Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the government will go ahead with promised tax cuts, even as inflation rises at the fastest pace in 16 years.
"There will be absolutely no change to people having tax cuts to take as additional income," Rudd said on the Nine TV network's Sunday program yesterday.
He said inflation remains the government's greatest challenge.
Australia's annual core inflation accelerated to 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter, the fastest since 1991. The central bank aims to keep price gains between 2 percent and 3 percent on average.
Treasurer Wayne Swan said he remained optimistic about the outlook for the Australian economy amid the highest borrowing costs in 11 years and concern the US is headed for recession.
"We do face substantial challenges but I think our growth prospects are very solid," Swan said yesterday on Channel Ten's Meet the Press program. "It's a very big inflation problem. We have to deal with it because inflation pushes up interest rates, erodes living standards and, in the end, inflation is a threat to growth."
The economy is showing few signs of cooling as rising consumer spending and exports to China help Australia ride out a global financial-market slump. It grew 4.3 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, the fastest pace in three years. The Reserve Bank of Australia last week raised the overnight cash rate target to an 11-year high of 7 percent.
Swan said measures allowing customers to more easily switch banks will bolster competition in the sector and help keep borrowing costs lower.
"We have to really take the ax to public spending given the inflation problem that we've inherited," he said. "That will mean that we will go through the budget looking at all areas of the budget to make the savings that are absolutely essential if we're going to put downward pressure on inflation and downward pressure on interest rates."
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