20 years. Energy, water – there must be substantial efforts on the supply side of commodities. There must be a huge effort on the demand side. Companies have to ensure that they can decouple growth from their environmental impact. Less is more is the way to go in future.

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A study on the mobile phone gender gap in low and middle-income countries

Mobile phone ownership in low and middle-income countries has skyrocketed in the past several years. But a woman is still 21% less likely to own a mobile phone than a man. Closing this gender gap would bring the benefits of mobile phones to an additional 300 million women. By extending the benefits of mobile phone ownership to more women, a host of social and economic goals can be advanced.

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The Women & Mobile report is the first comprehensive view of women and mobile phones in the developing world. This report, sponsored by the GSMA Development Fund and Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, explores the commercial and social opportunity for closing the mobile gender gap.The report builds off of a survey conducted with women on three continents to show their mobile phone ownership, usage, barriers to adoption and preferences. The report shows how mobile phone ownership can improve access to educational, health, business and employment opportunities and help women lead more secure, connected and productive lives. It also includes ten case studies highlighting the strategies and tactics that both mobile network operators and non-profit organizations across the globe are implementing to increase the usage and impact of mobile phones around the world.

Release Date:February 2010

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It was a tough task, but the winners of the RIAP Emerging Voices Project have been chosen, Sydney-sider’s Denis McMahon and Sarah Hill were selected as the most exemplary out of the numerous entries received from young people around the world. Both winning entries, which will now be exclusively printed in Business Asia magazine, were judged by RIAP and Business Asia to be well written, concise and offered exciting new ideas. In this edition, we feature DENIS McMAHON’s essay.

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The recent transition from third generation to fourth generation of Chinese leaders has left pundits scrambling for some clue as to what changes this might mean for the future of both China and the Communist Party.

The emerging consensus is that the CCP Standing Committee is sufficiently filled with Jiang proteges that the reformist agenda of the current leadership–and more specifically, the influence of Jiang himself–is assured for the foreseeable future. The real issue is the sustainability such an agenda (defined by its commitment to structural economic reform and only nominal political reform), considering the mounting social tensions being generated by the reforms and the Party’s attempts to preserve its own relevance.

The authority of the CCP as the legitimate Government of China has been slowly eroding since Deng Xiaoping first introduced his reform program in the wake of the Cultural Revolution.

This erosion has been two fold: the devolution of power to local levels of government has facilitated the weakening of the centralised state structure, and state initiated markets reforms have undermined the ideological foundations of the State. Such a weakening has given rise to inevitable challenges to CCP authority from outside the party. With the exception of the 1989 pro-democracy protests, few of these challenges have captured the imagination of the broader community or given way to popular movements of dissent.

Challenges to rule

However, this is not to say that the CCP right to rule remains unchallenged. On the contrary, the twin supports of CCP ideological legitimacy–development (the promise of prosperity) and nationalism–are directly threatened by current trends.

The first is the exclusion of certain groups from China’s prosperity, and the growing disillusionment of those who feel betrayed by the failure of the iron rice bowl. Mass unemployment, unpaid pensions and wages, and the latent corruption of local government and business officials are giving rise to worker militancy. As yet this remains unorganised and largely focused on local issues. Whether it remains so will depend on the Government’s ability to ensure job creation and the more equitable distribution of the benefits of reform. The second threat is the potential for nationalist sentiment to not only develop beyond State control, but to also be directed against the State. The threat from nationalism is arguably the greater of the two, as the State is in a weaker position to combat it.

A generation of post-Tiananmen high school and university students have been weaned on a diet of “political education” that has emphasised patriotism as a substitute ideology for socialism. Similarly, the party has come to base its legitimacy on its historical status as defender of Chinese pride and identity. However, the nationalist discourse is fast slipping beyond the control of a Government that is ill positioned to refute ultra-nationalists or defend a foreign policy necessarily shaped by the nuances of international relations.

Nationalism

To understand the unique role that nationalism plays in contemporary Chinese society, it is necessary to appreciate its historical development.

Modern Chinese nationalism only arose towards the end of the nineteenth century at a time when China’s sense of it own identity was being challenged by imperialist Western powers. Unlike in Europe, where expanding power fuelled nationalist sentiment in the ascendant nation-states, modern Chinese nationalism was born at a time of national weakness and developed in response to foreign oppression.

