INDONESIA
Economy grows 6.23%
Indonesia said yesterday that Southeast Asia’s biggest economy grew 6.23 percent last year, supported by strong private consumption and investment. The Central Statistics Agency added that in the three months to the end of December growth came in at 6.11 percent year on year. The full year figure fell short of government forecasts of 6.5 percent growth and the central bank’s estimate of 6.3 percent.
ARGENTINA
Price freeze announced
Argentina announced a two-month price freeze on supermarket products on Monday in an effort to stop spiraling inflation. The price freeze applies to every product in all of the nation’s largest supermarkets. The commerce ministry wants consumers to keep receipts and complain to a hotline about any price hikes they see before April 1.
ENERGY
BP Q4 profits shrink
Fourth-quarter profits from shrinking British oil company BP PLC beat analysts’ expectations yesterday thanks in part to a record performance from its refining division, as a trial over its 2010 US Gulf oil spill looms later this month. BP, the last of the big four western world oil companies to report, said fourth quarter net profit fell to US$3.984 billion from US$4.986 billion a year earlier, mainly as a result of asset sales to pay for its spill liabilities. The company has sold US$37.8 billion worth of assets since the Macondo spill and taken a total charge against profits of US$42.2 billion — most of which has already been paid out.
AUTOMAKERS
Mitsubishi profit jumps
Mitsubishi Motors said yesterday its net profit for the nine months to December jumped 27.3 percent from a year earlier to ¥17.3 billion (US$187 million), largely thanks to cost-cutting efforts. The Japanese automaker said sales edged down 0.8 percent to ¥1.28 trillion, while operating profit rose 6.2 percent to ¥40.9 billion. For the fiscal year to March 2013, Mitsubishi left its net profit forecast unchanged at ¥13 billion, but cut its sales forecast to ¥1.81 trillion from a previous target of ¥1.83 trillion.
ELECTRONICS
Samsung boosts US fund
Samsung announced on Monday it was pumping more money into research and venture capital funding efforts that will be led by a new hub for the South Korean giant in Silicon Valley. The electronics giant said it was launching a US$100 million “catalyst fund” that will augment its US$1 billion Samsung Ventures America Fund and “fuel innovative technologies and business models through all stages of business.” The company also said it will be launching its new Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center in Menlo Park, California, with additional offices in South Korea and Israel.
UTILITIES
Sumitomo buys UK firm
Japanese trading giant Sumitomo said yesterday it has bought Britain-based water supply and distribution firm Sutton & East Surrey Water (SESW), for a reported US$455 million. Sumitomo and its European subsidiary bought 100 percent of East Surrey Holdings, which owns SESW, the Japanese firm said in a statement. Sumitomo did not make public the purchase price, which the leading Nikkei business daily estimated to be ¥42 billion (US$455 million). The British firm, established in 1862, supplies drinking water to about 655,000 residential and business customers, the statement 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