Hong Kong’s consumer prices rose 5.7 percent last month from a year earlier on food and rental costs, exceeding analysts’ estimates.
The increase matched November’s rate and was more than the median 5.6 percent estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 12 economists. Excluding distortions from temporary government subsidies, the rate was 6.4 percent, unchanged from the previous month’s record.
Accounting firms including KPMG Tax Ltd and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu CPA Ltd expect Hong Kong Financial Secretary John Tsang (曾俊華) to dole out power subsidies and property-rate waivers in the budget next month, echoing previous relief measures. In March last year, the government announced a HK$60.7 billion (US$7.8 billion) relief package, including HK$6,000 cash subsidies for 6.1 million permanent residents.
“The underlying rate remains elevated — we expect the government to offer a similar package of relief measures,” Raymond Yeung (楊宇霆), an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd in Hong Kong, said before yesterday’s report.
Yeung sees inflation easing to 3.4 percent this year from 5.2 percent last year.
Average private home rents increased 3.7 percent in the three months ending last month from a year earlier, Centaline Property Agency Ltd (中原地產), the territory’s biggest closely held property broker, said on Thursday, citing a survey of 85 major residential estates.
The territory’s electricity suppliers both raised tariffs this year. CLP Holdings Ltd (中電控股) increased fees by 4.9 percent, and Hongkong Electric Co (香港電燈) is boosting charges by less than 5 percent for most households.
Hong Kong stocks advanced yesterday, with the Hang Seng Index posting its biggest weekly gain since the start of last month.
The Hang Seng Index rose 0.8 percent to 20,110.37 at the close of trading. For the week, the gauge advanced 4.7 percent, its biggest gain since the five-day period ended Dec. 2.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained