INDIA
GDP may slow to 7.1%
India’s economic growth is estimated to slow to 7.1 percent in the current fiscal year ending March 31 compared with 7.6 percent last year, the first indicator of the impact of the demonetization drive. The data released on Friday by the Indian Central Statistics Office comes as the nation has seen a sharp cash shortage following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise announcement on Nov. 8 pulling the nation’s highest value bank notes out of circulation. Experts have said the move could push GDP growth to below 6.5 percent this year as demonetization has hit all parts of the economy.
MACROECONOMY
EU ends year strong
Further evidence has emerged to show that the 19-country eurozone economy ended strongly last year. In a wide-ranging survey of economic activity across the bloc, the EU found sentiment running at near six-year highs. Its economic sentiment indicator rose 1.2 points to 107.8, its highest level since March 2011. Friday’s survey found confidence up across sectors, from retail to industry, and in most countries. Italy, though, was flat, and Spain suffered a retreat.
TRADE
Canada posts surplus
Canada on Friday posted its first trade surplus in more than two years, driven by record exports to countries other than the US. The small trade surplus for November amounted to C$526 million (US$397 million), the first since September 2014, following a C$1 billion deficit in October, Statistics Canada said. The news came as a surprise after analysts had widely agreed on expectations of a C$1.6 billion deficit.
CONSUMER GOODS
14 convicted over sterilizer
The Seoul Central District Court on Friday convicted 14 people — including a former head of the local unit of British consumer goods maker Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC — over the sale of humidifier sterilizers linked to deadly lung injuries, sentencing the former boss to seven years in prison. The court found Shin Hyun-woo guilty of criminal negligence for failing to inspect the safety of the product and allowing its sale, and false labeling for marketing it as safe, a spokeswoman for Reckitt said.
? HEALTH
Theranos to cut jobs by 41%
Theranos Inc, the embattled blood-testing company, is to fire about 41 percent of its workers after months of regulatory setbacks, lawsuits and scrutiny. The Silicon Valley start-up will eliminate 155 positions, leaving 220 employees who will focus on developing a new product, a tabletop blood testing product called the miniLab. It is the second wave of layoffs for Theranos, which in October fired 340 workers and said it would close its testing labs.
COMMODITIES
Abidjan blocks cocoa sales
Trucks carrying thousands of tonnes of cocoa have been blocked in the main port of Ivory Coast, the world’s top producer, as authorities have temporarily stalled exports, sources said on Friday. There are nearly “700 trucks blocked here at the port in Abidjan,” said Moussa Kone, head of the national cocoa producers’ union. He said trucks filled with cocoa have also been stranded in San Pedro, the nation’s second port, for several days.
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