The Japanese government raised its assessment of the economy for the first time in eight months, as it sees stimulus spending and improved conditions for exporters driving a recovery from recession.
“The recovery is expected to resume while supported by the improvement of export conditions,” Japan’s Cabinet Office said in a monthly report released yesterday, after it downgraded its assessment in four of the last seven months.
The government announced ￥10.3 trillion (IS$117 billion) in stimulus earlier this month to boost growth and end deflation. Stocks fell and the yen rose for a third day after the Bank of Japan (BOJ) on Tuesday set a 2 percent inflation target with no deadline and delayed extra easing for a year.
“The economy is recovering because production has been strong,” said Hiroaki Muto, senior economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management in Tokyo. “We may see a slowdown from 2014 when the effects of Abe’s policies begin to wear off.”
Goldman Sachs raised its real GDP growth forecast for the year, which starts in April, to 2 percent from 1.2 percent, it said in an e-mailed note to clients.
“Public works in the stimulus package, yen depreciation that has factored in anticipated monetary policy changes and the attendant improvement in corporate and household sentiment” were reasons cited for the increase.
In another sign of the challenges facing Abe, corporate loans fell last month from three months earlier, a poll of senior loan officers released by the BOJ showed.
Japan’s economy may have contracted for a third quarter in the October-December period by 0.6 percent, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. Goldman Sachs expects public works to power GDP growth to 3.2 percent in the three months from April.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS