Almost half of Japan's major firms believe the economy is showing signs of slowing down, amid concerns about global oil prices and the US economy, a survey released yesterday said.
Forty percent of businesses cited slowdowns, up 17 percentage points from its previous survey in September, the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper said.
The survey was conducted by the daily late last month and covered 214 major companies.
Thirteen percent surveyed said Japan's economic expansion was already over, while 49 percent predicted it would end by this December.
Some 70 percent said they were concerned about a surge in the price of oil and other raw materials, while 61 percent regarded the prospects for the US economy as a negative factor for Japan's economy, the survey said.
Crude oil hit US$100 a barrel for the second straight day on Thursday.
Surging oil prices are piling pressure on the US economy, already weakened by a horrific housing slump, adding to a raft of signals of looming recession in the world's largest economy.
In a separate survey released by the Mainichi Shimbun yesterday, some 58 percent of major Japanese companies said the nation's economy is still expanding gradually, down from 83 percent a year ago.
Eleven percent said the economy would worsen over the next 12 months, up from six percent in the previous survey, which was carried out late last month, covering 120 Japanese firms.
The Bank of Japan may slash the economic growth forecast for the fiscal year to as low as 1.3 percent from its current 1.8 percent, a paper reported this week.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained