JAPAN
Economy still weak: BOJ
Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Masaaki Shirakawa yesterday warned that the country would continue to face a “severe situation” as Europe’s debt crisis and a strong yen weigh on its post-quake economic recovery. “Japan’s economy is likely to continue to face a severe situation for the time being, especially with respect to exports,” he said in a speech to business leaders in the city of Nagoya. Japan fell into a trade deficit last month, reversing a year-earlier surplus, with record flooding in Thailand pounding the operations of Japanese automakers and electronics firms there.
MANUFACTURING
S Korea confidence low
South Korean manufacturers’ confidence held close to a 27-month low because of ongoing concerns over Europe’s debt crisis. An index measuring expectations for next month rose to 83 from 82 for this month, the Bank of Korea said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. The reading for this month was the lowest since August 2009. A measure of expectations at non-manufacturing companies slipped to 82 from 84. The survey, conducted from Nov. 14 to 21, was based on responses from 1,567 manufacturers and 872 non-manufacturers.
PHILIPPINES
GDP growth slows to 3.2%
Philippine officials said the economy decelerated for the third consecutive quarter amid Europe’s debt crisis and weak US growth, with GDP growing 3.2 percent in the third quarter, down 7.3 percent from a year earlier. National Planning Secretary Cayetano Paderanga said that high fuel costs, typhoon damage and a drop in construction were also to blame for slower growth. The board said the economy grew 3.6 percent from January to September, compared with an increase of 8.2 percent in the same period last year.
THAILAND
Ministry cuts GDP forecast
Thailand’s finance ministry has cut its economic growth forecast for this year to 1.7 percent to 2 percent from 2.6 percent earlier because of flooding, Somchai Sujjapongse, head of the fiscal policy office, told reporters. The ministry expects GDP to expand 5 percent next year as the government spends to rebuild damaged areas, he said. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate could climb to 1.8 percent to 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter because of widespread flooding, the National Economic and Social Development Board said in Bangkok yesterday.
MINING
Credit tightening: BHP chief
Europe’s debt crisis has had a negative impact on bank financing, BHP Billiton CEO Marius Kloppers said yesterday, but added that the mining giant was not exposed to the euro. Kloppers said there had been a “fairly large change” in the way lenders, particularly European banks that have led trade finance in the past, had operated in recent months as the euro crisis created market turmoil. “We really started seeing the European conditions impacting, for example, trade finance, availability of LCs [letters of credit] and so on,” he told a teleconference.
OIL
Iraq picks Shell, Mitsubishi
Iraq finalized a US$17 billion, 25-year joint-venture deal with Shell and Mitsubishi to capture and process gas from its southern oil fields, at a ceremony at the oil ministry on Sunday. State-owned South Gas Co will hold a 51-percent stake in Basra Gas, while Shell will have 44 percent and Mitsubishi 6 percent, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said.
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