Singaporean inflation rising
Singapore's inflation rate could exceed 5 percent this year, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) was quoted as saying yesterday.
"Last year, inflation was about 2 percent. This year, it could be 5 percent, maybe even more," the Business Times quoted Lee as telling a Lunar New Year gathering.
Lee was speaking in the lead-up to the national budget, which is to be delivered on Feb. 15.
The newspaper quoted him as saying rising prices are a global phenomenon caused by factors including increased demand, disease and adverse weather.
He said that while the budget will offer something for the poor and elderly, "We cannot just distribute money and make the problem go away."
Lee was quoted as urging a diversification of the city-state's food sources, almost all of which are imported.
He also said people should buy cheaper "house brands," the report said.
Inflationary pressures began picking up in Singapore last year, with rents and wages increasing amid buoyant domestic economic conditions and rising global oil and food prices.
Faced with a slowing US economy, a key market for Singapore exports, the city-state's trade-reliant economy is expected to grow at a slower pace this year after expanding 7.5 percent last year.
The government has forecast 4.5 percent to 6.5 percent growth this year.
Ericsson, Lenovo sign deal
Ericsson AB, the world's largest maker of wireless networks, signed an agreement to provide broadband equipment for Lenovo Group Ltd's (聯想) computers.
Lenovo ThinkPad notebooks will include Ericsson's mobile broadband modules beginning this year, the Stockholm-based company said yesterday in a statement distributed by Hugin newswire. No financial details were provided.
Meanwhile, United Co Rusal, the world's largest aluminum producer, signed an accord with China Power Investment Corp (中電集團) to build plants in China and Africa.
The two companies will build an aluminum smelter in China's Qinghai Province and a bauxite and alumina complex in Guinea, Moscow-based Rusal said in a statement yesterday.
Suntory to sell blue roses
In Japan, gift-givers will soon have the option of blue roses.
The Japanese company that created the world's first genetically modified blue roses said yesterday it will start selling them next year.
Suntory Ltd, which is also a major whisky distiller, hopes to sell several hundred thousand blue roses a year, spokesman Kazumasa Nishizaki said.
"As its price may be a bit high, we are targeting demand for luxurious cut flowers, such as for gifts," he said.
The exact price and commercial name for the blue rose have not been decided.
The company is also growing the rose experimentally in Australia and the US to get approval for sales, but no timing has been set for commercial launches in the two countries.
Suntory in 2004 unveiled the world's first genetically modified blue rose after 14 years of study which also involved Australian researchers.
It created the flowers by implanting the gene that leads to the synthesis of the blue pigment Delphinidin in pansies. The pigment does not exist naturally in roses.
Display industry booming
The Ministry of Economics said yesterday it expects output from the flat-panel display industry will exceed NT$2 trillion (US$62.11 billion) in 2011.
Last year, the industry churned out NT$1.69 trillion in output, up 33 percent from 2006, the ministry cited DisplaySearch data as saying.
The ministry said the flat panel sector had been listed as a star industry by the government.
"We are also assisting the sector to enhance research and development and reinforce valued-added production," an official from the ministry's Industrial Development Bureau said.
The ministry said the sector was expected to benefit from growing demand for thin-film-transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) TVs, which have become the driver of the industry's growth.
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],”
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
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