AUSTRALIA
Treasurer touts growth
Treasurer Wayne Swan said this year probably saw the most jobs created in a single calendar year and businesses are now positioned for record investment for the future. “We’ve grown our economy by almost 5 percent from its pre-crisis levels,” Swan said in his weekly economic note, which was received by e-mail. “That’s despite the headwinds we’re still facing from abroad,” he said.
AUSTRALIA
Reforms press rates
The government’s banking reform package will exert “downward pressure” on interest rates, Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten said. “What we’re trying to do is put competition into the mortgage market,” he said in an interview broadcast yesterday. “We’re trying to improve the role of the non-four big banks and we’re also trying to improve liquidity in our markets.”
AUTOMOBILES
Hyundai eyes fuel cells
Hyundai Motor Co, South Korea’s largest carmaker, aims to start commercial production of cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells in 2015 to expand its line of vehicles with reduced greenhouse-gas emissions. The new model will be an upgrade of the Tucson IX, a fuel cell sport-utility vehicle introduced in 2008, Seoul-based Hyundai said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. The company has extended the car’s range by 55 percent to a maximum 650km per charge and boosted fuel efficiency by 15 percent, according to the statement.
CONSTRUCTION
CITIC to build in Venezuela
CITIC International Contracting Inc (國華國際工程承包公司), a unit of China’s state-owned CITIC Group (中信集團), will build 10,000 housing units on the site of a Caracas military base, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said. CITIC is to receive US$400 million as a first instalment to build the units. Venezuela will use part of a US$20 billion loan from China to pay CITIC. The project is part of a pledge to close a housing deficit aggravated by heavy gains, Chavez said on state television. CITIC Group president Hong Bo (洪波) said that the company may build a series of 20-story towers on 40 hectares.
BANKING
Padoa-Schioppa, 70, dies
Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, architect of the euro currency and founding member of the European Central Bank’s executive board, has died, according to a person close to his family who asked not to be identified by name. He was 70. Padoa-Schioppa died after suffering a heart attack in Rome on Saturday night while at a dinner with about 100 people, the newspaper La Repubblica reported on its Web site. Padoa-Schioppa, who fought for the single currency as a catalyst for European integration, served on the central bank’s executive board from 1999 until 2005. He was deputy director-general of the Bank of Italy for 13 years, during which time he was passed over for the governorship in favor of Antonio Fazio in 1993.
TURKEY
IMF hints a rate hike
The IMF said the option for Ankara to raise interest rates “should be preserved” and warned against “excessive comfort” about rates remaining low for an extended period. “Conditions requiring an increase in interest rates may arise within the central bank’s policy horizon,” the IMF said on its Web site late on Saturday, after concluding a recent visit to the country.
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