JAPAN
Tax increase to be decided
Liberal Democratic Party Leader (LPD) Shinzo Abe said he would decide whether to increase a sales tax next year based on economic conditions in the second quarter. “It’s impossible to raise the tax if deflation deepens,” Abe said during a Fuji television program yesterday. A decision will be made after data on economic conditions from April to June become available next August, he said. Polls show the LDP, the largest opposition party, is on track to return to power it lost in 2009 after the election on Sunday, with Abe in line to become prime minister. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda won parliamentary approval in August for his bill to raise the country’s sales tax for the first time in 15 years. The bill raises the tax to 8 percent in April 2014 and to 10 percent in 2015.
AGRICULTURE
Meat packing plant relisted
A Canadian meatpacking plant involved in a large recall of contaminated beef products over E. coli bacteria concerns is again being allowed to ship products to the US. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said on Friday that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has relisted the XL Foods plant in Brooks, Alberta, effective immediately. Canada revoked the plant’s permit to export beef to the US on Sept. 13 at the request of the USDA after several of the company’s beef products were recalled. A massive recall was also implemented in Canada after 16 people became ill.
MEXICO
Economy to grow 3.5 percent
Treasury Secretary Luis Videgaray estimates the country’s economy will increase 3.5 percent next year, slightly less than the almost 4 percent growth next year. He expects inflation to run at 3 percent. Videgaray presented Congress on Friday with a balanced budget plan for next year. Lawmakers are expected to approve the budget by the end of the year. The treasury secretary projects next year’s price for a barrel of oil at US$84.90 and pegs output at 2.55 million barrels a day. Oil revenues finance about 30 percent of the federal government’s budget.
TECHNOLOGY
Cisco affirms growth target
Cisco Systems Inc chief executive officer John Chambers affirmed the company’s long-term revenue growth target of 5 percent to 7 percent as he expands software and services to lessen reliance on routers and switches. Cisco, the world’s largest maker of computer networking equipment, is looking for new markets amid intensifying competition from rivals. A central part of that effort has been the acquisition of software and services companies with strong recurring sales and profit margins. Services will become a bigger part of Cisco’s revenue, reaching 25 percent of sales, Chambers said on Friday at a financial analysts’ conference in New York. That business accounted for 21 percent of Cisco’s US$46.1 billion in revenue in the last fiscal year.
RETAIL
Groupon shares surge
Groupon shares surged on Friday as market players reacted to chatter about a possible takeover for the troubled online deals company. Groupon closed with a gain of 22.97 percent at US$4.68. The Chicago-based firm made no comment on reports of takeover talk. Nor did Google, which made an unsuccessful US$6 billion bid for Groupon a year ago. Groupon in September reported a loss of US$3 million in results that came up shy of most analyst forecasts for a small profit.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts