JAPAN
Agency revises debt outlook
Fitch Ratings agency yesterday revised its debt outlook for the country to negative from stable, citing government debt at more than twice the value of GDP in the fast-ageing nation. “Japan’s sovereign credit-worthiness is under negative pressure from rising government indebtedness,” said Andrew Colquhoun, head of Fitch’s Asia-Pacific Sovereigns team, in a statement. “A stronger fiscal consolidation strategy is necessary to buffer the sustainability of the public finances against the adverse structural trend of population ageing.”
NEW ZEALAND
Banks’ debt downgraded
Moody’s yesterday downgraded the debt ratings of the country’s four largest banks, citing the country’s “challenging” economic environment after two devastating earthquakes in Christchurch. The move to lower the ratings of ANZ National, Bank of New Zealand, ASB and Westpac New Zealand to Aa3 from Aa2 follows a downgrade to the four banks’ Australian parents last week. Aa3 is the fourth highest rating on a 21-point scale. “[It] reflects the ongoing impact of the challenging economic environment in New Zealand, which has resulted in asset quality metrics continuing to deteriorate — albeit at a slower pace — beyond minimum expectations,” Moody’s said.
JAPAN
Consumer prices rise
The country’s consumer prices rose for the first time in 28 months last month after a huge quake and Arab turmoil raised fuel prices, data showed yesterday, but analysts said the deflationary spiral is not over yet. Japan’s core consumer price index, which excludes volatile fresh food prices, rose 0.6 percent last month from a year earlier, the first increase since December 2008, according to the internal affairs ministry. The nationwide rise last month, which was in line with market expectations, was due largely to higher costs for oil products.
TECHNOLOGY
Japan chides Sony over data
Sony Corp was told by the Japanese government to improve management of personal data after the Japanese electronics maker’s networks were attacked by hackers who stole customer information. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced the order on its Web site yesterday. Separately, Sony said it will resume some of its PlayStation Network and Qriocity entertainment services in Asia today, more than a month after the biggest online data breach in US history led to the suspension of operations.
AUTOMAKERS
Honda, Toyota release data
Japanese auto giants Toyota and Honda saw global production halve last month because the March 11 earthquake and tsunami ravaged supply chains, the companies said yesterday. Honda reported a 52.9 percent year-on-year drop in worldwide production and an 81 percent slump in domestic output, while Toyota said global production was down 48.1 percent. Amid power and parts shortages, Toyota had announced production disruptions domestically and in the US, Europe, China and Australia because of the crisis, temporarily slowing output or shutting plants. The company announced a year-on-year drop of 15.4 percent in its global sales figures for last month. Honda said it expected production volume in Asia and Oceania to start picking up in July, the carmaker’s Asian Honda Motor Co unit said.
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],”
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
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