Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche Holding AG on Tuesday said that it would stop producing medicines at its Rio de Janeiro unit in Brazil, a new blow to a country whose economy appears to be in its most sluggish decade in 120 years.
Roche said the move would take place within the next five years because that factory is not financially sustainable.
Several big businesses have shown concerns about the future of the once booming Brazilian economy. The South American nation has hit strong headwinds since 2014, with few encouraging signs of a recovery since Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro took office on Jan. 1.
Photo: Reuters
Roche said the layoffs in Rio would begin next year. Its medicines in the South American country would be imported once the manufacturing unit is shut down and the company would keep its administrative units in Sao Paulo and Goias states.
The company employs 1,200 people in Brazil, including 440 at the Rio factory. The unit produces drugs like anti-anxiety medicines Lexotan and Valium, tranquilizer Rivotril and sedative Dormonid.
Also on Tuesday, airline Avianca Brasil, which filed for bankruptcy in December last year, announced the shutdown 21 of its routes next month and closure of its office at Rio’s international airport.
Last month, automaker Ford Motor Co closed its truck factory in Sao Bernardo do Campo, outside Sao Paulo.
More than 3,200 people worked in that operation when the announcement was made and most of them are expected to be laid off in November.
Authorities are trying to find a buyer for the plant, but have failed so far.
Workers at the Volkswagen plant in the same city accepted a cut in their benefits just to keep their jobs, a rare move that the local union agreed with.
Several other companies in financial difficulties have suggested they will not make big investments anytime soon, including companies that in 2017 promised to make new hires because of more flexible labor laws approved by the Brazilian Congress.
The Getulio Vargas Foundation think tank on Monday published a study saying the average growth of the Brazilian economy from 2011 to next year could be the worst since it started measuring in 1901, at 0.9 percent a year.
From 2011 to last year, it averaged 0.6 percent growth.
The once-bullish Sao Paulo stock market is now jittery about prospects for a major overhaul of the pension system meant to help the economy improve.
Bolsonaro backs the measure, which would delay or trim benefits for tens of millions of people, but it faces increasing resistance in Congress.
Economist Andre Perfeito said in a research note to clients that “the longer Brazil’s economy remains weak, the more difficult it will be for Bolsonaro to get the reform approved in Congress.”
The Brazilian government has boasted that last month’s job figure is a sign a that recovery could come after all.
More than 173,000 jobs were created, it said, the best figure in five years. Still, almost 13 million Brazilians are unemployed, according to government figures.
The economic crisis is often dramatized in the shape of colossal lines outside job centers in major cities any time new openings appear.
More than 15,000 people showed up at a center in Sao Paulo after 6,000 jobs were announced. The positions offered included telemarketing operator, salesman and supermarket cashier.
Thirty-eight-year-old Gerson Alcantara, who has been unemployed for six months, was one of the people in line from the early hours of the day.
He has already worked as a security officer and a driver, but said he would take any job he is offered. He is not hopeful about the future, though.
“The crisis has gotten a lot worse,” Alcantara said.
Asked if the approval of a pension reform by Congress would make the country’s economy recover, he was skeptical.
“That will only improve things for the rich,” Alcantara said.
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
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
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],”