AUSTRALIA
Housing market takes a dive
The housing market last year recorded its biggest annual decline since 2008, as sharp interest rate hikes sapped buying power and put off investors. The national Home Value Index fell 5.3 percent last year, the first drop since 2018, CoreLogic Inc said in a report on Monday. Annual declines were the biggest in the bellwether market of Sydney, which slid 12.1 percent, followed by an 8.1 percent drop in Melbourne. National values last month declined 1.1 percent, the report said. Home values could fall further in the early months of this year, CoreLogic said.
TURKEY
Inflation rate slows again
The annual inflation rate slowed for a second month last month after hitting a two-decade high, official data showed yesterday. Consumer prices rose 64.3 percent from a year earlier, the state statics agency said, compared with an 84.4 percent annual increase in November. Analysts attribute the sharp slowdown to the so-called base effect. The latest reading is still higher than in any other emerging market aside from Argentina.
SRI LANKA
Austerity drive begins
The country on Monday began a fresh austerity drive, freezing government recruitment as new taxes and higher electricity prices were implemented, with authorities trying to secure a US$2.9 billion bailout from the IMF. A record 20,000 civil servants retired at the end of last month — eight times as many as usual, according to the Ministry of Public Administration, Home Affairs, Provincial Councils and Local Government — after President Ranil Wickremesinghe reduced their retirement age from 65 to 60. They would not be replaced, the ministry said.
INDIA
Rules to curb risky gaming
Regulations have for the first time been drafted to oversee areas of online gaming that fall into a gray area between gambling and entertainment, seeking to resolve growing complaints of addiction particularly among minors. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has published proposed rules governing apps or Web sites that involve an exchange of users’ money, from online casinos and card games to fantasy sports clubs. That sets them apart from gaming titles such as Electronic Arts Inc’s FIFA Soccer, which is to be regulated by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.
FRANCE
Retirement age under debate
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said a contentious overhaul of the pension system might not necessarily require raising the minimum retirement age to 65 from 62. Consultations with worker and business representatives would continue for another week before the government finalizes a plan to be debated in parliament early next month, Borne said on France Info radio. “There are other solutions that could enable us to meet our objective of balancing of our pension system by 2030,” Borne said.
RUSSIA
Ex-Soviet states buy less gas
Gas exports to countries outside a group of former Soviet republics plunged 45.5 percent annually last year, figures from gas giant Gazprom showed on Monday. Gazprom PJSC said in a statement that exports outside the Commonwealth of Independent States totaled 100.9 billion cubic meters compared with 185.1 billion in 2021. Europe was previously Gazprom’s main export market, but supplies have been drastically reduced because of sanctions following Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
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