Greece said yesterday that the EU was “sleepwalking toward a cliff” by sticking to austerity rules that created huge inequalities among members, and it expected a debt relief deal for itself to be honored by the end of this year so that its economy could recover.
Athens, facing a second bailout review entailing an unpopular loosening of labor laws in the autumn, is keen to show that painful tax rises and pension cuts as part of its 86 billion euro (US$96.3 billion at current exchange rates) bailout deal last year will bear fruit.
“Greece has kept its part of the agreement and expects the same from its partners. We are not simply seeking, we are demanding and expecting specific measures that will render debt sustainable as part of the deal we are implementing,” Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told the Sunday newspaper Realnews.
Photo: AFP / Pool
“This [debt relief] will be followed by reduced [budget] surpluses after 2018, which will open the way for the economy’s recovery,” he said.
Greece has committed to attaining a primary budget surplus — excluding debt servicing costs — of 3.5 percent of economic output by 2018 as part of its third bailout package since 2010.
The IMF, which has yet to decide whether it will fund the third bailout, has said that surplus targets of 3.5 percent beyond 2018 are not realistic for Greece and has pushed for softer fiscal goals to take part in the financing.
Greece’s leftist-led government and the central bank also want lower primary surplus targets, arguing this will give Athens room to cut taxes and help the battered economy return to growth after a protracted recession.
The economy has shrunk by a quarter in six years and the jobless rate is 23.5 percent.
Tsipras also told Realnews that the EU was “sleepwalking toward a cliff” as the Stability Pact’s tough fiscal rules had engendered deep inequalities among member states.
“Brexit will either awaken European leaderships or it will be the beginning of the end of the EU,” he said, referring to Britain’s June vote to leave the 28-nation bloc.
He criticized Germany for acting as Europe’s “savings bank” with excessive surpluses, frozen wages and low inflation, at a time when the EU’s deficit-ridden southern members have broken all records for unemployment.
“If [German Finance Minister Wolfgang] Schaueble’s dogma for a multi-speed Europe and economic zones of low-cost labor is not abandoned, Europe will be brought to the brink of dissolution,” Tsipras was quoted by Realnews as saying.
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],”
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
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