Kaisa in strategic pact with State firms KAISA Group entered into a strategic cooperation agreement with China Merchants Shekou Industrial Zone Holdings and China Great Wall Asset Management on joint venture arrangements and asset acquisitions. Kaisa said in a filing late Tuesday the cooperation agreement will include new opportunities in property development in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, as well as other businesses such as cultural tourism and ferry. The agreement is “conducive to ... revitalizing (its) assets of commercial and residential projects, and alleviating short-term liquidity difficulties,” the firm said. PC monitor shipments forecast to drop slightly CHINA’S shipments of personal computer (PC) monitors are forecast to edge down 1.4% this year, lower than the 3.6% worldwide drop in 2022, data from an industry report showed. The country is expected to ship no more than 32 million PC monitors in 2022, said the report released by global market research firm International Data Corp. (IDC). The market lacks growth momentum after the demand for PC monitors reached a peak last year, said the IDC, adding that contracting purchases from government and the education sector also posed increasing challenges to the PC monitor market. Rail freight volume up 2.8% CHINA’S rail cargo volume, a key indicator of economic activities, rose 2.8% year on year in the first quarter of the year, data from the China State Railway Group Co. (China Railway) shows. A total of 948 million tons of cargo was transported on China’s railways in the period, 25.87 million tons more than that in the same period last year, according to the company. Service trade surges 33.5% THE country’s service trade maintained momentum in the first two months of this year, jumping 33.5% year on year to nearly 953.5 billion yuan (US$146.6 billion), the Ministry of Commerce said yesterday. Of the total, service exports reached about 467.6 billion yuan, up 39.4% year on year, and service imports stood at 485.9 billion yuan, increasing 28.3% year on year. The growth of service trade exports outpaced import growth by 11.1 percentage points, resulting in a 57.6% drop in the service trade deficit. Trade in knowledge-intensive services raked in 382.4 billion yuan, up 17.9% year on year. | 