ENERGY
Qatar finds new reserves
Key gas exporter Qatar has discovered additional reserves of 68 billion cubic meters of natural gas in a northern offshore field, media reported yesterday. The discovery was made in Block 4 North in North Field at a water depth of about 70m, newspapers said. The gas discovery was “made after four years of intensive exploration activities, including the drilling of two exploration wells,” the Peninsula daily quoted Qatari Energy Minister Mohammed al-Sada as saying. The field is operated by Qatar Petroleum and its German partner, Wintershall, as well as Japan’s Mitsui Gas Development Qatar. North Field was discovered in 1971 and contains 25.5 billion cubic meters of recoverable gas.
MALAYSIA
Exports recover in January
Malaysia yesterday said that exports rebounded 3.5 percent in January from a dip a month earlier as demand from neighbors and the giant Chinese market picked up. January exports were valued at 56.99 billion ringgit (US$18.37 billion), the trade ministry said in a statement. Imports rose 16 percent to 53.72 billion ringgit. The economy grew a faster-than-expected 6.4 percent in the fourth quarter last year, its best showing in more than two years, and expanded 5.6 percent for the full year. The increase, which exceeded the official target of 5 percent, has been credited largely to steady domestic demand. The government has been pumping money into investment drives and cash handouts to boost the economy ahead of elections due by June.
TAXATION
Big US firms shield profits
US companies are keeping more of their profits offshore, choosing overseas tax havens amid talk in Washington about closing corporate tax loopholes, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The business newspaper said its analysis of 60 big US companies had found that they had collectively parked a total of US$166 billion offshore last year. That shielded more than 40 percent of their annual profits from US taxes, the report said. Each of the 60 companies chosen for the analysis had held at least US$5 billion offshore in 2011, the Journal said.
ENGINEERING
World Bank bars Larsen
Larsen & Toubro, India’s biggest builder of power networks and airports, has been barred from World Bank-financed contracts for six months under the lender’s fraud and corruption policy. Larsen is ineligible to be awarded a contract from Thursday last week to Sept. 6, according to a listing published on the World Bank Web site. The sanctions are not expected to have a material impact on the company’s operations, profitability or financials, Mumbai-based Larsen said in a statement to the stock exchange on Saturday.
INVESTMENT
Ecuador to review treaties
Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa on Saturday said he planned to challenge several bilateral investment treaties after the South American country was ordered to pay billions of US dollars in damages by overseas courts. “We are going to take on these treaties as soon as we have the majority in the legislature” Correa said, referring to the session set to start on May 14. His supporters won an overwhelming majority in a Feb. 18 vote. He was alluding to two of 23 treaties that Ecuador has signed since 1993. They have allowed US oil firms, such as Occidental Petroleum and Chevron, to sue Ecuador in foreign courts.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to