New Zealand business sentiment recovered slightly in May, but remains near three-year lows as surging fuel prices slow economic growth, damping customer demand and eroding profits. The business confidence index rose to 10 from minus 10.6 in April, ANZ Bank New Zealand said Friday in Wellington. A gauge of firms’ own-trading improved to 25.6 from 19.6. Confidence levels remain low as the global fue...
New Zealand business sentiment recovered slightly in May, but remains near three-year lows as surging fuel prices slow economic growth, damping customer demand and eroding profits. The business confidence index rose to 10 from minus 10.6 in April, ANZ Bank New Zealand said Friday in Wellington. A gauge of firms’ own-trading improved to 25.6 from 19.6. Confidence levels remain low as the global fuel-price shock hits consumer spending and drives up costs that many firms are struggling to recover. This adds to signs economic growth has slowed sharply, with a number of local economists forecasting a second-quarter contraction. “These are very uncertain times for businesses,” said Sharon Zollner , chief New Zealand economist at ANZ in Auckland. “Some of the initial shock appears to have worn off, but activity indicators remain considerably lower than before the Middle East conflict broke out. Pressure on costs and profitability are clear.” The survey shows expected inflation in one year’s time is 3.63% while 56.7% of firms expect to raise prices in coming months. Just 2% see profits improving. Zollner said firms’ hiring intentions have declined as they face a “profitability shock” and this is also reflected in the expected increase in wages over the next year dropping to just 2.48%. “Costs are increasing but firms have a limited ability to recoup that through higher prices, with customers so price sensitive,” she said. “The wage bill is one area where firms have some ability to limit cost increases, particularly in a soft labor market.” The prospect of rising unemployment and softer wage increases will curb household incomes, adding to signs of cautious spending particularly as rising fuel costs crowd out non-essential purchases. Earlier Friday, ANZ reported that consumer confidence edged higher in May after dropping to a three year low in April, but is well down on levels before the Iran war erupted. The gauge rose to 86.5 from 80.3 in April, with a net 36% expecting th...
Japan is often seen as one of Asia’s most stable democracies, with a sophisticated media industry and constitutional protections for free expression, yet one of the world’s leading press freedom indexes has once again rated the country’s media environment as “problematic”. Analysts and journalists said the label points to a contradiction at the heart of Japan’s press system – reporters are rarely ...
Japan is often seen as one of Asia’s most stable democracies, with a sophisticated media industry and constitutional protections for free expression, yet one of the world’s leading press freedom indexes has once again rated the country’s media environment as “problematic”. Analysts and journalists said the label points to a contradiction at the heart of Japan’s press system – reporters are rarely subject to the overt repression seen in authoritarian states, but political pressure, access journalism and newsroom self-censorship have steadily narrowed the space for scrutiny. While Japan rose four places in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index released by the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders last month, it still came in 62nd out of 180 nations, leaving it well below many of its democratic peers and regional neighbours. Advertisement 07:53 If you’re tired of being told what to see in Japan, try this no-frills tourism Reporters Without Borders, known by its French initials RSF, ranks countries according to the political, legal, economic, sociocultural and security conditions in which journalists work, drawing on a tally of abuses against journalists and media outlets as well as questionnaires completed by press freedom specialists.
Nothing about the summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in Beijing suggested high drama. The language was restrained, the optics disciplined. The impression it left was simple: escalation of tensions for its own sake is a losing strategy. The announcement that China would buy 200 Boeing aircraft served mainly as a political gesture of goodwill, with the commerci...
Nothing about the summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in Beijing suggested high drama. The language was restrained, the optics disciplined. The impression it left was simple: escalation of tensions for its own sake is a losing strategy. The announcement that China would buy 200 Boeing aircraft served mainly as a political gesture of goodwill, with the commercial details to be filled in later by negotiators. More important was the pattern across readouts from Beijing and Washington, which emphasised staying in close touch, expanding channels of communication and lowering the emotional temperature after a long stretch of spiralling rhetoric. At the heart of this reset is a phrase likely to define the next phase of the relationship: a “constructive” China-US relationship characterised by “strategic stability” . Xi introduced this framing at the summit, and Chinese media have since treated it as the new framework for ties with Washington. Advertisement But what made this visit more interesting was what aired on American television. With few concrete summit outcomes to report, US networks turned to the next-best raw material: the lives of ordinary Chinese people. This matters because, for many Americans, China remains an abstraction. It is often portrayed as a composite of pollution, factories, authoritarianism, backwardness and threat. US media coverage did not abandon those tropes, but a more layered approach emerged as film crews went into communities, speaking to students, workers and small-business owners. Advertisement The students they met were just like those in many other countries. They admired American brands and artists such as Taylor Swift. Happiness, they said, meant career success and personal fulfilment.