Chong Pooi Koon

Pas­sen­gers fac­ing can­celled flights and lock­downs are hav­ing trou­ble re­ceiv­ing re­funds as air­lines burn through cash.

Af­ter a record surge on Thurs­day, crude prices fall in ear­ly Asian trade then re­bound on hopes of an out­put cut deal.

Oil prices surge af­ter US Pres­i­dent Trump spurred hopes on Sau­di-Rus­sia deal.

As in­fec­tions con­tin­ue to rise glob­al­ly, in­vestors say more eco­nom­ic pain and mar­ket volatil­i­ty may lie ahead.

Chi­na’s fac­to­ry ac­tiv­i­ty re­bound­ed sharply in March as the coun­try re­turned to work fol­low­ing virus-in­duced shut­downs.

Share mar­kets in Asia and Eu­rope, and oil prices re­sume falls af­ter lat­est warn­ings of virus’s spread.

An­a­lysts warn eco­nom­ic head­winds lie ahead as coro­n­avirus con­tin­ues to spread world­wide, keep­ing oil prices de­pressed.

Sin­ga­pore’s econ­o­my shrank the most in a decade in the first three months of 2020, data show.

But an­a­lysts say down­ward trend in share prices like­ly to con­tin­ue as coro­n­avirus bat­ters glob­al econ­o­my.

Some air­lines may need res­cu­ing by their gov­ern­ments as planes are ground­ed, an­a­lysts say.