ECONOMY
Pimco forecasts growth
Pacific Investment Management Co (Pimco) tapped former US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to help formulate an outlook for next year that projects higher growth, a stronger dollar and muted inflation. The manager of the world’s largest bond mutual fund said global growth will accelerate next year in a “rising tide” as lower oil prices help most economies. Expansion will climb to about 2.75 percent from about 2.5 percent this year, Pimco said in a report posted on the company’s Web site on Thursday. Economists expect growth of 2.8 percent for next year, the average forecast in a Bloomberg survey.
ECONOMY
China’s GDP revised up
The government revised up the size of its economy for last year, but sees that having little effect on economic growth this year. GDP was up 3.4 percent to an estimated 58.8 trillion yuan (US$9.5 trillion) last year, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday, following a new economic census. That marks a rise of 1.9 trillion yuan in the size of the economy that year, slightly below the entire GDP of Malaysia during the same period, according to World Bank statistics. The upward revision of GDP reflected greater contribution from the services sector, which accounted for 46.9 percent of last year’s GDP, up from an initial estimate of 46.1 percent, while the secondary sector — which includes manufacturing and construction — accounted for 43.7 percent of GDP, down from 43.9 percent.
GERMANY
Consumer confidence grows
Consumer confidence saw a boost this month as shoppers hit the stores for Christmas and looked ahead to the new year with optimism, a poll found yesterday. After stabilizing last month following several months of decline, “consumer sentiment showed solid development in December,” market research company GfK said in a statement. “The consumer climate is continuing its upward trend.” Meanwhile, the widely watched Ifo business climate index showed solid gains this month after rising for the first time in seven months last month.
CONSUMER GOODS
Firms fined for price-fixing
Penalizing a dirty business involving cleaning products, French regulators fined 13 consumer-products makers about 950 million euros (US$1.2 billion) for price fixing on goods like shampoos, detergents and toothpaste. France’s competition authority on Thursday said that the companies sought to maintain “artificially high” prices in negotiations with supermarkets which filtered down to consumers — and ultimately impacted the economy. Among those implicated were household names like US-based Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, and Sara Lee and Anglo-Dutch firm Unilever.
AUTOMAKERS
GM halts Russian sales
US carmaker General Motors Co (GM) on Thursday said it was halting sales to dealers in Russia due to the falling ruble, following in the footsteps of a number of companies seeking to limit their risk until the currency stabilizes. Company spokesman Sergei Lepnukhov said cars already purchased by customers would be delivered. The ruble has lost about 50 percent of its value since the beginning of this year as Western sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support for an insurgency in Ukraine, along with falling oil prices, have hit the economy of the major energy exporter.
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