ECONOMY
Qatar forecasts deficit
Qatar could run its first budget deficit in 15 years next year, the Qatari Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics said yesterday in a statement. The ministry said that the Gulf state’s economy will grow by 7.3 percent next year, down from its previous estimate of 7.7 percent, but still above growth last year of just over 6 percent. Qatar expects to run a fiscal deficit of 4.9 percent of GDP next year and 3.7 percent the following year, the ministry said.
ECONOMY
Turkey sees GDP growth
Turkey’s economy grew faster than expected during the first quarter of the year as domestic demand gained speed. GDP expanded 2.3 percent in the January-to-March period, compared with 2.6 percent during the previous quarter, the statistics agency said yesterday. Seasonally-adjusted output was 1.3 percent from the previous quarter. Household demand, which makes up roughly two-thirds of GDP, grew 4.5 percent during the first quarter compared with 2.4 percent during the preceding three-month period.
SOFTWARE
Facebook hails Messenger
Facebook on Tuesday celebrated that an Android version of its Messenger app has been downloaded more than a billion times from the Google Play store. “Happy to make it to the very exclusive Android 1 billion+ downloads club,” Messenger team head David Marcus said in an online post. A chat forum on Messenger’s page at Google Play was rich with accolades, but peppered with comment that the high download count was driven by Facebook spinning the widely used service out of the social network, compelling people to get the app.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Bayer selling diabetes unit
German pharmaceuticals and chemicals giant Bayer AG yesterday said that it has agreed to sell its diabetes care business to Panasonic Healthcare Holdings Co for 1.022 billion euros (US$1.2 billion). Panasonic Healthcare Holdings is 80 percent owned by US investor KKR, with Panasonic Corp holding 20 percent. “Closing of the transaction is subject to customary conditions, including relevant antitrust clearance, and is expected to occur in the first quarter of 2016,” Bayer said in a statement.
ECONOMY
Airlines urge end to APD
Abolishing its tax on air travel could boost Britain’s economy by 1.7 percent by 2020, British Airways and easyJet said yesterday, calling on the government to go beyond recent concessions on the duty. A study by PwC, commissioned by the airlines, found scrapping air passenger duty (APD) would lift GDP by about 0.5 percent in the first year and by 1.7 percent by 2020, with tax receipts from other sources more than offsetting the revenues lost from APD.
BRAZIL
Infrastructure plan unveiled
Brazil on Tuesday announced a US$64 billion infrastructure spending package, hoping to revive its flagging economy with investment in highways, railroads, ports and airports. The government said more than one-third of the new spending, 69.2 billion reals (US$22.3 billion), would come by the end of 2018, with the remaining 129.2 billion reals laid out starting in 2019. The government forecasts a contraction of 1.2 percent in GDP growth this year.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained