KUWAIT
State plans to sell assets
Kuwait plans a new state-owned fund to manage as much as US$100 billion in local assets with the goal of selling them to private investors in five to seven years, al-Anba newspaper reported on Sunday. The new sovereign wealth fund would include local assets managed by the Kuwait Investment Authority, which has been burdened by its domestic mandate and would focus more on its international portfolio, al-Anba reported, citing unidentified officials. Stakes in local companies, as well as power and water projects, are to be included in the new fund, the newspaper said. The plan to privatize utilities while removing domestic energy subsidies is intended to make its power and water assets more profitable for the fund and attractive to potential investors, al-Anba said.
AGRICULTURE
Cocoa output faces decline
Nigeria’s cocoa midcrop output could decline by as much as 60 percent as prolonged dry weather takes a toll on the trees, the nation’s cocoa association said. “The heatwave is so severe now that flowers and buds are falling off cocoa trees in the farms,” Sayina Riman, president of the Cocoa Association of Nigeria, which groups farmers, traders and grinders, said by telephone from the southeastern cocoa hub of Ikom. “The 2016 midcrop may drop by about 60 percent as a result of the ravaging effect of the long harsh harmattan weather.” Farmers in the southwestern cocoa belt that accounts for about 70 percent of Nigeria’s production say the crop is not faring well.
COMMODITIES
Amplats reports big losses
Anglo American Platinum Ltd (Amplats) said it is to report a bigger-than-expected loss after the world’s largest producer of the metal reported impairments and write-offs amounting to 14 billion rand (US$848 million). The basic loss for last year is likely to be 12.1 billion rand to 12.2 billion rand, compared with earnings of 624 million rand a year earlier, the Johannesburg-based company said yesterday. The bulk of the loss is due to the carrying value of Amplats’ assets, it said. Post-tax restructuring costs of 850 million rand and implementing plans that led to a reduction in employees and contractors also contributed to the decline, Amplats said.
SINGAPORE
Decline extended again
Singapore’s consumer prices fell for a 14th straight month, extending the longest streak of declines in almost three decades. Consumer prices fell 0.6 percent from a year earlier last month, data released in Singapore yesterday showed. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey was for a 0.7 percent decline. Core inflation, which excludes private transport and accommodation costs, accelerated to 0.3 percent last month. “External sources of inflation are likely to remain muted,” the central bank and the Ministry of Trade and Industry said in a statement.
OBITURARY
Media General chair dies
Media General Inc chairman John Stewart Bryan III, the former publisher of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, has died. He was 77. The fourth and final generation of his family to work in the media business, Bryan died on Saturday, the Times-Dispatch editor Paige Mudd said. He had suffered a fall at his home on Jan. 15 and had been hospitalized since then. Bryan’s death comes amid a bidding contest between Nexstar Broadcasting Group Inc of Texas and Iowa’s Meredith Corp to merge with Media General.
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
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
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