CHINA
Credit growth too fast: IMF
The nation has made progress on reforms, but still should allow market forces to play a more decisive role and accelerate its opening up to the rest of the world, the IMF said yesterday. While credit growth has slowed, it remains too fast, and policymakers should de-emphasize growth targets and focus on higher-quality growth, the fund said in a statement. The economic expansion would likely slow to 6.6 percent this year and to about 5.5 percent by 2023, the IMF said.
GERMANY
Retail sales beat forecasts
Retail sales last month rose more than expected after four consecutive monthly drops, data showed yesterday. The private consumption data showed retail sales rose by 2.3 percent on the month in real terms, the Federal Statistics Office said. It was the strongest monthly increase since October 2016 and beat the Reuters consensus forecast of a 0.7 percent rise. On the year, retail rose by 1.2 percent, slightly weaker than the Reuters consensus forecast of a 1.3 percent increase.
AVIATION
Longest flight to return
Singapore Airlines Ltd yesterday said that it would relaunch the world’s longest commercial flight in October, a journey of almost 19 hours from the city-state to the New York City area, but it would not be available to economy travelers. The daily, non-stop journey from Singapore Changi Airport to Newark Airport in New Jersey would cover about 16,700km and take about 18 hours and 45 minutes, the airline said in a statement. The current record holder is Qatar Airways Ltd Flight 921 from Auckland to Doha, which takes 17 hours and 40 minutes.
ADVERTISING
Sorrell invests in shell firm
Martin Sorrell, the recently ousted boss of WPP PLC, has taken control of a listed shell company to use it as a vehicle to buy marketing firms, replicating the approach he took in the 1980s to build the world’s biggest advertising group. Sorrell plans to invest £40 million (US$53 million) of his own money into Derriston Capital, a little-known two-year-old company, which would be renamed S4 Capital, he said in a statement.
? AUTOMAKERS
Hyundai to invest in Alabama
Hyundai Motor Co is to invest US$388 million to expand and upgrade its engine manufacturing operations in Montgomery, Alabama, and create 50 new jobs. The Seoul-based automaker is to spend about US$40 million to build a new engine-head machining facility that would be completed in November and be operational by the middle of next year, it said in a statement. The rest of the investment is to go toward equipment and updating its engine plant to support production of Sonata and Elantra sedans.
ENERGY
Canada buys pipeline
The Canadian government on Tuesday said it is buying a controversial pipeline from the Alberta oil sands to the Pacific Coast to ensure it gets built. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government plans to spend C$4.5 billion (US$3.46 billion) to purchase Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline. The pipeline expansion would triple the capacity of an existing line to ship oil extracted from the oil sands in Alberta across the snow-capped peaks of the Canadian Rockies.
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