PHILIPPINES
Economy slows to 4.9%
Manila said yesterday economic growth slowed to 4.9 percent in the three months to March, as it was hit by a drop in global trade and less spending on infrastructure. The National Statistical Coordination Board said first-quarter growth was well down from the 8.4 percent in the same period last year, when activity was boosted by election-related spending. “Underspending by the government and the slowdown in global trade constricted the economy to a lower growth ... of 4.9 percent in the first quarter,” the agency’s secretary--general, Romulo Virola, said in a statement. The growth figures were at the lower end of the government’s 4.8 to 5.8 percent forecast.
TELECOMS
KT, SoftBank plan venture
South Korean telecom operator KT said yesterday it would form a cloud--computing venture with Japan’s SoftBank to help Japanese companies keep their data safe from natural disasters. South Korea’s No. 2 wireless operator will have a 51 percent stake in the joint venture to be established by September, with the rest held by the Tokyo-based Internet and telecoms firm, KT said in a statement. The new venture will set up a data storage center in South Korea by October to offer services to Japanese companies.
NEW ZEALAND
‘Xenophobia’ costly: Key
People could not afford to be “totally xenophobic” toward Chinese investment because it has brought jobs and capital into the country, Prime Minister John Key said yesterday. Key, who has previously said New Zealanders risked becoming “tenants in their own land” if foreign firms were allowed to buy farms without restrictions, said there were positive aspects to investment from Beijing. He said China’s Bright Dairy & Food Co (光明乳業) took a controlling stake in South Island milk producer and processor Synlait last year and was now expanding the business. “So they’re not buying the land, they’re bringing in capital and that’s creating jobs,” Key told TVNZ.
BANKING
Moody’s warns on loans
The value of bad loans at Vietnamese banks may increase as borrowers’ cash flows weaken because of higher interest rates, Moody’s Investors Service said yesterday. Vietnamese banks for which information was available from annual reports in English booked a higher value of non--performing loans as of the end of last year compared with a year earlier, Moody’s said in a note. “This trend is continuing,” wrote Christine Kuo (郭書岑), a Singapore-based senior credit officer for Moody’s. “The increase reflected weakening corporate cash flows as a result of lower profits owing to rising costs and higher debt-service burdens because of rising interest rates.”
UNITED KINGDOM
BCC cuts growth forecast
A leading business group yesterday cut its growth forecasts for the country’s economy over the next two years, but insisted the government’s austerity measures were correct. The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said it expects the economy would grow by 1.3 percent this year against a previous forecast of 1.4 percent, and cut its forecast to 2.2 percent for next year down from 2.3 percent. A major reason for the downgrade was high inflation, which is putting a squeeze on household incomes, the group said in its quarterly economic forecast. Inflation is currently at 4.5 percent, more than double the official target of 2 percent.
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