CHINA
Consumer inflation slows
The nation’s consumer inflation last month slowed more than expected and factory prices decelerated sharply, official data showed yesterday, as economic pressures persist, despite robust exports and manufacturing. The consumer price index rose by 1.7 percent from a year ago, compared with a 1.9 percent increase in October and 1.6 percent in September, the National Bureau of Statistics said. However, a sharp slowdown was posted by the producer price index, which measures prices of goods at the factory gate and only grew by 5.8 percent year-on-year, compared with 6.9 percent in the two preceding months.
GERMANY
Exports fall as imports rise
The nation’s exports dropped in October for the second straight month while imports grew, narrowing the country’s trade surplus. The Federal Statistical Office on Friday said that October exports dropped 0.4 percent from September, following a 0.4 percent decline in September from August, according to figures adjusted for calendar and seasonal variations. Exports rose 1.8 percent in October, narrowing the adjusted trade surplus to 19.8 billion euros (US$23.3 billion) from September’s 21.9 billion euros.
EGYPT
World Bank issues tranche
The World Bank on Friday signed a US$1.15 billion loan with the government, a final tranche of funds to support economic reforms in the country, the international lender said. The deal was sealed on the sidelines of an investment conference, which President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi inaugurated on Friday afternoon in Sharm el-Sheikh. The loans are provided to support “Egypt’s homegrown reform program aimed at powering job creation, ensuring energy security, strengthening public finances and enhancing business competitiveness,” the World Bank said in a statement.
ELECTRONICS
Samsung, colleges team up
Samsung Electronics Co is bringing together South Carolina’s two biggest universities to partner with the South Korean electronics company for research into home appliances. The new Palmetto Consortium for Home Appliance Innovation was on Friday announced at Samsung’s new plant in Newberry, where washing machines should be coming off assembly lines next month and 950 workers should be employed at the US$380 million plant by 2020. Samsung said it also wants to make the plant a center for customer service and research and development with the help of the University of South Carolina and Clemson University.
AGROCHEMICALS
Regulators to warn Bayer
EU anti-trust regulators are to warn Bayer AG that its planned purchase of US seed maker Monsanto Co Inc might hurt competition, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday, a move that would force Bayer to offer concessions to address the concerns. The US$66 billion deal would make Bayer the world’s largest pesticides and seeds company, an outcome already facing strong criticism from environmentalists and some farm groups. The European Commission is expected to send a charge sheet known as a statement of objections to the companies in the coming weeks, but a final decision has not yet been made, the person said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to