AUTOMAKERS
Suzuki plans Myanmar plant
Japanese automaker Suzuki Motor Corp plans to invest tens of millions of dollars to build a second plant in Myanmar, the Nikkei business daily reported yesterday. The company has secured a plot of about 20 hectares at the Thilawa special economic zone southeast of Yangon for the new plant, the report said. Construction is expected to start later this year, with the facility slated to come online in 2017, it added. Suzuki is expected to invest several billion yen and hire about 300 employees and aims to produce about 10,000 cars a year and increase Suzuki’s output in Myanmar by more than five times, it said.
TECHNOLOGY
Plaintiffs drop Google suit
Plaintiffs in an antitrust lawsuit against Google Inc on Friday withdrew their suit accusing the company of harming smartphone buyers by forcing handset makers using the Android operating platform to make Google’s own applications the default option. The class action lawsuit, filed by two smartphone customers in May last year, was dismissed on Feb. 20 by US District Judge Beth Labson Freeman in San Jose, California. Google also faces antitrust issues in Europe. The European Parliament in November last year urged antitrust authorities to break up Google and called on the European Commission to consider proposals to unbundle search engines from other commercial services.
MINING
Mauritania miners end strike
Miners in Mauritania’s northern iron ore hub of Zouerate went back to work on Friday after downing tools for nine weeks in a dispute over wages, their union and management said. The workers had been on strike since Jan. 28 to demand that the National Industrial and Mining Company honor agreed pay rises and bonuses. The union said management had agreed to lump payments of three months’ salary for the workers. The company said it had reinstated 400 workers sacked during the strike.
MACROECONOMICS
IMF approves Ghana loan
The IMF approved a three-year, US$918 million extended credit facility for Ghana to help it repay debt and stabilize the nation’s economy. The IMF Executive Board has allowed immediate disbursement of US$114.8 million, the fund said in a statement on Friday. The money would help increase foreign reserves to support the currency and curb the budget gap before a US$1 billion Eurobond sale scheduled for June. Ghana is the world’s second-largest producer of cocoa and Africa’s second-largest gold miner.
FRANCE
Economy forecast to pick up
The economy is set to pick up slightly in the first half of the year but unemployment is expected to stay at record highs, according to forecasts. In estimates released on Thursday, the INSEE national statistics office said the economy would grow by 0.4 percent in the first quarter of the year and by 0.3 percent in the second quarter. While there is a good chance the economy is set to grow faster over the whole year than the 1 percent Paris estimates, the jobless rate was forecast to hit a 20-year record high of 10.2 percent in mainland France, INSEE predicted.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last