Subsequently, the unique nature of Chinese nationalism has been defined by two key qualities. Firstly, that a restoration of Chinese power and dignity is dependent on catching up with the West. And secondly, the necessity for China to become strong again is fuelled by a desire to rights those wrongs committed against China and to protect the Chinese people from ever suffering such indignity again. So arose the paradox whereby China aspired to emulate Western strength and power by adopting its political institutions, economic modes of production and scientific techniques, whilst also founding much of its new identity on anti-foreigner sentiment.

Mao’s influence

Nationalism has always been an important aspect of the CCP’s authority as the legitimate government of China. Mao’s generation of leaders burnished their nationalist credentials in the war against the Japanese, establishing themselves as anti-imperialist defenders of China’s territorial–and spiritual –integrity.

However, whilst nationalism–in the form of anti-imperialism–played an important role in shaping Chinese identity under Mao, it was not essential to Mao’s legitimacy as leader. On the contrary, the state was defined by the socialist revolution and by Marxist Leninist-Mao Zedong thought, of which Mao was the embodiment.

The introduction of Deng XiaoPing’s reforms marked the death of Maoist socialism. In its place, the Government has fostered an alternative ideology to shape economic policy: “development”, or the pragmatic accumulation of wealth and the reduction of poverty. In such a way the mandate of the CCP has shifted from promoting the socialist revolution to facilitating an ever-increasing improvement in the material well being of Chinese citizens. Such a philosophy, based exclusively on economic matters, has proved an insufficient substitute for the all-encompassing ideology of socialism and the quasi-spiritual devotion to Mao.

Moreover, in the wake of socialism, development demanded an altruistic motivation beyond the mere pursuit of profit. Nationalism successfully filled this void and fitted easily with Deng’s status as a revolutionary and participant of the Long March. However, Deng’s nationalism was different from that of Mao: whilst Mao was anti-imperialist, Deng’s Open Door policy required greater tolerance of foreigners. In this way historical concepts of Chinese civilisation and past greatness were employed to support the drive to prosperity. It was also a tool to foster social cohesion and ensure cooperation. Development was essential in catching up with the rest of the world–development was a nationalist objective in itself.

Evolution

Post-Tiananmen nationalism evolved yet again. As noted earlier, the Government’s response to the protests was to intensify political education on campus with the aim of filling the ideological void left by socialism with nationalism–at the expense of democracy.

However, Tiananmen also strengthened the hand of anti-Westernisation conservatives in the party. Subsequently, the form of nationalism that was promoted was more militant than in the past. China’s modern relations with the West came to be seen by many as a continuation of the pre-1949 humiliations inflicted on China.

No credentials

Such a shift proved convenient for the third generation of leaders who, having been too young to fight either the Japanese or the KMT, lacked the nationalist credentials of either Mao or Deng.

By standing up for China’s interests against modern foreign aggressors, they could lay claim to the mantle of Deng and Mao and justify their right to rule. Moreover, the third generation of leaders have been most in need of playing the nationalist card as they have pursued the most extensive dismantling of the socialist state apparatus. Whilst the early reforms facilitated the world’s most extensive reduction in poverty, more recent reforms have been less than equitable in their distribution of benefit. Hence, by standing strong against foreign aggressors and supporting popular Chinese anger–much as it did in 1998 when the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and Beijing students were reportedly bussed in to protest in front of the US embassy–the Party has both established itself as the defender of China, and provided a welcome distraction from the short comings of the reform process.

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A Quick Look at Current Events from Emerging Nations

This week has been overshadowed by the Greek crisis and its affects on trading partners. Asian markets have been largely overlooked on the whole. There have been some unusual events taking place.

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The markets caught the headlines through out the week, The RBA held rates, surprising the markets. BoJ held rates doing what the markets expected. Economic reports were mostly at forecast. New Zealand unemployment fell below forecast. Most overlooked were the emerging nations.

Emerging Asian currencies may suffer more profit-taking in a near term as China ‘s January-February data is likely to stay weak on annual basis due to the Chinese New year

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China ‘s imports in January shrank by 15.3 percent from a year ago – the lowest since August 2009, data showed earlier.

