IMF
Greece to get IMF, EU loan
Greece will receive all of a long-awaited 34.3 billion euro (US$45.2 billion) loan tranche from the EU and the IMF by today, a Greek official said yesterday, hours after an initial payment was carried out. “The full amount should arrive by Wednesday,” the official said on condition of anonymity. “A payment of 7 billion euros was made on Monday. There will be another 11.3 billion euros for debt buyback, plus 16 billion euros to recapitalize Greek banks,” he added.
PHILIPPINES
Growth to surpass forecasts
The economy will likely grow more than government forecasts this year and pick up over the next two years, Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said yesterday. He told a year-end economic briefing that GDP would exceed 6 percent for this year, well above the 5 to 6 percent expansion tipped by officials in Manila. The foundation was set with growth of 6.5 percent in the first nine months of the year, Balisacan said, adding: “We forecast growth in 2013 to be between 6 to 7 percent and in 2014, between 6.5 to 7.5 percent.”
INDIA
Bank keeps rate on hold
India’s central bank kept its benchmark interest rate on hold yesterday due to inflation concerns, despite calls from business for a cut in lending costs to boost the sharply slowing economy.
The Reserve Bank of India kept its main lending rate at 8 percent, and the percentage of deposits banks must keep with the central bank — the so-called cash reserve ratio — also unchanged.
CHINA
Property prices increase
The cost of new homes increased in more Chinese cities last month than in the previous month, official figures showed yesterday, despite efforts from the government to keep the market in check. Prices in 53 out of 70 cities tracked by the government rose month-on-month, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement, up from 35 cities in October and 31 cities in September. Prices of new homes dropped in 10 cities and stayed unchanged in the remaining seven cities, the bureau said.
INSURANCE
AIG sells stake in AIA
Insurance company American International Group Ltd (AIG) sold its remaining stake in Asian life insurer AIA Group for US$6.4 billion, the Hong Kong based-company said yesterday. AIG sold nearly 1.65 billion shares, which represented AIG’s remaining stake of approximately 14 percent, at HK$30.30 each, AIA Group Ltd said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange. The selling price was a 4.3 percent discount to Friday’s closing price of HK$31.65. AIG sold US$6 billion in AIA Group stock in March and US$2 billion more in another sale in September.
Private equity
Firm to drop stake in guns
Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management yesterday said it will immediately begin selling its investment in gunmaker Freedom Group in light of last week’s school shooting in Connecticut. Cerberus acquired Bushmaster in 2006 and later merged it with other gun companies to create Freedom Group, which reported net sales of US$677.3 million for the nine months ending September, up from US$564.6 million in the same period a year ago. Bushmaster is the manufacturer of the AR-15 rifle used by the shooter in the Newtown killings that claimed 27 lives, including 20 school children.
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
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