RUSSIA
Inflation might rise to 17%
Inflation could hit 17 percent this year, the deputy economy minister said yesterday, as the ruble suffers on the back of slumping oil prices. “Peak inflation will come in March to April, when year-on-year inflation could reach 15 to 17 percent,” Alexei Vedev was quoted as saying by the state-run TASS news agency. Official inflation has already topped 11 percent as the ruble has been hit hard by tumbling oil prices and Western sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine.
SOUTH KOREA
Unemployed rate rises
The jobless rate rose last month from a month earlier, with unemployment among young people hitting a 15-year high, government data showed yesterday. The jobless rate stood at 3.4 percent, up from 3.1 percent in November last year, with the number of employed people reaching 25.38 million, up 422,000 from a year earlier, Statistics Korea said. Unemployment among those aged 15 to 29 stood at 9 percent.
UNITED KINGDOM
Inflation hits record low
Inflation has slowed to its lowest rate on record, falling 0.5 percent last month. The rate has been below the central bank’s 2 percent target since the start of last year. The Office of National Statistics said on Tuesday that falling oil prices kept inflation down. The muted rate means there is little pressure on the Bank of England to raise interest rates from their record low 0.5 percent.
GERMANY
Nation balances budget
Germany says that last year it achieved its first balanced budget since 1969, a year earlier than planned, thanks to low interest rates, higher tax revenue and other factors. The Ministry of Finance said on Tuesday that historically low interest rates meant that the nation paid less on previous credit, and overall spending was 1 billion euros (US$1.18 billion) less than budgeted, at 295.5 billion euros.
UNITED STATES
Federal deficit rises
The federal deficit for the first three months of the budget year is up slightly from the same period a year ago. The US Department of the Treasury said the government ran a deficit of US$176.7 billion for the first three months of the current budget year, which began on Oct. 1 last year. That is up 2.4 percent from a US$172.6 billion imbalance for the same three months in the previous budget year.
INTERNET
Spotify hits 15m subscribers
Swedish music streaming service Spotify said it now has 15 million paying subscribers, boosting claims that its revolutionary and controversial model can work. The expanding startup said late on Monday it had added 2.5 million subscribers since November last year. At the end of last year, Spotify said it had 60 million users, of whom 15 million were paying subscribers, compared with 40 million active users and 10 million subscribers in May last year.
INTERNET
Alibaba to buy AdChina
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) will take a majority stake in AdChina (易傳媒), which calls itself China’s leading digital marketing platform, to develop online and mobile marketing, the Chinese e-commerce giant said yesterday. The financial details were not disclosed. The two companies will also develop online marketing services and data marketing products for businesses, media clients and third-party service providers.
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],”
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
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