BEIJING: Asian stock markets were mostly lower Wednesday after Wall Street declined and investors looked ahead to U.S. economic data and China’s announcement of its annual growth target.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 lost 0.5 percent to 18,724.03 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 0.3 percent to 24,631.46. Seoul’s Kospi fell 0.2 percent to 1,997.50 and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 dropped 0.5 percent to 5,906.80. The Shanghai Composite Index was down 0.2 percent at 3,257.72. An exception to the downtrend was India, where the Sensex rose 1 percent after the central bank unexpectedly cut interest rates.
Investors were looking ahead to Wednesday’s release of data on employment by ADP, a payroll processing company, and manufacturing data from the Institute for Supply Management. Those provide hints for the Labor Department’s release of monthly jobs data Friday; the report is an important influence on the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy decisions and scrutinized by financial markets.
China’s Premier Li Keqiang is expected to lower this year’s official growth target to 7 percent from last year’s 7.5 percent when he announces the government’s economic plans Thursday in an appearance before the national legislature. The lower target after a decade of double-digit expansion is part of the ruling Communist Party’s marathon effort to reduce China’s reliance on trade and investment and nurture more self-sustaining growth based on domestic consumption and service industries.
