UNITED STATES
Sandy cost runs in billions
New Jersey suffered at least US$29.4 billion in damage from Sandy, the Atlantic superstorm that left 37 people dead and washed out communities as it ravaged shore areas, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said yesterday. The figure covers property and business losses as well as mass transit system damage, Christie said in a statement. He said the estimate reflects national aid already received and may be revised upward in coming weeks. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo last week said that Sandy had cost his state about US$33 billion. Cuomo said he would seek US$30 billion in aid from the federal government to mitigate physical and economic damage.
PORTUGAL
State deficit shrinks
The Ministry of Finance said the government deficit narrowed in the first 10 months of the year after a part of banks’ pension funds were transferred to the state. Based on comparable figures, the deficit of the central administration and social security agency was 6.05 billion euros (US$7.8 billion), less than a shortfall of 6.47 billion euros in the same period of last year, the ministry’s Budget Office said in a report on its Web site. Spending rose 0.7 percent, while personnel costs declined 13.7 percent. Tax revenue dropped 4.2 percent, with revenue from indirect taxes declining 4.5 percent and revenue from direct taxes falling 3.7 percent. This year’s revenue from taxes and social security contributions would be about 3.3 billion euros lower than planned in this year’s budget, Finance Minister Vitor Gaspar said on Oct. 3.
HUNGARY
S&P downgrades rating
The nation’s credit rating was lowered to two steps below investment grade by Standard & Poor’s, which said the government’s policies are eroding medium-term economic growth prospects. The country’s long-term foreign and local currency sovereign ratings were reduced one level to “BB,” S&P said in a statement on Friday. The grade, on par with Portugal and Turkey, has a stable outlook, signaling the ratings company is more likely to keep it unchanged than to cut it or raise it. The government said the decision is “frivolous.” The country is in its second recession in four years. The government backtracked last month on a pledge to cut a special bank tax in half next year, as part of a salvo of measures to keep the budget deficit within the EU limit of 3 percent of economic outlook. S&P said it expects the government to meet its fiscal targets in the short term.
COLOMBIA
Central bank cuts rates
The central bank on Friday voted 4 to 3 to cut interest rates to the lowest level in a year after the nation’s biggest brokerage collapsed and industry contracted for a second month. Banco de la Republica, led by bank Governor Jose Dario Uribe, cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point to 4.5 percent, as forecast by only two of 33 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. In a speech in Cartagena, President Juan Manuel Santos said Finance Minister Mauricio Cardenas provided the decisive vote in the decision. The move comes after the bank opened a so-called liquidity window for brokerages in an effort to avoid disruptions in financial markets following the collapse of Interbolsa SA’s brokerage this month.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is