ENERGY
Morocco delays solar plant
Morocco postponed without explanation the inauguration of Noor-1, a solar power plant that was due to open on Sunday in Ouarzazate, part of what will eventually be the world’s largest solar power production facility. With an electricity production capacity of 160 megawatts, Noor-1 is supposed to allow the nation to significantly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and cut carbon dioxide emissions by 240,000 tonnes per year, according to estimates from the energy ministry. The project’s next phases — Noor-2 and Noor-3 — are to follow next year and in 2017, and a call for tenders is open for Noor 4.
INTERNET
Zuckerberg Internet appeal
Facebook Inc founder Mark Zuckerberg yesterday urged India to approve a controversial plan that would provide a free Internet service to the poor. The head of the social network tried to drum up support for the Free Basics service that offers people without the Internet free access to a handful of Web sites through mobile phones, in a column in the Times of India. However, activists say the program threatens the principles of net neutrality and could change pricing in India for access to different Web sites. Critics accused the world’s largest social networking firm of favoring a limited swath of the Internet and excluding rival services.
JAPAN
November output slid 1%
Factory output fell 1 percent last month from the previous month, in the first decline since August, official data showed yesterday, as the country struggles to stimulate its fragile economy. The decline was mainly due to stagnant production of general machinery, chemical engineering and metal industry, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said. The figure was worse than market expectations of a 0.4 percent drop. For this month, the ministry expects production to rise 0.9 percent and advance 6 percent next month. Japan’s production overall is making “one step forward and one step back,” the ministry said in a statement.
EUROZONE
No new member expected
The eurozone is not expected to welcome any new members in the coming years, as the region’s long crisis seems to have put some countries off, European Commissioner for the Euro and Social Dialogue Valdis Dombrovskis said in a newspaper interview yesterday. “Before a country joins the euro, it must have a fixed exchange rate to the euro,” Valdis told the daily Die Welt. This mechanism is the waiting room for eurozone membership,” he said. However, at the moment, no EU member is in the “euro waiting room,” with the exception of Denmark, which has a special status, he said. The last countries to join the euro were Latvia last year and Lithuania this year.
SAUDI ARABIA
Riyadh expects deficit
Saudi Arabia expects to post a budget deficit of 367 billion riyals (US$98 billion) as spending came in higher than targeted and revenue dropped amid a plunge in oil prices, an official said yesterday. Spending is estimated to reach 975 billion riyals by the end of this year, overshooting the government’s target by 13 percent, Saudi official Hindi al-Suhaimi told reporters in Riyadh. Actual revenue was 608 billion riyals, compared with a forecast of 715 billion riyals at the beginning of the year. The deficit is at about 16 percent of GDP, National Bank of Abu Dhabi senior economist Alp Eke said. The median estimate of of 10 economists in a Bloomberg survey was a shortfall of 20 percent.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to