Australia’s buoyant economy posted strong growth in the second quarter of the year on the back of increasing exports, consumer and government spending, official data showed yesterday.
The economy expanded by 0.9 percent in the March-June quarter, following 0.7 percent growth in the first three months of the year, to take the annual rate of growth to 3.4 percent — the fastest pace since September 2012.
The quarterly reading was far above market expectations of 2.8 percent, and comes after the previous quarter’s year-on-year reading of 3.1 percent.
“The national accounts for the June quarter highlight the strength and the resilience of the Australian economy, which is in its 27th year of consecutive economic growth,” Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told reporters.
“The economy is strong, the fundamentals are good and momentum has continued, and these are an encouraging set of numbers,” he said.
The economy has recorded uneven expansion in recent years as an unprecedented period of mining investment reaches its end, with the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cutting interest rates to a record-low of 1.5 percent to support growth.
Household spending jumped 0.7 percent during the quarter to contribute 0.4 percentage points to growth, while net exports added 0.1 percent, while government expenditure rose 1.0 percent in the period to continue its stellar growth through the year.
The stronger data reinforced expectations that the next move of the RSB would be to lift rather than cut interest rates, but analysts said any hike was not likely in the near-term, with wages growth and inflation remaining soft.
“Despite solid growth, the economy is not generating much in the way of wage or price pressures,” Commonwealth Bank of Australia senior economist Gareth Aird said in a note. “There is still plenty of slack in the labor market to chew through.”
Analysts said that exports growth was expected to level out in the second half of the year, while house prices — particularly in the larger cities — were also falling this year as tighter lending standards discourage local and international investors.
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
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
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