ECONOMY
S Korean growth disappoints
South Korea’s central bank says economic growth will be slower than expected this year because consumer spending has waned following a deadly ferry sinking in April. Bank of Korea Governor Lee Ju-yeol, said yesterday that South Korea’s economy will expand 3.8 percent this year instead of the 4 percent predicted in April. He said the economy will likely grow 4 percent next year, not 4.2 percent. Consumer prices will increase 1.9 percent this year, lower than the previously forecast 2 percent increase, the bank said. Also yesterday, Bank of Korea left its policy rate unchanged at 2.5 percent for a 14th consecutive month.
TRADE
China’s exports up
China’s export growth edged higher last month in a small sign of improvement for the world’s second-biggest economy as it undergoes an uneven recovery. Exports rose 7.2 percent in US dollar terms from a year earlier, up slightly from May’s 7 percent growth, the General Administration of Customs said yesterday. Imports grew 5.5 percent last month after shrinking 1.6 percent in May. Exports for June totaled US$186.8 billion, while imports were US$155.2 billion, resulting in a US$31.6 billion trade surplus.
MACROECONOMICS
Australia unemployment up
Australia’s unemployment rate returned to a decade high of 6 percent last month, data showed yesterday, as the economy shed full-time posts owing to “challenging” conditions and as more people joined the jobs market. The jobless rate climbed even as the economy added a seasonally adjusted 15,900 positions to take the number of people employed to 11.578 million, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showed. The rise in the total number of positions came through part-time roles, which jumped 19,700 last month. Full-time jobs fell by 3,800.
MACROECONOMICS
India seeks to reduce deficit
Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley set a fiscal deficit target for this year of 4.1 percent of GDP as he presented the new government’s first budget, while promising cuts in the next few years. He said India urgently needed “to introduce fiscal prudence” by raising the tax take of the government and making efforts to balance the books after years of overspending.
LABOR
Shinyang investigated
Samsung Electronics Co said yesterday it was “urgently” investigating allegations that one of its suppliers in China employed children and underage students. China Labor Watch said the supplier, Shinyang Electronics, was believed to have hired at least five workers under the age of 16. The New York-based watchdog cited other violations, including unpaid overtime wages, excessive overtime and a lack of social insurance and training.
FINANCE
Credit Suisse requests delay
Credit Suisse has asked a US court to delay sentencing in its tax-evasion case as it seeks a way to continue managing pension funds worth billions of dollars. In a court filing issued on Tuesday, the bank said it is requesting an administrative exemption from the US Labor Department that would allow it to continue managing the funds despite having been found guilty on criminal charges of aiding tax evasion. Department rules bar asset managers from managing pension plans if they have been convicted of certain crimes, including tax evasion.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts