South Korea’s land prices fell last month, the first decline in eight years, as demand for property weakened amid a global economic slowdown.
The average price fell 1.4 percent last month from October, the first decline since 2000, the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs said yesterday in a statement on its Web site.
South Korea’s real-estate industry, which accounts for about 20 percent of the economy, is reeling after the backlog of unsold homes reached the highest level in more than a decade. Land prices in Seoul slid 2.7 percent last month, extending the previous month’s 0.2 percent drop, according to the statement.
Residential-land prices in urban areas fell 1.8 percent last month from the previous month, while commercial-property prices declined 1.6 percent, the ministry said.
Meanwhile, South Korea may allow pension funds, financial institutions and home developers to create real estate investment trusts (REITs) to help construction companies by acquiring unsold homes.
The government is also considering tax breaks for pension funds and other companies that invest in the REITs, the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime said in a statement yesterday.
Financial institutions in South Korea have agreed to extend the maturity of loans by a year to aid some cash-strapped construction companies as the number of unsold homes reach the highest level in more than a decade. The global financial crisis has dried up funds, making it more difficult for consumers to get loans to buy new homes and for builders to refinance debt.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by