IMF managing director Christine Lagarde on Friday urged the G20 major economies to fulfill their pledges to revive the faltering global economy.
Ahead of this week’s meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bankers in Istanbul, Turkey, Lagarde said they needed to implement the G20 leaders’ commitments made in November last year at a summit in Brisbane, Australia, to boost growth, adding more than US$2 trillion to the global economy and millions of jobs over the next four years.
“Without action, we could see the global economic supertanker continuing to be stuck in the shallow waters of subpar growth and meager job creation,” Lagarde said in a blog on the IMF Web site.
The G20 industrialized nations, which account for more than 80 percent of the global economy, tasked the IMF to monitor the implementation of its growth strategy. Turkey took over the G20 presidency in December last year.
Lagarde said the G20 finance ministers meeting tomorrow and on Tuesday should work urgently on structural reforms amid global risks ranging from divergent central bank policies, with the US Federal Reserve on a tightening path, while others are increasing stimulus; a stronger US dollar, and weak growth and inflation in the eurozone and Japan.
“We need a decisive push for structural reforms in areas such as trade, education, health, social safety nets and labor and product markets, as well as efficient infrastructure,” she said.
Though the global economy might get a further lift from falling oil prices and relatively stronger US growth, Lagarde said, the Fed’s ongoing exit of exceptional support for the US recovery — even if well-managed — could result in what she termed “excessive volatility” in financial markets.
Lagarde said that the strengthening dollar poses a special risk for emerging-market economies, where banks and companies have increased their borrowing in the US currency over the past five years.
A further risk to the global economy is the possibility that the eurozone and Japan “could remain trapped in a twilight zone of low growth and low inflation for a prolonged period,” Lagarde said.
“These ‘low-low conditions’ would raise the risk of recession and deflation, because they would make it even harder for many countries to reduce high unemployment and high debt,” Lagarde said.
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