Central banks around the world renewed efforts this week to reflate their economies as slowing prices emerge as a threat to global prosperity.
A day after the European Central Bank (ECB) unexpectedly halved its benchmark interest rate to a record-low 0.25 percent and Peru cut its main rate for the first time in four years, the Czech central bank yesterday intervened in currency markets.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) yesterday left open the chance of cheaper borrowing costs by forecasting below-trend economic growth.
“Central banks want to err on the side of keeping policy easier for longer as they don’t see an inflation danger out there,” said Kit Juckes, global strategist at Societe Generale SA in London. “There is a fear of deflation for some and nobody wants to increase the risk of it.”
The need to sustain or reinforce stimulus was demonstrated this week by new estimates from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that showed average inflation across its 34 members slowed in September to an annual rate of 1.5 percent. That is close to the 1.3 percent recorded in May, which was the softest since the world was plagued by recession in 2009.
“It does look as though inflation is certainly not a concern on the upside anymore,” Stamford, Connecticut-based Pierpont Securities Holdings LLC global strategist Robert Sinche said in a radio interview on Bloomberg Surveillance on Tuesday. “Monetary policy around the world is probably going to stay accommodative for a good deal longer.”
Two months after the US Federal Reserve delayed pulling back its US$85 billion of monthly asset purchases, the ECB on Thursday joined the reflation push with a rate cut aimed at tackling what ECB president Mario Draghi called a “prolonged period of low inflation.”
The reduction was anticipated by just three of 70 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and came after the eurozone’s inflation rate slid to 0.7 percent last month, the weakest in four years and less than half of the ECB’s target of just below 2 percent.
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
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by