Vietnam’s economy grew at a slower pace than economists estimated in the first quarter as industrial output eased and Samsung Electronics Co cut production of smartphones.
GDP rose 5.1 percent from a year earlier, the Vietnamese General Statistics Office said in Hanoi yesterday. That was lower than all eight forecasts from economists in a Bloomberg survey and below the median estimate of 6.25 percent.
GDP expanded 6.68 percent in the final quarter of last year, according to previously reported data.
Photo: Reuters
Samsung’s output in Vietnam fell 38 percent in the first quarter from the previous year, dragging down electronics production.
Vietnam outperformed most of its Southeast Asian peers last year, as export growth remained resilient. The economy has become a manufacturing hub for companies such as Samsung, which is Vietnam’s biggest exporter, accounting for about 20 percent of the nation’s shipments. Samsung took the dramatic step in October last year to end production of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, a decision that businesses said at the time would hurt the economy.
Global trade risks are also mounting, with Vietnam among the nations in Asia most vulnerable to a rise in protectionism in the US.
The government is increasing spending on infrastructure to retain its role as a top investment destination in Southeast Asia as others, such as the Philippines, catch up.
The World Bank forecasts Vietnam’s economy would rise more than 6 percent this year and next, among the fastest in the world.
“The upshot is that we expect GDP growth in Vietnam to accelerate in 2017,” Gareth Leather, a senior Asia economist at Capital Economics Ltd in London, said in a report.
“There are some factors that should help to support growth this year,” he said, citing a recovery in agricultural output, loose monetary conditions and a strong export sector.
Manufacturing gained 8.3 percent in the first quarter from the same period last year. Exports rose 12.8 percent in the first quarter, while imports gained 22.4 percent. Exports of telephones and parts fell 24.4 percent year-on-year last month, the second month of contraction.
Retail sales rose 9.2 percent in the quarter.
Consumer prices rose 4.7 percent last month from a year earlier, compared with a median estimate of 4.8 percent in a Bloomberg survey of five economists.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts