Global finance chiefs, faced with concern among emerging economies about the shockwaves of monetary policy announcements, are to urge decisionmakers to communicate changes precisely.
The G20 nations will pledge to “remain mindful” of unintended negative side-effects from extended monetary easing, according to a draft of the communique that was to be completed in Moscow yesterday, obtained by Bloomberg News.
Future changes will be “carefully calibrated and clearly communicated,” according to the document, which also emphasizes the harmful effects of “excess volatility” in financial markets.
Nations were also wrestling with how strongly to call for budget-cutting plans. Proposed medium-term budget targets, a goal sought by Germany, were softened to pledges to present fiscal strategies, a G20 official said yesterday. There was also debate over whether to single out the US and Japan for not following through on previous budget-planning commitments, the official said.
“Europe favors fiscal austerity, while the US believes that those countries that can afford it should use fiscal policy to stimulate the economy,” Pawel Samecki, deputy chairman of a World Bank and IMF advisory committee, said in an interview in Moscow yesterday.
Samecki also serves as the head of the Polish central bank’s international department.
Finance chiefs at the G20 gathering are grappling with competing priorities for the global economy. The draft communique notes that the US and Japanese economies are strengthening while growth slows in emerging markets and the euro area remains mired in recession.
“The emerging markets continue to remain very concerned that advanced-economy policies are creating volatility in global financial and currency markets and they are looking for defensive mechanisms,” Eswar Prasad, a former IMF official who teaches economics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said in an interview.
Speculation about developed economies scaling back their unprecedented monetary easing has roiled emerging-market currencies and bonds since G20 finance chiefs last met in April. That prompted policymakers including US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to refine their message.
“The crucial challenge is how the financial markets manage these signals and how they manage them in a way in which emerging markets and their currencies are not negatively affected,” South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Friday.
The market reaction to the prospect of the Fed starting to taper its stimulus was “excessive, totally unjustified,” European Central Bank Governing Council member Christian Noyer said in Moscow.
Bernanke, who did not travel to the meeting, has now “done enough” to convey that US policy won’t change overnight, giving the rest of the world time to adjust, Gordhan said.
The US dollar weakened against most of its major peers in response to that reassurance.
The G20 discussed the importance of carefully calibrating and communicating the US unwinding its quantitative easing, South Korean Finance Minister Hyun Oh-seok told reporters in Moscow on Friday.
Several countries pointed out the possible negative spillover effects emerging economies may face from such moves, he said.
Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said Japan will continue its “powerful” monetary easing program and that it will be natural for the US to throttle back its bond buying once the recovery takes hold.
Europe needs to do more to jumpstart its economy, US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said as his EU counterparts defended their job-boosting efforts.
US Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Janet Yellen told the G20 meeting that calibrating the pace of unwinding stimulus would be in line with circumstances of the US economy, Hyun said.
Finance ministers from France, Italy and Germany said the EU is committed to fighting joblessness and pursuing its growth agenda.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San