Citigroup Inc yesterday expected the global economy to post another year of weak growth at 2.6 percent this year following 2.5 percent growth last year, due to the poor conditions of developed economies.
“The emerging markets are unlikely to see growth if developed economies continue to be stagnant,” Citigroup vice chairman Hamid Biglari said at an economic forum in Taipei organized by the Chinese-language CommonWealth Magazine.
Biglari said that in the next five years, developed nations would register an average growth of between 1 percent and 2 percent per year, except for the US.
While the US is expected to see its economy grow just 1.6 percent this year due to its “fiscal cliff,” the country’s political leaders would likely propose a budget reform to avoid the impending financial disaster by the end of the year, and the US is expected to post annual growth of between 3.5 percent and 4 percent by 2017, Biglari forecast.
Because of urbanization and infrastructure building, emerging markets are likely to see an annual growth rate of 5.5 percent on average, Biglari said.
With the US recovering and China and other emerging markets developing, he predicted the global economy would grow 3.1 percent next year and by between 3.5 percent and 3.75 percent from 2015 to 2017.
At the same venue, Muhamad Chatib Basri, chairman of the Indonesia Investment Coordinating Board, said his government is still in negotiations with Foxconn Technology Group (富士康) about an investment plan in the Southeast Asian country.
Foxconn is the trading name of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), which is the world’s largest contract maker of Apple Inc’s products.
“There are certain issues still under discussion, such as land usage and local partners,” Basri said at the forum.
The investment plan would help send Indonesia to a new era of industrial production, which depends not only on cheap labor, but also innovation and technology, he said.
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