What we are seeing is saturation point for the recent bullish trend. If we see more negative trade and economic data, we will see more correctionsThe rupee has lost nearly 2 percent against the dollar so far this week, heading for its largest weekly loss since the week ended Nov 20, according to Thomson Reuters data.Last week, it recorded a fifth consecutive week of gains, the longest streak of appreciation in more than 15 months.

The Singapore dollar was next in line, having shed 0.9 percent versus the greenback after gaining for four weeks.

Offshore investors on Friday also took profits from emerging Asian currencies against the euro.

The market players had built up long positions in the regional units versus the single currency as Asia’s economic and fiscal fundamentals are stronger than the euro zone.

Investors expect emerging Asian currencies to see some more corrections, but the long term outlook is still positive.

China’s trade surplus widened more than expected in January amid a sharp drop in imports, although analysts cautioned against alarm, saying the data may reflect holiday-related distortions rather than deterioration in underlying economic trends.

China’s trade surplus totaled $27.3 billion for the month, according to data reported Friday by the state-run Xinhua news agency, outpacing expectations for a $10.6 billion surplus according to a poll compiled by Dow Jones Newswires.

Imports for the month were down 15.3% from a year earlier, while exports contracted a 0.5%, according to the Xinhua-reported figures. Despite repeated pledges by China’s top leaders that they will stick to their two-year-long property-tightening campaign, expectations of various forms of easing have surfaced after the Chinese central bank said Tuesday it will support financing for social housing projects and first-time home purchases.

It remains unclear whether Wuhu’s move has the central government’s blessing but analysts said the city’s measures, which were designed to support purchases of smaller-size apartments and property for self-use only, have the potential to be replicated by other cities.

Housing sales in China have plunged in recent months as home buyers have taken to the sidelines in anticipation of further declines in prices thanks to Beijing’s tightening campaign.

The average sale price of homes in Wuhu city was CNY5,567 per square meter last month, down 0.25% from a month earlier and 5.7% from the same period a year earlier, according to private-sector data provider, China Real Estate Index System.

Bank Indonesia may cut interest rates further if the global economy worsens and domestic inflation continues to ease, Deputy Governor Hartadi Sarwono said Friday. The central bank unexpectedly cut its policy interest rate by 25 basis points

Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung ordered the central bank to “solve” within the first quarter a shortage of funds among lenders, stepping up pressure on policy makers to fix banking risks threatening the economy.

The deadline to remedy “liquidity problems” in the banking system was given in a resolution on the government’s website. The prime minister also instructed the central bank to closely monitor the market in order to reduce lending interest rates to “suitable” levels at a “suitable” time.

Vietnam’s dong climbed for a second day on speculation demand for foreign currencies will weaken as the nation’s imports slow and the trade deficit narrows. Government bonds fell.

The country’s trade gap shrank to $100 million from a revised $269 million in December, as imports declined to $6.6 billion from $9.36 billion, according to preliminary data released Feb. 2 by the General Statistics Office in Hanoi.

“The trade deficit has been gradually narrowing in recent years,” researchers Tai Hui, Jennifer Kusuma and Thomas Harr at Standard Chartered Plc in Singapore wrote in a report Wednesday. That means “more support for the Vietnam dong, at least in the short term,” they wrote.

The currency rose 0.2 percent, to 20,913 as of 2:56 p.m. local time on Wednesday, headed for the strongest close since Jan. 30, according to prices from banks compiled by Bloomberg. The central bank fixed the reference rate at 20,828, unchanged since Dec. 26, according to its website. The currency is allowed to trade up to 1 percent on either side of the rate.

TheBank of South Korea unanimously decided to leave its key interest rate for an eighth consecutive month. The decision was in line with what the market had been expecting.

The Korean monetary authority has chosen to remain cautious in recent rate decisions because of a slowing global economy that may affect South Korea , which is very open to international trade. In fact, South Korean exports tend to be used as an indirect measure of the status of the global economy.

The key lending rate was left at 3.25% as Korean authorities continue to highly weigh inflationary pressures. The latest Consumer Prices Index figure came in at 3.4%, below the 4% target. The market expects inflation to move above the target over the next 12 months if demand from China and the United States holds steady.

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