CHINA
Factory inflation eases
Factory inflation last month eased to a 14-month low, while consumer prices grew at their slowest rate in the past six months, official government data showed yesterday. The producer price index — an important barometer of the industrial sector that measures the cost of goods at the factory gate — came in at 4.3 percent year-on-year last month, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics said. The consumer price index — a main gauge of retail inflation — rose 1.5 percent year-on-year, down from 1.8 percent in December last year and in line with government forecasts.
UNITED KINGDOM
Central bank freezes rates
The Bank of England on Thursday froze interest rates at 0.5 percent, but warned that borrowing costs could rise more quickly than expected to bring down inflation, sparking fresh turmoil on the markets. On a brighter note, the central bank ramped up its economic outlook, despite Brexit uncertainty. The central bank said in its latest quarterly forecast that British GDP is expected to grow by 1.8 percent this year.
UNITED STATES
Fed faces challenge: Dudley
Mounting sovereign debt could drive up borrowing costs and complicate matters for the US Federal Reserve, which faces a challenging environment this year, a senior policymaker said on Thursday. Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley said rising rates on US Treasury bills could make the Fed’s job “a little more difficult.” Dudley also reiterated his position that this week’s correction on Wall Street was not a threat to the economy.
INTERNET
Watchdog fines Google
The Indian antitrust watchdog on Thursday said that Google abused its position as the dominant search engine in the nation to create a search bias in favor of its own services and those of its partners. The Competition Commission of India said in a statement that it was imposing a fine of 1.36 billion rupees (US$21 million) on Google along with a warning to desist from unfair practices. The regulator has been investigating Google since 2012.
CHIPMAKERS
Demand boosts Nvidia
Nvidia Corp said demand for graphics chips from its main video gaming market, cryptocurrency miners and data-center owners propelled sales higher than forecast this quarter. Revenue in the fiscal first quarter would be US$2.9 billion, plus or minus-2 percent, the Santa Clara, California-based company said in a statement on Thursday. Net income rose to US$1.12 billion, or earnings per share of US$1.78, in the quarter ended Jan. 28, from US$655 million, or US$0.99, the previous year, the company said. Sales increased 34 percent to US$2.91 billion.
SHIPPING
Earnings disappoint
A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S forecast its profit for this year would grow as much as 43 percent after the owners of the world’s biggest shipping company fell short of meeting expectations for last year. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization would be in the range of US$4 billion to US$5 billion this year, the company said yesterday. That compares with the US$3.5 billion it booked last year. The company proposed paying a dividend of US$24 a share.
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
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