Vietnam’s economic growth accelerated in the fourth quarter, as banks increased lending and rising foreign investment boosted exports.
GDP rose 6.96 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, quickening from a revised 6.07 percent gain in the three months through September, according to data released by the official Vietnamese General Statistics Office on Saturday. For the full year, the economy grew 5.98 percent, exceeding the government’s 5.8 percent target and compared with a median estimate of 5.7 percent in a Bloomberg survey.
Vietnam’s central bank lowered the dong deposit rate cap for some terms in October, and has cut other rates and devalued the dong this year in a bid to help businesses. Exports from overseas companies in the nation increased 15 percent this year, as disbursed foreign direct investment (FDI) climbed 7 percent, data released on Friday show.
“The growth is being supported by exports, mainly from foreign companies,”Vietnam Institute of Economics director Tran Dinh Thien said before the release. “Signs of economic improvement are getting clearer, but the growth is still fragile.”
The government has taken steps to overhaul the financial system and boost lending, with credit growth rising 11.8 percent as of Friday last week from the end of last year. Meanwhile, falling oil prices have helped ease inflation, and the central bank said this week it aims to maintain the dong’s stability next year and pursue “flexible” monetary policies to boost expansion and curb price gains.
Vietnam typically releases GDP and trade data before the end of the stated period, weeks before other countries do. Some analysts have questioned the third-quarter data, with Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd’s Glenn Maguire and Eugenia Fabon Victorino saying they were “skeptical of the strong growth print, as most economic indicators are pointing to weaker growth data.”
Exports grew 13.6 percent this year as manufacturers including Samsung Electronics Co and LG Electronics Inc boosted investment. Shipments from FDI companies, including crude oil, reached US$101.6 billion this year, or 68 percent of the total, data from Vietnam’s Foreign Investment Agency showed on Friday.
Inflation eased to 1.84 percent this month from a year earlier, the slowest pace since at least 2006. The government has ordered fuel retailers to cut tariffs and asked industries to stabilize prices before and during the Lunar New Year holiday in February.
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