AUSTRALIA
Room to cut rates: bank
The nation’s central bank said it still has room to cut the benchmark interest rate from its record-low level and judged that the nation’s exchange rate remains high even after the biggest monthly drop since 2011. Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens and his board kept the overnight cash-rate target at 2.75 percent, the bank said in a statement yesterday. “The inflation outlook, as currently assessed, may provide some scope for further easing, should that be required,” Stevens said.
TRADE
Brazil registers record deficit
Brazil says it has registered its highest-ever trade deficit, which reached more than US$5.39 billion in the first five months of the year. Officials blame much of the record deficit on state-owned oil company Petrobras’ recent purchases of crude oil. According to data released on Monday, Brazil’s exports totaled US93.29 billion from January through last month. At the same time, however, the country imported US$98.68 billion worth of goods.
EMPLOYMENT
Spain sees hiring boost
Spain’s Ministry of Labor says the number of people registered as unemployed fell by a little under 100,000 last month as employers ramped up hiring in preparation for the busy summer tourist season. The ministry said yesterday that the total number of workers registered as jobless stands at 4.89 million. Spain’s unemployment rate was a record 27.2 percent during the first quarter.
AVIATION
Fleet inspections ordered
Japanese Minister of Transport Akihiro Ota said yesterday he had ordered the country’s two biggest airlines to inspect their entire modified Dreamliner fleets after a fault was found with one aircraft at the weekend. Ota said he issued the instruction to Japan Airlines (JAL) and All Nippon Airways after JAL found a fault with an air pressure sensor in the Dreamliner’s battery container on Sunday. The setback, although not serious, is yet another embarrassment for Boeing, which admitted in April that despite months of testing it did not know the root cause of problems that had led to the worldwide grounding of the next-generation airliner.
MYANMAR
Coca-Cola starts operations
Coca-Cola has begun bottling its famous soft drink in Myanmar as part of a planned five-year, US$200 million investment after having no local production for more than 60 years. The company announced in a press release the ceremonial inauguration of its bottling plant yesterday in Hmawbi Township, a suburb of Yangon, the country’s biggest city, with local partner Pinya Manufacturing Co. The return of Coca Cola is emblematic of the opportunities US companies see in Myanmar as it builds a free market economy after decades of military rule.
AUTOMAKERS
Pickups dominate in US
Full-size pickups once again dominated US auto sales last month, as small businesses — increasingly confident in the economy — raced to replace the aging pickups they held on to during the recession. Car buyers, too, were lured by low interest rates and Memorial Day sales. Overall, US consumers bought 1.4 million vehicles last month, up 8 percent from the same month a year ago, according to Autodata Corp. Most automakers topped analysts’ expectations last month, with Nissan reporting its highest May sales ever.
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