The IMF on Wednesday called on the G20 to take clear steps to spur growth at this weekend’s meeting of finance ministers in Australia.
In February in Sydney, G20 finance ministers fixed a goal of raising global economic growth by 2 percent over the next five years, but left the strategies to reach it vague.
According to the 188-nation IMF, advanced economies that have the means — specifically the US and Germany — and certain emerging market economies like Brazil and India should increase public spending on infrastructure.
Structural reforms are needed across all G20 economies to boost output, it said, saying that an increase in productivity would come from easing limits on trade and investment in Indonesia, Russia and Turkey.
The IMF called for labor reforms that lift gender and age barriers in advanced economies, such as the US and Japan, and allow greater participation, such as in South Africa, where an “important fraction” of the population remains unemployed.
“Actions to increase labor demand and remove impediments to employment are also needed in stressed euro area economies,” it said.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) this week cut its growth forecasts for most major advanced economies, with the global economy dragged by a sluggish eurozone, tension in Ukraine and the Middle East, and uncertainty over Scotland’s future.
Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey, who is set to chair the Cairns meeting, admitted reaching the goal could be challenging.
“Whatever the progress on our 2 percent growth ambition reported in Cairns, we have to do better. If anything, the world outlook has become a bit more uncertain since February, so we have to redouble our efforts to ‘shift the dial’ on growth,” he said. “But without agreed ambition and mutual pressure, very little will ever be achieved.”
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],”
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
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