Asian Development Bank (ADB) president Haruhiko Kuroda, a potential candidate to head Japan’s central bank, signaled that he favors greater monetary stimulus by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) this year.
“Some additional” measures could be justified for this year, Kuroda said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday, stressing that he was speaking in his capacity as an economist and chief of the ADB, not as a BOJ contender. Kuroda, 68, said that the BOJ has “many” tools to achieve its 2 percent inflation target, and that the “global standard” for the horizon to achieve such goals is two years.
Kuroda’s remarks indicate the BOJ would embrace more aggressive steps to end deflation should Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominate him to succeed BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa and should he win confirmation in parliament. The BOJ last month announced it would start open-ended asset purchases only in January next year, even as it unveiled a 2 percent inflation target that its own forecasts showed won’t be reached in the coming two years.
Japan’s economy has suffered under a decade and a half of deflation, which has pushed up the real burden of debt, and caused companies and households to put off spending, said Kuroda, a former vice finance minister of international affairs. Falling consumer prices must be “eradicated,” he said.
Economists at banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co and Credit Suisse Group AG see Kuroda as the leading contender to replace Shirakawa next month. The yen has weakened and stocks have climbed since mid-November in anticipation of additional monetary stimulus by the incoming BOJ leadership team.
The yen has fallen about 14 percent in the past three months against the US dollar, to ¥92.67 as of 2:30pm yesterday in Tokyo. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average has climbed about 26 percent over the same period.
Kuroda said that the yen “so far” has been in a “natural adjustment” from an excessive value. He also said that the yen’s depreciation does not come too late to help his nation’s economy, which has seen manufacturers including Sharp Corp and Sony Corp hurt by a surging yen in recent years.
The Japanese government will continue in its efforts to drive the Nikkei to 13,000 by the end of the fiscal year on March 31, Japanese Economy Minister Akira Amari said on Saturday, Kyodo news reported. The Nikkei index closed at 11,153 last week. Japanese markets were closed yesterday for a holiday.
The jump in equities raises the risk of disappointment as Abe prepares to unveil his choice of central bank chief. The government should announce its nominations for the new BOJ leadership team by the end of this month, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party said last month.
Kuroda, who once wrote that the BOJ should set a 3 percent inflation target, was a career bureaucrat who rose to be vice finance minister in charge of currency policy. He has led the Manila-based ADB since 2005.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”