FRANCE
Minister sees 0.1% growth
Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said yesterday he would propose to the European Commission growth forecasts of 0.1 percent this year, 1.2 percent next year and 2 percent in 2015. The government will present new growth and deficit forecasts to the commission in the middle of this month. “It’s a prudent and realistic estimation,” Moscovici told Europe 1 radio. He said he would base this year’s deficit target at 3.7 percent of GDP because of weaker-than-expected growth, and 3 percent by the end of next year.
ITALY
Emigration rises by a third
Emigration rose by nearly a third last year to 79,000, with a growing number of young people choosing to leave the crisis-hit country, local media reported yesterday, citing official data. The number of citizens registering as foreign residents rose from 61,000 in 2011. Most of the emigrants came from wealthier regions in the north and their favored destinations were Germany, Switzerland and Britain. The data showed a sharp rise in emigrants from the north compared with the south — the source of waves of emigration during the 20th century — that accounted for just 27 percent of the total, from 61 percent in 2011. The highest number of emigrants last year — 13,156 people — came from the Lombardy region, which includes the business hub, Milan.
SOUTH KOREA
Firms suspend production
Seoul said yesterday that 13 firms had been forced to suspend production at a joint industrial zone in North Korea and warned of a “critical” situation if Pyongyang continued to ban access to the site. Pyongyang has barred South Koreans from entering the Seoul-funded Kaesong Industrial Complex just over the border since Wednesday. With no additional personnel, fuel or other materials allowed into the estate, nine firms suspended production yesterday, joining four others that had already done so, according to the Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korea affairs. Pyongyang has allowed South Koreans still in Kaesong to leave and one worker who had fallen sick was permitted to cross the border yesterday with a driver, leaving a total of 514 South Koreans and four Chinese in the complex. The ministry said about 40 others would return to Seoul today, further thinning out the presence of South Koreans in the complex, who usually number at least 700.
UNITED STATES
Data ‘show financial crimes’
A trove of data obtained by a journalists’ group that details thousands of offshore accounts reveals several instances of swindles and other financial crimes, the Washington Post reported yesterday. Among the 4,000 US individuals listed in the records, at least 30 were accused in lawsuits or criminal cases of fraud, money laundering or other serious financial misconduct, the report said. They include billionaire hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, who was convicted in 2011 in one of the biggest insider-trading scandals in the nation’s history, and Paul Bilzerian, who was convicted of securities fraud, the paper said. The head of the group, Gerard Ryle, obtained the data — involving 2.5 million records of more than 120,000 companies and trusts, set up by two offshore companies operating in the British Virgin Islands and in Asia and the South Pacific — on a hard drive after investigating a fraud and offshore haven case in Australia.
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],”
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
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