AUTOMAKERS
Ford to cut jobs: report
US automaker Ford Motor Co is poised to cut thousands of jobs worldwide, with reductions expected to total about 10 percent of its global workforce, the Wall Street Journal reported late on Monday. A source confirmed to reporters that massive job cuts are planned at Ford in the coming days, affecting as many as 20,000 salaried workers. The US’ second-largest automaker, Ford employs about 202,000 workers worldwide. The announcement came as the company grapples with slowing sales after several years of growth. The automaker sold 214,695 vehicles last month, 7.2 percent fewer than during the same period last year. Ford spokesman Mike Moran said the company’s immediate goals “include fortifying the profit pillars in our core business, transforming traditionally underperforming areas of our core business and investing aggressively, but prudently, in emerging opportunities.”
TUNISIA
The economy picks up
The nation’s embattled economy picked up in the first quarter and there was a slight fall in unemployment, according to data published on Monday by the National Statistics Institute. Economic growth in the first quarter was 2.1 percent, slightly more than the 1 percent mark registered last year, as GDP grew by 0.9 percent, the report said. An uptick in tourism revenues, agriculture and mining activity, namely phosphates, were among the sectors that contributed to growth. At the same time unemployment dropped slightly to 15.3 percent, compared with 15.5 percent in the previous quarter. While Tunisia is hailed as a success story of the Arab Spring uprisings, authorities have failed to redress the economy since the 2011 revolution.
TRADE
Australia, HK eye FTA
Australia and Hong Kong began talks to secure a free-trade agreement (FTA), Australian Minister for Trade and Investment Steven Ciobo said yesterday, adding that he would focus on securing increased access for service providers and it could be firmed up within one year. Ciobo, who met Hong Kong Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Gregory So (蘇錦樑) in Hong Kong, said that as tariffs on Australian goods are already at zero, talks would focus on improving access for financial, education, travel, construction, mining, energy and transport companies. Ciobo told Sky News that Canberra would “look and try to negotiate as comprehensive an FTA as possible over the next 12 months or thereabouts.” Hong Kong was Australia’s eighth-largest export market and 12th-largest trading partner overall from 2015 to last year, Australian government data showed.
CHINA
US Treasury holdings surge
The nation in March increased its holdings of US Treasuries by the most in two years, a sign that the world’s second-biggest economy is stabilizing and stricter capital controls have helped to stem capital flight. The nation raised its ownership of US government bonds, notes and bills by US$27.9 billion to US$1.09 trillion, the biggest increase since March 2015, according to a monthly US Department of the Treasury report released on Monday. That means China remains the second-largest foreign holder of US debt. Adding the US$3.7 billion surge in Belgium’s ownership, which is often seen as a home to China’s custodial accounts, the total increase was the biggest since 2014.
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