Turkey will provide neighboring Syria with electricity if asked but the deteriorating situation there makes such a move unlikely, the energy minister said on Wednesday.

"We'll give electricity to Syria if they want," Taner Yildiz was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.

U.S. shoppers spent cautiously this holiday season, a disappointment for retailers who slashed prices to lure people into stores and now must hope for a post-Christmas burst of spending.

Sales of electronics, clothing, jewelry and home goods in the two months before Christmas increased 0.7 percent compared with last year, according to the MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse report.

China's financial system is facing increasing risks due to soaring bank loans, with lending to the property sector and local governments a particular concern, the finance ministry warned Wednesday.

Bank lending has been rising "at a high speed" in recent years and the quality is yet to be tested, Li Yong, vice finance minister, was quoted in a statement as saying.

Toyota said Wednesday that it expects to sell 9.7 million vehicles globally this year, up 22 percent from 2011 as Japan's biggest automaker accelerates a recovery after last year's natural disasters.

Those figures may put Toyota back in pole position as the world's biggest automaker, ahead of General Motors and Volkswagen.

The dollar rose past 85.00 yen in early Asian trade on Wednesday on expectations that the Bank of Japan (BoJ) would take more monetary easing steps under pressure from the incoming government.

The greenback was at 85.12 yen around 0040 GMT after topping 85.00 yen for the first time since April 2011. The dollar was at 84.78 yen in Tokyo afternoon trade on Tuesday.

The Turkish economy is expected to post growth of at least 4 percent in 2013, according to a projection by the central bank on Tuesday.

"We expect a growth of 4 percent or above in 2013," Central Bank governor Erdem Basci told reporters in Ankara.

Rating agency Standard and Poor's on Monday downgraded Egypt's long-term credit rating because of "elevated" tensions over its political crisis, and warned it could be lowered further.

The country's long-term rating was lowered to 'B-' from 'B' because the turmoil has "weakened Egypt's institutional framework, and the increasingly polarized political discourse could diminish the effectiveness of policy-making," the agency said.

General Motors will recall 119,000 U.S. vehicles because some of them may be missing a backup hood latch, the U.S. automaker said in regulatory filings.

GM did not say whether it was aware of any accidents or injuries as a result of the defect, which affects certain Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon vehicles from the 2010 to 2012 model years.

South Korea's Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering said Tuesday it had secured a 1.9 trillion won ($1.8 billion) order to build a fixed platform for Norway's Statoil ASA.

Daewoo said it would complete the 31,000-ton offshore platform for the production of oil or gas by the end of 2016.

Iraq and Jordan agreed on Monday to extend an oil pipeline to the Red Sea city of Aqaba for the export of Iraqi crude, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said after a fleeting visit to Amman.

"It was agreed to extend an oil pipeline across Jordan to Aqaba to export Iraqi oil and satisfy Jordan's crude requirements," the Iraqi premier told journalists, saying this would "end the transportation of oil using tankers."