Asia markets on Monday are expected to digest headlines concerning developments out of the People’s Bank of China and European Central Bank announced at the weekend.

Nikkei futures traded in Chicago were up 0.44 percent at 19,360, while Osaka futures were off 0.54 percent at 19,170, at 6:20 a.m. HK/SIN. That compared with the Nikkei 225’s Friday close of 19,274.82.

Down Under, SPI futures were mostly unchanged, trading lower by 0.1 percent at 5,667, compared with the benchmark index’s previous close of 5,672.617.

Stateside, stocks posted weekly losses on Friday. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.06 percent to close at 21,797.79, but fell 189.77 points for the week. The S&P 500 lost 0.61 percent in the same period, ending the Friday session down 0.15 percent at 2,461.43. The tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 0.59 percet, or 37.68 points, to close at 6,360.19.

China’s central bank intends to remove requirements for financial institutions to set aside foreign-exchange risk reserves for trading yuan forwards as of Sept. 11, Reuters said.

The move comes as the Chinese currency recently erased its entire decline from 2016. The on-shore yuan traded at 6.4773 to the dollar at the end of the trading session on Friday. The offshore yuan was slightly softer at 6.5013.

China August producer price inflation rose 6.3 percent compared with one year ago, Reuters reported on Saturday. That was above the 5.6 percent rise forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll and the 5.5 percent increase seen in July.

Meanwhile, the European Central Bank is weighing an option to to reduce its bond-buying to 20 billion euros or 40 billion euros a month from the current 60 billion euros, Reuters reported, citing three unnamed sources with direct knowledge of the discussion. The central bank’s decision was widely expected to be delivered at its Oct. 26 meeting, Reuters reported.

In corporate news, South Korean automakers Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors said they were likely to miss their 2017 sales targets, Yonhap reported on Sunday. South Korean exporters have been hit due to a diplomatic tiff with China over the deployment of an anti-missile defense system.

In currencies, the dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, stood at 91.473 at 7:10 a.m. HK/SIN after broadly slumping on Friday. The dollar index had finished the week at 91.325. Analysts had attributed softness in the dollar to geopolitical tensions and potential economic fallout from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

Against the Japanese currency, the dollar fetched 108.32 yen after plumbing a low of 107.31 in the last session.

Monday’s trading session was relatively data-light (all times in HK/SIN):

• 7:50 a.m.: Japan July machinery orders