The world’s economy is growing more slowly than the IMF and other large forecasters are predicting, A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S chief executive officer Nils Smedegaard Andersen said.
The Danish company, owner of the world’s biggest shipping line, is a bellwether for global trade, handling about 15 percent of all consumer goods transported by sea.
“We believe that global growth is slowing down,” he said in a telephone interview. “Trade is currently significantly weaker than it normally would be under the growth forecasts we see.”
The IMF on Oct. 6 lowered its global GDP forecast for this year to 3.1 percent from 3.3 percent, citing a slowdown in emerging markets driven by weak commodity prices.
The Washington-based fund also cut its forecast for next year to 3.6 percent from 3.8 percent.
However, even the revised forecasts might be too optimistic, according to Andersen.
“We conduct a string of our own macroeconomic forecasts and we see less growth — particularly in developing nations, but perhaps also in Europe — than other people expect in 2015,” Andersen said, adding that the company is “a little bit more pessimistic than most forecasters” for next year too.
Maersk’s container line on Friday reported a 61 percent slump in third-quarter profit as demand for ships to transport goods across the world hardly grew from a year earlier. The low growth rates are proving particularly painful for an industry that is already struggling with excess capacity.
Trade from Asia to Europe has so far suffered the most as a weaker euro makes it tougher for exporters like China to stay competitive, Andersen said.
Still, there are no signs yet that the global economy is heading for a slump similar to the one that followed the financial crisis of 2008, he said.
“We’re seeing some distortions amid this redistribution that’s taking place between commodity exporting countries and commodity importing countries, but this shouldn’t lead to an outright crisis,” he said. “At this point in time, there are no grounds for seeing that happening.”
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by