TURKEY
GDP growth forecast cut
The government is cutting its forecast for the nation’s economic growth this year from 4.5 percent to 3.2 percent due to the negative global situation, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said yesterday. Yildirim said that GDP would grow 3.2 percent this year, in 2017 would expand 4.4 percent and from 2018-2019 is expected to return to a rate of 5 percent growth. The prime minister did not directly refer to the July 15 failed coup and plunge in tourism following attacks this year, which economists expect have eaten into GDP growth. Statistics last month showed that the economy grew 3.1 percent in the second quarter, slowing sharply from the strong figure of 4.7 percent the first quarter. The nation has enjoyed robust growth for much of the past decade in one the the key achievements of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the source of much of his popularity.
NETWORKS
Ericsson to lay off workers
Ericsson AB yesterday said it is to lay off 3,000 workers in Sweden and downsize operations as part of its global plan to cut costs by 9 billion kronor (US$1 billion) next year. The Swedish networks company said the job cuts will be in research and development, sales and administration. It employs 16,000 people in Sweden. The company said “technology shifts” were behind the layoffs. It also said that it would recruit 1,000 people in research and development in Sweden in the next three years to meet the demands of new technologies and increase its software portfolio. CEO Jan Frykhammar said the company would continue to have “a strong focus “on research and development and that the cost-cutting measures were necessary “to secure Ericsson’s long-term competitiveness as well as technology and services leadership.”
REAL ESTATE
PropertyGuru eyes Vietnam
PropertyGuru Pte, Southeast Asia’s largest real-estate Web site, is investing in Vietnam’s Batdongsan to gain a foothold in one of the fastest-growing countries in the region. PropertyGuru will gain two board seats at Vietnam’s largest real-estate site, according to a statement yesterday that did not disclose financial details. Batdongsan is used by 2 million people per month in Vietnam and has about 500 employees in seven offices. Growing Internet use by the country’s young population, where there are more mobile phones than residents, provides an attractive option for PropertyGuru, offsetting slumping regions such as its home market of Singapore. Vietnam’s economic growth accelerated to 6.4 percent in the third quarter from 5.8 percent in the previous quarter. Vietnam becomes PropertyGuru’s fifth market after Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
MINING
Lucara completes upgrade
Lucara Diamond Corp completed the first stage of upgrading its processing plant at the Karowe mine in Botswana that would introduce technology to recover some of the world’s biggest diamonds. The upgrades will allow the company to sift diamonds as big as 90mm amid tonnes of mining rubble, the Vancouver-based company said in a statement yesterday. Last year, Lucara recovered a 1,109-carat gem — named Lesedi la Rona — at Karowe, which was the world’s second-largest diamond even after breaking off a 374-carat chunk in the process.
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