INDONESIA
Food prices drive up CPI
Inflation rose to 4.5 percent last month, driven by higher food prices, the government said yesterday. The consumer price index (CPI) was up 4.5 percent from a year earlier, an increase from the 3.97 percent recorded in March, the Central Statistics Agency said. Staples such as garlic, chili, sugar, onion and cooking oil were behind the inflationary push, said agency head Suryamin, who like many Indonesians goes by one name. Last month’s CPI rose 0.21 percent on-month compared with 0.07 percent rise in March, the agency said. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, hit 4.24 percent year-on-year last month.
ENERGY
Venture acquires LNG stake
Mitsubishi Corp, Japan’s biggest trading company, and Mitsui & Co agreed to buy a 14.7 percent stake in Woodside Petroleum Ltd’s proposed Browse liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Australia for US$2 billion. The Mitsui and Mitsubishi venture, Japan Australia LNG Pty, also agreed to acquire about 1.5 million tonnes of LNG annually from Woodside, according to a statement yesterday. Mitsui and Mitsubishi also signed an initial agreement to consider potential partnership on other opportunities globally, Woodside said.
BANKING
Lloyds makes thin profit
Britain’s state-rescued Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) said yesterday it made a slender net profit in the first quarter of the year, helped by falling bad debts and cost cutting. Earnings after tax stood at £10 million (US$16 million) in the three months to March, LBG said in a statement, but it also set aside another £375 million to compensate clients who were mis-sold insurance. The profit contrasted with a huge net loss of £2.43 billion in the same period of last year, when LBG, which is 40 percent owned by the government, took an even bigger compensation charge.
PETROLEUM
BP profit falls 18 percent
BP PLC says first-quarter net profit was down 18 percent largely due to a big drop in returns from its downstream business selling fuels, lubricants and fertilizer. For the three months ending March 31, BP said yesterday that its net profit was US$5.9 billion compared to US$7.3 billion a year earlier. Replacement cost profit, a closely watched industry measure, was down 12 percent at US$4.9 billion from US$5.6 billion a year earlier. The big difference came in the downstream category, where underlying replacement cost profit fell 58 percent to US$924 million compared with US$2.2 billion a year earlier. Within downstream, the underlying profit in the fuels business was down 63 percent at US$487 million.
BEVERAGES
Coca-Cola not buying partner
Coca-Cola, the world’s largest beverage company, on Monday denied media reports it was in talks to buy energy-drink giant Monster Beverage. “At this time, we are not in discussions to acquire the Monster Beverage Corporation,” Coke said in a statement. “Coca-Cola has a distribution relationship with Monster in many markets, including the United States. Therefore, we are always in contact with Monster to maximize the value of our commercial arrangements,” the company said. “We continue to review the best ways to maximize the value of our relationship.” Citing people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Monday that Coke was in talks to buy Monster, which has a US$13 billion market value.
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