INDONESIA
Central bank cuts rate
The central bank yesterday cut its key interest rate for a fourth straight month to spur the economy amid a deteriorating outlook for global growth. Bank Indonesia lowered the seven-day reverse repurchase rate by 25 basis points to 5 percent, as predicted by 23 out of 30 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The rest had forecast no change. The latest round of easing comes after the IMF revised down its forecast for global growth and cut its GDP growth projection for the nation to 5 percent this year, down from 5.2 percent it estimated in July.
ECONOMY
Eurozone manufacturing falls
The eurozone economy stayed at the brink of contraction as manufacturing shrank for a ninth month. IHS Markit’s Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index rose to 50.2 this month, missing economist estimates of 50.3. The reading above 50 — a level that divides expansion from contraction — signals that the private sector in the eurozone is barely growing at the start of the fourth quarter. The outlook is gloomy, with expectations sinking to their worst since 2013, according to Markit. A rebound in French services provided a boost, while the pace of German decline slowed. The rest of the region showed weakness.
CHEMICALS
BASF maintains forecast
German chemical giant BASF AG yesterday left forecasts unchanged for this year, despite reporting falling sales and profits in the third quarter, blaming trade conflicts and uncertainty for the lingering gloom. Net profit at the group slumped 24 percent year-on-year in the July-to-September period to 911 million euros (US$1.01 billion). Sales edged back 2 percent to 15.2 billion euros, with underlying profit down 1 percent at 1.4 billion euros. Looking ahead to the full year, BASF confirmed its forecast of a fall of up to 30 percent in operating profit before special items on a “slight decline” in sales.
INTERNET
TikTok downloads fall
TikTok, a viral short video app run by Chinese start-up ByteDance Inc (字節跳動), saw global user downloads fall for the first time since its inception two years ago, data from Sensor Tower showed. The app amassed an estimated 177 million first-time users across the Apple App Store and Google Play for the third quarter. That represented a 4 percent decline from a year earlier. It was the first time the hit app saw new installs drop on a quarterly basis, the mobile data provider said. In total, TikTok has been installed by about 564 million users so far this year and has been installed 1.45 billion times since launching. “With any app growth, there will come a time when it plateaus, especially since TikTok had grown so much,” Reprise Digital managing director Alvin Foo said.
CHIPMAKERS
SK Hynix profit suffers
South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc, the world’s second-largest memorychip maker, posted its lowest quarterly profit in three years as it suffers from a long-running slump in the global chip market, it said yesterday. Operating profit for SK Hynix, which supplies chips to companies from Apple Inc to Huawei Technologies Co (華為), dropped 93 percent annually to 473 billion won (US$403 million) in the July-to-September period, the company said. Net profit plunged 89 percent to 495 billion won, while sales fell 40 percent to 6.8 trillion won.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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
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