JAPAN
Factory output declines
The country’s factory output turned down in July as manufacturers cut back on inventory stockpiles, government data showed yesterday. Industrial production slipped 0.8 percent month-on-month after a revised 2.2 percent rise in June, the Ministry of Trade and Industry said. The fall was bigger than expected, with the median forecast by economists coming in at a drop of 0.3 percent in a Bloomberg survey. However, the ministry kept its view that manufacturing activity is on the path to recovery and said the July drop was “small” considering the robust growth in June.
CHINA
Factory activity improves
The nation’s factory activity gathered steam last month, official data showed yesterday, beating expectations, but not dispelling concerns about the headwinds facing the world’s second-largest economy. The latest purchasing managers’ index, a gauge of factory conditions, came in at 51.7 last month, the National Bureau of Statistics said, up from the 51.4 reading in July. Anything above 50 is considered growth while a figure below points to contraction. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News had expected a reading of 51.3.
UNITED STATES
Economy rebounds in spring
The economy rebounded sharply in the spring, growing at the fastest pace in more than two years amid brisk consumer spending on cars and other goods. GDP grew at an annual rate of 3 percent in the April-to-June quarter, the Department of Commerce reported on Wednesday. It was the best showing since a 3.2 percent gain in the first quarter of 2015.
MEXICO
Number of poor increases
The government on Wednesday said that about 53.4 million of the nation’s 122 million people were poor last year, compared with 53.3 million in 2012. However, population growth meant the percentage dropped from 45.5 percent in 2012. The number living in extreme poverty who cannot buy even basic items dropped from 9.8 percent of the population in 2012 to 7.6 percent last year. The government’s poverty-measurement agency said that 17.5 percent of people did not have sufficient income to buy enough food, down from 20 percent in 2012.
ENERGY
Lukoil mulls selling unit
Russian oil giant OAO Lukoil is considering selling its Swiss unit Litasco SA because new US sanctions on Russia will make it harder for the Geneva, Switzerland-based energy trader to raise new funds, industry sources said. Lukoil chief executive Vagit Alekperov later confirmed the company was considering selling Litasco. A senior industry source told reporters that Litasco could be sold later this year, possibly as a first step toward divestment of other overseas assets by Lukoil to enable it to focus on tapping fields in Siberia.
CORPORATE
HNA sues businessman
HNA Group Co (海航集團) is seeking at least US$300 million from Chinese businessman Guo Wengui (郭文貴) for making defamatory statements tying the company to corruption and alleging it has secret ties to the family of a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party official. In HNA’s complaint, filed on Wednesday with the New York state Supreme Court, the company said Guo’s false allegations are causing harm to the group’s reputation and financial standing.
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],”
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
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