INDIA
Inflation rises unexpectedly
Inflation unexpectedly accelerated last month, crimping the central bank’s scope to extend interest-rate cuts and bolster economic growth. The benchmark wholesale-price index rose 7.23 percent from a year earlier, fueled by a 19 percent jump in the prices of fruit and vegetables, after climbing 6.89 percent in March, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry said in a statement yesterday.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Canon eyes full automation
Canon Inc is moving toward fully automating digital camera production in an effort to cut costs. Company spokesman Jun Misumi said yesterday that the move would likely be completed over the next few years. He declined to give a date. Japanese manufacturers have recently moved production abroad to offset earnings damage from the soaring yen, but Canon believes full automation will help keep manufacturing in Japan. It denies the move might cause job cuts.
SHIPBUILDING
Record container ship started
Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering said yesterday it had started work on the world’s largest container vessel, with a deck big enough to accommodate four football pitches. The company said the 400m-long ship would carry up to 18,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit containers. It is scheduled to be delivered to Danish shipper A.P. Moeller-Maersk in the second half of next year. The vessel is the first of 20 such container ships that Daewoo will build by 2015 under a US$3.6 billion order from the Danish company.
METALS
Profits fall 84% at Rusal
Russian aluminum giant United Company Rusal yesterday said first-quarter net profit dived 84 percent from a year earlier because of higher costs and falling prices. Rusal said its net profit for the three months that ended on March 31 totaled US$74 million compared to US$451 million over the same period in the previous year. Revenue fell 3.7 percent to US$2.88 billion.
AVIATION
JAL records US$2.33bn profit
Japan Airlines (JAL), which went bankrupt two years ago in one of the country’s biggest-ever corporate failures, yesterday logged an annual net profit of US$2.33 billion, thanks to cost--cutting efforts. The carrier said its net profit for the year through March was ¥186.6 billion on sales of ¥1.2 trillion, as a strong yen saw more Japanese travel overseas, although demand was hit by last year’s earthquake and tsunami disaster. It had forecast a ¥160 billion net profit.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure