UNITED STATES
Deficit hits February record
The federal government posted a record budget deficit last month, pushing the overall deficit for the first five months of the budget year up 39 percent from a year earlier. The Department of the Treasury said in its monthly report that the deficit hit an all-time high of US$234 billion. That surpasses the old February deficit record of US$232 billion set in 2012. For the first five months of this budget year, the deficit totals US$544.2 billion. Last week, the administration projected that this year’s deficit would total US$1.09 trillion.
ECONOMY
Indian rules delayed again
India delayed the introduction of new accounting rules for the second year running, in a move that will spare the country’s banks from adding another layer to the US$190 billion pile of bad loans on their books. The Reserve Bank of India on Friday said that legislative amendments needed to implement the new Indian Accounting Standards are still under consideration by the Indian government. “Accordingly, it has been decided to delay the implementation” of the rules “until further notice,” the central bank said.
SPAIN
Worker plan approved
The Cabinet on Friday approved a plan to persuade some of the roughly 1 million workers who left the country during its 2008 to 2013 economic slump to return home. Among the 50 measures included in the two-year plan are scholarships and grants for scientific researchers and lower social security payments for selected workers, the government said in a statement after the Cabinet approved the program.
TURKEY
Reserves fall explained
A recent fall in the central bank’s foreign currency reserves stemmed from sales of forex to energy-importing firms and a foreign debt payment, worth US$5.3 billion in total, a central bank official said on Friday. The official said the fall in reserves was not extraordinary and that the bank maintained a policy of accumulating reserves. However, the central bank said it would suspend its one-week lira repo auctions after the currency led a retreat among emerging market peers on Friday.
ELECTRONICS
Apple upbeat over economy
Apple Inc chief executive officer Tim Cook yesterday said he is “extremely bullish” about the global economy based on the amount of innovation being carried out and urged China to continue to “open up.” In a speech at an economic forum in Beijing, Cook said Apple is less concerned with the short-term economic outlook, because the tech giant makes investments looking ahead years or decades. Apple reported a revenue drop of 26 percent in the greater China region during the quarter ending in December last year.
MINING
Storms halt operations
Global miners BHP Group and Glencore PLC halted output at energy and metals operations across Australia as two cyclones simultaneously approached the coast for the first time since 2015. BHP stopped output at the Pyrenees oil project off Western Australia as cyclone Veronica tracked toward a hub of liquefied natural gas and iron-ore export operations. In the north, cyclone Trevor has already made landfall.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by