China’s consumer prices fell 0.3% in July from a year earlier, official data showed on Wednesday.

The official consumer prices index rose 0.2% in July from a month earlier, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.8% in July from a year earlier.

China’s trade slumps in July, official customs data showed on Tuesday.

Exports from the country in US dollar terms fell 14.5% in July from a year ago while imports fell 12.4%.

China’s exports to the European Union and the US fell 8.9% and 18.6% respectively. China’s trade with ASEAN also fell with exports dropping 2%, imports falling 6.3%.

China’s lottery ticket sales surged 50.4% year on year to 274 billion yuan in the first half of 2023, data from the Ministry of Finance showed.

Lottery tickets for the sports industry jumped 71.1% in the first six months of the year from the same period last year while lottery to support the welfare system rose 20% in the period.

Lottery sales rose 52.4% to 48.7 billion yuan in June from last year.

China’s central bank pledged to increase financial support for private enterprises.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) will guide more financial resources into the private economy, said Pan Gongsheng, governor of the central bank.

Pan said the PBOC wil expand the scale of instruments to support private enterprises in debt financing. He also called on financial institutions to create a favorable environment for the development of private enterprises and provide them with reliable, efficient and convenient financial services.

The POOC will also work to meet the reasonable financing needs of private real estate enterprises and implement differentiated housing credit policies, said Pan.

US President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order that will limit US investment in China in sensitive technologies including semiconductors quantum computing and certain artificial intelligence capabilities, the White House said in a statement.

The US Treasury Department has also released a notice, detailing the scope of the program.

The White House said the Biden administration is “committed to taking narrowly targeted actions to protect our national security”.

Moody’s cut credit ratings of 10 small and mid-sized US banks and said it may downgrade some of the nation’s biggest banks on Monday.

Moody’s cut the ratings of 10 banks by one notch while placing six major lender including the Bank of New York Mellon, US Bancorp and State Street under review for potential downgrades.

 

Germany’s industrial output in June fell 1.5% from the previous month, official data showed on Monday.

The fall was wider than May’s fall of 0.1%.

Production of automobile fell 3.5% while output in the construction sector fell 2.8%.

 

For the first time in 14 years, eight Amazon nations fathered in Brazil’s Belem to discuss protection of the world’s largest tropical rainforest.  

The nations signed a joint declaration to promote sustainable development, end deforestation and fight organised crime.

The nations however stopped short of adopting a common goal of ending deforestation. Instead countries will be left to pursue their individual deforestation goals.

The Amazon nations also urged developed world to help protect the rainforest.

 

Some 76.7 million people were food insecure in Eastern Africa as of early July, according to the UN World Food Program (WFP).

While the number of people decreased compared to 2022, the WFP said the impacts of the 2020-2023 drought are likely to persist.

The WFP said food insecurity levels across the region are likely to remain high in the second half of 2023.

"While there has been rainfall in drought-affected areas of the Horn of Africa, food insecurity levels are likely to continue to be extremely high as any improvement with rains in drought-affected land will be slow," the WFP said.