TRADE
Germany sets record
A pick-up in global trade saw Germany post record exports and imports in March, official data showed yesterday, while its trade surplus climbed more than 11 percent on a yearly basis to 18.9 billion euros (US$27 billion). Germany recorded exports worth 98.3 billion euros, a monthly increase of 7.3 percent, and also received a record amount of imports, worth 79.4 billion euros, for a monthly increase of 3.1 percent, the figures showed. “That was the highest monthly figure recorded for both exports and imports since the collection of foreign trade statistics had started in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1950,” the national statistics service said. Citing data provided by the German central bank, it said the current account of the balance of payments came to 19.5 billion euros in March, up from 18.8 billion a year ago.
REAL ESTATE
UK housing prices plunge
British house prices suffered their biggest annual fall in one-and-a-half years last month, as worries about the economic outlook deterred buyers, mortgage lender Halifax said yesterday. The Halifax house price index fell 3.7 percent in the three months to last month compared with a year ago, the biggest decline since October 2009, and leaving the average price of a home at £160,395 (US$262,350). On the month, prices were 1.2 percent lower, the biggest fall since September last year and confounding forecasts for a 0.1 percent gain. Prices had been flat in March. Britain’s economy has not grown at all since last September, raising concerns that the recovery is stalling even before government spending cuts start to bite.
SINGAPORE
Reserves for protection: PM
The country will need to ensure it has sufficient reserves as global uncertainties will be the “new norm” in the next decade, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) said. The city-state will need to buffer its economy “against volatility and storms by accumulating adequate reserves,” Lee, who is also deputy chairman of Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC, 新加坡政府投資公司), said yesterday at the sovereign wealth fund’s 30th anniversary conference. It will invest its reserves “prudently and shrewdly, with a long-term view,” Lee said. GIC, manager of more than US$100 billion of the nation’s reserves, will need to ensure it has “sufficient ammunition” to tackle future crises and meet long-term spending needs, Lee said in his speech. GIC is ranked the world’s eighth-largest state investment company by Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute.
ELECTRONICS
Toshiba in black, slightly
Toshiba yesterday said it returned to the black for the year to March, but warned the outlook remains uncertain because of the impact of the massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11. Toshiba, whose business spans consumer electronics and nuclear reactors, reported a net profit of ¥137.8 billion (US$1.7 billion) for the financial year, reversing a bottom line loss of ¥19.7 billion a year earlier. The company’s operating profit nearly doubled to ¥240.3 billion on revenue of ¥6.4 trillion, up 1.7 percent from the previous year, it said. The electronics giant said the profit and sales gains were mainly because of strong demand for TV sets and its memory chips, which are used in smartphones and tablet computers. For the year to March next year, it forecast a net profit of ¥140 billion, an operating profit of ¥300 billion on revenue of ¥7 trillion.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to