The earthquake that struck Christchurch on Feb. 22, killing more than 160 people and wrecking the central business district, is likely to cost as much as NZ$15 billion (US$11 billion), New Zealand’s Treasury Department said.
The magnitude 6.3 earthquake will probably cost two to three times more than the estimated NZ$5 billion expense of a temblor that hit the city in September, documents on the Treasury Department’s Web site show. The bill will be shared between the government, insurers and businesses, the department said yesterday.
Economic growth in New Zealand this year is expected to be 1.5 percentage points lower because of last month’s disaster, according to the Treasury Department.
Starting next year, the recovery will “bring a sizable boost” to investment, it said.
“Paying for the earthquake will likely involve a balanced combination of a bit more borrowing in the short term and reconsidering our spending priorities, so we can provide the financial resources needed to help rebuild,” New Zealand Finance Minister Bill English said in a statement yesterday on his Web site.
A “small contraction” in real GDP is expected in this quarter, compared with a forecast of 0.5 percent growth before last month’s quake, the Treasury said.
The number of deaths from last month’s quake rose to 166, the New Zealand civil defense department said on its Web site yesterday. Crews finished searching the rubble of the toppled Christchurch cathedral and didn’t find any victims, the statement said.
Further aftershocks of magnitude 5 or more are possible in the next few days after a magnitude 4.8 shock reported yesterday by the US Geological Survey, the civil defense department said on its Web site. Residents and businesses were allowed access to some areas of Christchurch opened to the public today, the department said.
Police yesterday identified six more people killed, including a 24-year-old South Korean national. Previously the names of 20 victims, including two Israeli citizens and a Thai national, were released. As many as 100 foreigners may have died in the quake, according to the New Zealand government.
The IMF will likely reduce its economic growth forecast for New Zealand after the nation’s deadliest earthquake in 80 years, spokeswoman Caroline Atkinson said on Thursday.
“The outlook for the New Zealand economy was weaker even before the earthquake, as domestic demand was soft despite income gains from high commodity prices,” the Treasury said.
The impact of last month’s quake, “combined with already slower economic growth than forecast,” may leave nominal GDP NZ$15 billion lower through 2015, English said.
The total loss of tax revenue may be as much as NZ$5 billion over a five-year period, he said.
“This is manageable in the context of the government’s revenue base of about NZ$330 billion over the five years,” he said.
“It’s clear that the earthquake will have an impact on the government’s finances — through both increased costs and reduced tax revenue,” English said in his statement.
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