MANUFACTURING
China reaches 18-month high
China’s manufacturing rose this month to its highest level in 18 months, in a sign that mini-stimulus measures to shore up growth have taken hold. The preliminary HSBC purchasing managers’ index rose to 52.0 this year from 50.7 last month on a 100-point scale on which numbers below 50 indicate contraction. This month’s reading was the highest since January last year. The report said overall new orders and new export orders in China’s manufacturing industry rose faster this month than the month before. All other categories, including employment and output prices, also improved.
MACROECONOMICS
Japan’s trade deficit triples
Japan’s trade deficit last month more than tripled from the year before to a higher-than-expected ¥822.2 billion (US$8.1 billion), as imports surged and exports edged lower. The Japanese Finance Ministry reported yesterday that imports jumped 8.4 percent year-on-year to ¥6.76 trillion while exports fell 2 percent to ¥5.94 trillion. The trade deficit was ¥911 billion in May. In seasonally adjusted terms it rose from ¥862 billion in May to ¥1.1 trillion last month.
MACROECONOMICS
Unemployment falls in Spain
The unemployment rate in Spain fell sharply in the second quarter, slipping beneath 25 percent, official data showed yesterday in a further sign that the country is pulling away from deep economic crisis. The rate fell by 1.45 percentage points and the number of people looking for work fell by 310,400, marking the biggest quarterly fall since the series of statistics began, the data showed. This was the first time the rate had been less than 25 percent, or one in four of the workforce, since the third quarter of 2012, but 5.5 million people are still unemployed in Spain.
MACROECONOMICS
NZ raises benchmark rate
New Zealand yesterday raised its benchmark interest rate to 3.5 percent but signaled a pause in its program of rate hikes. The announcement prompted a sharp drop in the NZ dollar, which was trading down nearly 1 percent at US$0.8625. New Zealand has been going it alone among developed nations this year by raising interest rates. Yesterday’s decision was the central bank’s fourth successive hike of a quarter percentage point.
AUTOMAKERS
GM issues more recalls
General Motors Co (GM) issued six more recalls on Wednesday, bringing its annual total to 60 recalls covering almost 30 million vehicles. The latest recalls cover nearly 823,000 cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles (SUV) mostly in North America but also includes a small number of exports. The largest is for faulty seats in just over 475,000 cars and small SUVs. Other problems include incomplete welds on seat brackets, turn signal failures, power steering failures, loose suspension bolts and faulty roof rack bolts.
AVIATION
Bombardier cuts jobs
Canada’s Bombardier will cut 1,800 jobs, the troubled aviation giant announced on Wednesday in a major reorganization. “This marks another step in Bombardier’s evolution,” said Pierre Beaudoin, the company’s president and chief executive officer, who said the overhaul, to be completed by Jan. 1 of next year, would reduce costs and overheads. Meanwhile, one of its senior officials, Aerospace president and chief operating officer Guy Hachey, is stepping down.
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