OIL
Firm allowed to resume work
The Chinese subsidiary of ConocoPhillips can resume operations at an oil field off the coast of northeastern China that was closed in 2011 after two oil spills, a regulator said. Conoco and its subsidiary, ConocoPhillips China Inc, came under intense media criticism in China following the spills, which drained into the Bohai Sea and its bay. The State Oceanic Administration said in a statement on Saturday that conditions at the Penglai 19-3 oilfield had returned to normal after a series of rectification measures, and that ConocoPhillips could gradually resume production there. China’s largest oil field is jointly owned by Houston-based ConocoPhillips’ Chinese subsidiary and China National Offshore Oil Corp (中國海洋石油), China’s main offshore oil and gas producer. The two spills occurred in June 2011. Combined, they released more than 114,700 liters of oil, or 723 barrels, and more than 416,400 liters of mineral oil-based drilling mud.
INDIA
Inflation dictates rates: bank
Central bank Governor Duvvuri Subbarao signaled inflation risks will limit the extent he can reduce interest rates to bolster an economy expanding at the weakest pace in a decade. “There is room for monetary easing, but that room is limited and we have to make a careful judgment on how to use that limited room,” he said at a briefing in Moscow on Saturday, reiterating guidance he gave last month. Subbarao estimated economic expansion of 5.5 percent for the 12 months through March, above the Central Statistics Office projection of 5 percent. The country last month became the first major Asian nation to cut interest rates this year after benchmark inflation eased, as the central bank moved to back government efforts to boost the economy.
UNITED STATES
Doubt creates drag: expert
Former White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers said uncertainty over the future of the corporate tax code is creating a drag on the economy by making businesses hesitant to invest. Summers, the former director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, said in an interview on CNN that the question of whether Congress will overhaul the nation’s tax rules has brought about uncertainty for businesses, including whether they should reinvest overseas profits in the US. “Washington absolutely should provide clarity or certainty this year,” Summers said. “It should do whatever it’s going to do on corporate tax reform and then it should make clear that those rules are going to be in place for the next five years. And that will contribute to bringing money home and getting it reinvested in the US economy.”
RETAIL
Wal-Mart sales a ‘disaster’
Wal-Mart Stores Inc had the worst sales start to a month in seven years as payroll-tax increases hit shoppers already battling a slow economy, according to internal e-mails obtained by Bloomberg News. “In case you haven’t seen a sales report these days, February MTD sales are a total disaster,” Jerry Murray, Wal-Mart’s vice president of finance and logistics, said in an e-mail to other executives, referring to month-to-date sales. “The worst start to a month I have seen in my ~7 years with the company.” Murray’s comments about this month’s sales follow disappointing results from last month, a month that Cameron Geiger, senior vice president of Wal-Mart US Replenishment, said he was relieved to see end, according to an internal e-mail obtained by Bloomberg News.
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
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
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],”
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