TRADE
EU, Singapore ink deal
The EU and Singapore on Friday signed free-trade and investment-protection agreements in Brussels. The two sides are to remove tariffs, reduce technical barriers and provide better opportunities in services and government procurement under the deals, the Singapore government said in a statement on Friday. The city-state is to drop tariffs on all products coming from the EU. The EU is to remove tariffs on 84 percent of Singapore’ products and the remaining 16 percent over three to five years. The investment-protection agreement is to replace the existing bilateral treaties.
UKRAINE
IMF announces loan
The IMF on Friday announced it had reached an agreement with Kiev over economic policies that would unlock a new loan deal to provide nearly US$4 billion. The new 14-month stand-by loan deal replaces a four-year financial aid package agreed to in March 2015 and due to expire in five months, the IMF said in a statement. The agreement must be approved by the IMF board, which is to meet later in the year.
CHINA
Home-price gains slow
Home-price gains slowed last month, breaking a half-year streak of accelerating inflation in the housing market. New home prices gained 1 percent from the previous month, according to Bloomberg calculations based on data released yesterday by the National Bureau of Statistics. That compared with a 1.5 percent increase in August. The biggest month-on-month price increase was a 6.2 percent gain in Xian, the data for 70 cities showed.
UNITED STATES
Home sales keep falling
Home sales last month fell for the sixth straight month, a sign that housing has increasingly become a weak spot for the economy. The National Association of Realtors on Friday said that sales declined 3.4 percent last month, the biggest drop in more than two years, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.15 million. That was the lowest sales pace since November 2015. Hurricane Florence dragged sales in North Carolina, but even excluding the storm’s effects, sales would have fallen more than 2 percent, the association said.
CRYPTOCURRENCIES
Spain to order reporting
Spain plans to require cryptocurrency investors to report their holdings and transactions whether in the country or offshore, to help control tax evasion. The Spanish government proposed new legislation on digital coins affecting anyone subject to Spanish taxes. The planned rules, which need to be debated and approved by the Spanish Congress, were announced on Friday in a briefing by government spokeswoman Isabel Celaa, who revealed several anti-fraud measures simultaneously.
SHOEMAKERS
Wanda Ferragamo dies
Wanda Ferragamo, the honorary president of the Florentine shoemaker founded by her husband, Salvatore, has died at the age of 96, her family said on Friday. Wanda turned the shoemaker into an international fashion powerhouse by extending the business to accessories and clothing. The group last year reported revenue worth nearly 1.4 billion euros (US$1.6 billion).
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the