■ ECONOMY
Foreign trade set to slow
Slower growth is expected in this year's foreign trade owing to the moderate global recovery, a government report said yesterday. According to the Bureau of Foreign Trade's forecast, the economy will grow 4.3 percent this year, compared to the forecast of 3.3 percent global economic growth, the Central News Agency (CNA) said. This year's exports are expected to grow 8.15 percent to reach US$242 billion, and import are expected to grow 7.11 percent to hit US$217 billion. The trade surplus is expected to reach US$25 billion, up 18 percent year-on-year, CNA quoted the report as saying. In the fourth quarter of last year, imports and exports grew 3.1 percent and 1.5 percent respectively.
■ ECONOMY
Inflation haunts China
China faces inflationary pressures this year as the country's trade surplus expands, a central banker said yesterday. "If the trade surplus continues to expand over the next few months, the central bank will strengthen its macro control measures and will be more pre-emptive in taking tightening measures," Wu Xiaoling (吳曉靈), vice governor of the People's Bank of China told reporters during a financial conference in Beijing. The measures may include further reserve ratio rises, more aggressive open market operations and more currency swaps. China faces rising inflationary pressure this year caused by a long expansion in monetary supply and bank lending last year, Wu said.
■ TRADE
FTA deadline extended
The US and South Korea need more time to negotiate an ambitious free trade agreement, and have extended the deadline to today, the two governments said. "Negotiations continue between the US and the Republic of Korea on a number of outstanding issues," Sean Spicer, Assistant US trade representative for public affairs, said in a statement released yesterday. The talks must finish by noon today in the eastern US, Spicer said. That would be early tomorrow morning in South Korea.
■ ELECTRONICS
Creative slips into the red
Creative Technology Ltd, whose music players compete with Apple Inc's iPod, said it expects to post an operating loss of about US$20 million for the fiscal third quarter ending yesterday. "The operating loss is due to lower-than-expected sales for Creative products in Asia and the United States and restructuring charges worldwide relating to cost-reduction efforts in the quarter," Creative said yesterday in a statement to the Singapore Stock Exchange. The company expects sales in the third quarter to be about US$180 million. That is 20 percent lower than the US$225.7 million in sales posted a year earlier and down 58 percent from US$424.4 million in the second quarter.
■ AVIATION
Brazil's airports reopen
All of Brazil's 49 airports were set to reopen early yesterday following a deal reached by the government and striking air traffic controllers to end a walkout that has wreaked havoc on the nation's air transportation system, a labor representative said. Under the accord, the government agreed to suspend planned transfers of striking workers from the airport of Brasilia, the capital, to other parts of the country, and begin talks about increasing worker salaries and "demilitarizing" the industry.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts