INDIA
Remittances curbed
India has tightened restrictions on the amount of money Indian companies and individuals can send out of the country, trying to curb a sharp decline in the rupee. The US dollar has risen about 15 percent against the Indian rupee this year, pushing up costs for oil and other crucial imports, amid stagnating economic growth. The central bank said the measures it announced Wednesday are aimed at “moderating” outflows. The limit for overseas investments by Indian companies has been reduced to 100 percent of a company’s net worth from 400 percent. State oil companies were exempted. The amount of money individuals can remit overseas was cut to US$75,000 each financial year from US$200,000. The Reserve Bank said it could grant exemptions to the new limits if a genuine requirement was demonstrated.
SINGAPORE
Home sales fall 73 percent
Singapore’s home sales last month slid to the lowest since December 2009 as investors balked at new curbs on property loans and developers marketed fewer projects. Home sales fell to 481 units last month, 73 percent lower from a month earlier, according to data from the Urban Redevelopment Authority released Thursday. Sales rose to a record 2,793 units in March. The island-state’s private residential property price index rose 1 percent to 215.4 points in the three months ended June 30, extending a 0.6 percent increase in the first quarter. Suburban home prices climbed 3.8 percent in the June quarter, compared with the 1.4 percent increase in the previous quarter, according to government data.
MINING
Up to 1,700 Rio staff to go
Mining giant Rio Tinto yesterday said it will lay off up to 1,700 staff at its huge Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia after a more than US$5 billion expansion was halted. The project in the Gobi desert, at one of the richest copper deposits in the world, has been years in development, but has been hit by a series of last-minute delays due to political wrangling. Its planned expansion was put on ice last month after the Mongolian government said financing provisionally secured for the underground development needed to be approved by parliament, which is in recess.
BRAZIL
Siemens in cartel lawsuit
The Brazilian state of Sao Paulo plans to file a lawsuit against German engineering giant Siemens AG to recover funds lost to an alleged price-fixing cartel involved in the construction and upkeep of the subway and train systems of the cities of Sao Paulo and Brasilia. The state government said in a statement posted on its Web site on Tuesday night that Siemens told Brazil’s antitrust agency, CADE, of the existence of the cartel in May. Besides Siemens, CAF of Spain, Mitsui of Japan, Bombardier of Canada and Alstom of France were allegedly involved in the cartel, the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported this week.
SMARTPHONES
Apple’s shares surge
Apple Inc’s shares surged passed the US$500 threshold — their highest level since January. Wednesday’s gains came a day after activist investor Carl Icahn said he thinks Apple should do more to revive its stock price. Apple is committed to buying back US$60 million in stock by the end of 2015. Icahn believes that program should be immediately increased. The company’s stock peaked last year at US$705.07, but began losing ground on concerns about slowing growth and growing competition.
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