INDIA
Delhi mulls oil austerity
The government is considering closing fuel pumps at night as one of a number of “austerity measures” aimed at cutting its ballooning oil import bills, Minister of Oil Veerappa Moily said yesterday. Moily said details have not yet been finalized on the new measures, expected to be introduced later this month. “We have not worked out the details, how the austerity measures or the conservation mission will have to be launched,” Moily told NDTV news channel. The country imports about 80 percent of its oil needs and the import bill has risen dramatically because of high global prices and a plunging rupee. The Ministry of Oil wants to cut fuel demand by 3 percent and save about US$2.43 billion in foreign exchange outflows.
SOUTH KOREA
Falling prices cool inflation
The nation’s inflation slowed slightly to 1.3 percent last month, helped by stable or falling prices of education services, fuel and household items, state data showed yesterday. The consumer price index (CPI) rose 1.3 percent last month after gaining 1.4 percent in July, Statistics Korea said. The inflation rate has remained between 1 and 2 percent for 10 straight months. Last month’s reading was below the Bank of Korea’s target range of 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent. The central bank said earlier it expected inflation to accelerate to 2.1 percent in the second half of the year from an estimated 1.3 percent in the first half, projecting 1.7 percent for the entire year. The core CPI, which excludes volatile oil and agriculture prices, gained 1.3 percent year-on-year last month, compared with a 1.5 percent rise a month earlier.
EMPLOYMENT
Poll shows what lures talent
Sunshine and sandy beaches are all very well, but they are not enough to snare the best expatriate executives to Australia’s biggest city, Sydney, a study found yesterday. A survey of more than 3,000 executives around the world found that the “dominant issue in deciding where to locate is workplace related” and Sydney must do more to emphasize its desirability as a work destination. “While Sydney’s lifestyle remains the city’s major selling point, the challenges are to better define Sydney’s role in global talent’s career path and better promote the advantages it offers for career progression,” the study said. Global high-flyers nominated the opportunity to work on interesting and challenging projects as their top reason for moving cities, with “liveability” — such as the ease of getting around and a city’s security — ranked second.
GREECE
State to handle asset sale
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and Minister of Finance Yannis Stournaras have both insisted any sale of state assets will be handled by the agency set up for this purpose and not by any firm based abroad and run by foreign management. Samaras and Stournaras were responding to rumors that the country’s creditors, unimpressed by the pace of privatizations, are pushing for a foreign-based special purpose vehicle to handle the selloffs. Stournaras told the Ethnos newspaper that he “categorically denied” that the national Asset Development Fund would be moved abroad. The fund’s two last chairmen have resigned over the past six months, one to face unrelated legal issues and the other for improper contact with the buyer of former state betting firm OPAP.
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],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
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