MALAYSIA
Growth outlook dims
The economy might expand less than expected this year, in part because of slower external demand amid moderate global growth, Bank Negara Malaysia Governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz said. “There is no strong momentum” in global economic growth, Zeti said on Saturday in Washington in an interview that touched on China’s growing influence, global monetary policy and the ringgit. Malaysia’s interest rates are accommodative and conditions allow the nation to maintain borrowing costs “at these levels,” she said. The government in January said that growth would be from 4.5 to 5.5 percent this year, down from a projection of as much as 6 percent. Zeti said in the interview that the midpoint could be “slightly lower” at about 4.8 percent.
TRADE
Germans protest TTIP
Thousands of people marched in Berlin, Munich and other German cities on Saturday against a planned free-trade deal between Europe and the US that they fear will erode food, labor and environmental standards. Opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is particularly high in Germany, in part due to rising anti-US sentiment linked to revelations of US spying and fears of digital domination by firms like Google Inc. A recent YouGov poll showed that 43 percent of Germans believe TTIP would be bad for the nation, compared with 26 percent who see it as positive. The resistance has taken German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government and German industry by surprise, and they are scrambling to reverse the tide and save the deal, which proponents say could add US$100 billion in annual economic output on both sides of the Atlantic.
CYPRUS
Bankruptcy laws passed
Lawmakers on Saturday passed key bankruptcy laws designed to open the taps for more international bailout cash. The vote makes it possible to operate foreclosure laws that international creditors have demanded as a condition for extending more loans to the nation. The new laws should make it easier for banks to demand payment or seize assets, thereby reducing the banks’ own liabilities. Lawmakers had passed some of the legislative package last year, but delayed enforcement until they could approve other bills also passed on Saturday that are designed to offer protection to some vulnerable categories of debtors. The IMF has been withholding 88 million euros (US$95.1 million) in rescue money, citing Cyprus’ delay in giving banks the legal tools to deal with their load of bad debt.
TAXES
UK, Canberra target cheats
Australia is to work together with Britain to pursue multinational firms shifting profits offshore to avoid paying taxes, going “further and faster” than Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development plans, Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey said yesterday. Hockey, who was in the US for the G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers, said the two nations announced a joint working group during the multilateral forum in Washington on Thursday and Friday last week that would build on London’s so-called “Google tax” on companies that divert profits overseas. Australia grilled technology and mining giants including Apple Inc, Google Inc, BHP Billiton Ltd and Rio Tinto PLC at an upper house Australian Senate hearing earlier this month on their tax structures.
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