TAXES
Virgin Islands to seek debts
The US Virgin Islands has said it is cracking down on those who owe the US territory US$430 million in unpaid taxes. Virgin Islands Governor Kenneth Mapp on Wednesday said that he is creating a new task force charged with recuperating at least 15 percent of what is owed by September. He said the money owed includes property, income and hotel occupancy taxes. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker said people would be prosecuted with no prior warning. The territory is in the middle of an economic slump and faces an unemployment rate of 11 percent.
CHINA
Data credibility unit formed
The National Bureau of Statistics has set up a new supervisory arm to ensure the authenticity of its data. The new enforcement team was formed to meet demands from the central government to improve data quality, according to a statement published on the bureau’s Web site yesterday. The accuracy of the nation’s statistics has been questioned, as readings such as GDP growth or jobless rates showed uncanny stability, while provincial officials have had an incentive to inflate growth numbers to enhance their careers. Liaoning Province earlier this year admitted that it faked fiscal data from 2011 to 2014.
FOOD AND BEVERAGE
Nestle sales miss forecasts
Swiss giant Nestle SA yesterday reported anemic sales growth as Asian market strength was offset by weak consumer spending in the Americas. First-quarter sales rose 0.4 percent to 21 billion Swiss francs (US$21.1 billion), slightly below analyst expectations of 21.3 billion francs compiled by financial news agency AWP. However, organic sales growth, which excludes exchange rate factors as well as acquisitions and spin-offs, came in better than expected at 2.3 percent against an analysts’ call of 2.1 percent. Unfavorable exchange rates weighed on sales growth with 0.4 points and asset sales with 1.5 points.
CONSUMER GOODS
Unilever sales rise 6.1%
Anglo-Dutch food and consumer products giant Unilever PLC yesterday reported rising sales and boosted its shareholder dividend in its first earnings update since seeing off a takeover bid by Kraft Heinz Co. Sales rose 6.1 percent in the three months to last month to 13.3 billion euros (US$14.3 billion), partly attributable to favorable exchange rate factors, and better than analysts’ expectations. The company also announced a 12 percent hike in its dividend for the quarter, “reflecting the confidence in our outlook,” it said in a statement.
E-COMMERCE
Alibaba launches LiveUp
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) has created a loyalty program for online shoppers in Singapore that it might expand to other markets, teaming up with Uber Technologies Inc and Netflix Inc to lure customers. It is the first time Uber and Netflix have jointly created an online rewards program, said Maximilian Bittner, CEO of Lazada Group SA, the Singapore-based e-commerce operator Alibaba acquired for US$1 billion last year. The trio’s LiveUp program started yesterday and links their services, from UberEats and Netflix to online grocer RedMart and Alibaba’s Taobao online marketplace. A mobile app is to be rolled out in the second half of this year.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained