Business news in brief

U.S. proposes catfish quality standards

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering new voluntary standards for catfish quality. It posted its proposal Thursday on the Federal Register, opening the process to a 60-day comment period from catfish producers, suppliers, processors, retailers, food-service operators and others.

Arkansas is the nation's third-largest catfish producer, behind Mississippi and Alabama, but leads the nation in eating it. In the late 1950s, it also became the first state to produce catfish commercially. Some 5,000 acres in Arkansas are used in catfish production, compared to about 60,000 acres in Mississippi, according to the National Agriculture Statistics Service.

The 2014 Farm Bill directed the Agriculture Department to set up its own voluntary fee-based grading program for catfish. The department said its notice in the Federal Register seeks "to identify what the industry requires and needs in a catfish quality standard."

The comment period ends Sept. 12. Comments can be mailed to: Catfish Grade Standards, Quality Assessment Division, 1400 Independence Ave. SW, Stop 0258, Room 3932-S, Washington D.C. 20250, or sent by fax to (202) 690-2746.

-- Stephen Steed

Mexico boosts construction subsidies

MEXICO CITY -- Three years after Mexico's housing crisis wiped out $4 billion in stocks and bonds, President Enrique Pena Nieto has almost doubled subsidies for low-income housing.

Moody's Investors Service analyst Francisco Vazquez said the doubling over the past two years has encouraged developers to construct homes at a rapid pace even as a sluggish economy saps demand. Much of the new building is also taking place in the outskirts of cities where few services are available, he said.

Pena Nieto roiled the housing market shortly after taking office in 2012. He said his government would use its subsidies program to steer construction closer to city centers at a time when some homeowners in far-flung developments were being left with no basic services. Vazquez said that the overbuilding threatens to hurt Mexico's residential mortgage-backed securities market, where default rates remain above the 4 percent level they reached during the 2013 meltdown.

"Mexico's housing policy faces a huge challenge," Robert Rauch, who oversees $6.3 billion of assets at Gramercy Fund Management LLC in Greenwich, Conn., said in an email. Homebuilders are constructing "units that are significantly cheaper to build but remain far outside the main city centers."

-- Bloomberg News

Deaf woman files suit over drive-thrus

TRENTON, N.J. -- A deaf New Jersey woman who primarily communicates in sign language is suing Taco Bell, saying the company and its restaurants failed to accommodate her at drive-thru windows.

Gina Cirrincione said she wrote her order and handed it to an employee at the drive-thru pickup window at a Taco Bell in Pleasantville in January. A video shows an employee saying he would take the order "one time," but she would have to come inside in the future.

She also claims a drive-thru employee at a Taco Bell in Atlantic City returned a note for food without filling the order.

Cirrincione wants Taco Bell to develop a policy to consider the needs of deaf customers. She's also seeking damages.

Taco Bell did not return a call seeking comment.

-- The Associated Press

London luxury-home sales fall from '15

LONDON -- London's best homes are proving a tough sell after the U.K. voted to leave the European Union.

The number of prime properties sold in London in the 12 working days after the referendum fell 43 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to data compiled by researcher Lonres. The number of homes under offer dropped 25 percent.

Home values across the capital were already being hurt before the vote, with prices decreasing 1.4 percent in May, the biggest monthly decline since June 2011, according to data compiled by Acadata Ltd. and LSL Property Services PLC. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors' measure of London home-price changes last month fell to its weakest since the financial crisis.

"Brexit or no Brexit, the high end of the London market was going to have a major correction and that's going to happen now," Sean Mulryan, the chairman of Ballymore Properties Ltd., said in an interview with Newstalk radio, using the popular term for the British exit from the EU. The top end "had overheated two years ago," he said. Ballymore is one of the city's largest homebuilders.

Prime-home sales dropped 18 percent in the 12 working days after the vote compared with the same period before the referendum, the Lonres data shows. The number of homes under offer fell by a third.

-- Bloomberg News

China reins in banks as bad debt rises

BEIJING -- China's banking regulator on Friday required banks to step up risk controls and safeguard financial stability as the nation's soured debt rose.

Banks' nonperforming loans climbed to 1.81 percent of outstanding credit as of June 30 from 1.75 percent three months earlier, the China Banking Regulatory Commission said in a statement. While the commission said the banking industry's capital adequacy and provision levels are still "relatively sufficient," it urged the lenders to raise capital to enhance their loss-absorbing and risk-management ability.

Chinese lenders are grappling with a growing mountain of bad debt after flooding the financial system with cheap credit for years to prop up economic growth. The official figures of $208 billion as of March are widely believed to understate the true scale of the problem, with Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia Ltd. estimating nonperforming loans were probably closer to $1.7 trillion at the end of last year.

The industry's bad-loan coverage ratio, a measure of its ability to absorb potential losses from soured credit, weakened to 161 percent from 175 percent in March, the statement showed, signaling a drag on future profits from the need to set aside additional reserves. The minimum required level is 150 percent.

-- Bloomberg News

Business on 07/16/2016

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