SOUTH KOREA
Q2 growth speeds up
The economy grew slightly faster than previously estimated in the second quarter thanks to greater spending on public construction projects, the central bank said yesterday. Asia’s fourth largest economy grew 0.9 percent quarter-on-quarter in April-to-June compared with the 0.8 percent estimated in July. However, the second-quarter growth in GDP was still much slower than the 1.3 percent rise seen in January-to-March. Year-on-year the economy grew 3.4 percent in the second quarter, the same as earlier forecast. Central bank policymakers hold their monthly interest rate-setting meeting tomorrow, amid rising domestic inflation, but gloomier world prospects which weigh on the country’s export-dominated economy.
CURRENCY
Nigeria shifts toward yuan
Nigeria’s central bank plans to diversify its US$33 billion in foreign exchange reserves away from the US dollar by switching a 10th of the stockpile into yuan, underlining the momentum behind China’s drive to internationalize its currency. “We are looking at anything to start with from 5 to 10 percent of our reserves,” Nigerian Central Bank Governor Lamido Sanusi said on Monday. The bank had already said that it was considering reducing its reliance on the dollar, which economists say accounts for the bulk of its US$32.96 billion in reserves. However, Sanusi, speaking to CNBC news by telephone from China, said Africa’s second-largest economy was not abandoning the dollar and euro.
GLOBAL TRADE
WTO rejects China’s tire ire
Beijing said yesterday it regretted a WTO decision to reject its complaint against punitive US tariffs on Chinese tire imports. The case centered on a 2009 decision by US President Barack Obama to invoke a safeguard clause in China’s WTO accession agreement to impose punitive duties of 35 percent on Chinese tire imports. That prompted China to lodge a complaint with the global trade watchdog. In December last year, a panel rejected the complaint, a decision that China appealed. On Monday the appellate body rejected China’s arguments and ruled that the surge of tire imports were “a significant cause of material injury to the domestic industry.”
BANKING
Temasek ups CCB stake
Temasek Holdings has increased its stake in China Construction Bank (CCB, 中國建設銀行) to 8.10 percent from 6.27 percent, according to the Singapore investment firm and a filing made to the Hong Kong stock exchange. A spokesman for the state-linked firm confirmed Temasek’s stake in the Chinese lender has been raised, but declined to give any further details of the transaction. Temasek Holdings bought 4.4 billion of the Chinese bank’s Hong Kong-listed shares and paid as much as HK$4.94 (US$0.63) per share, according to the filing by the Singapore firm made on Thursday.
ENTERTAINMENT
Netflix streams south
US video giant Netflix Inc on Monday announced the launch of its television and movie streaming service to Latin America and the Caribbean. The service started on Monday in Brazil and would be made available in 43 countries and territories in the region during the next week, wrote Rochelle King, Netflix vice president of user experience and design, in a company blog posting. Netflix subscribers in the new countries will pay a monthly fee of about US$8 for unlimited access to the company’s streaming-video library.
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
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