The IMF on Thursday lowered its growth forecast for France this year and warned the country might miss its targets to cut its budget deficit.
The Washington-based body cut its GDP growth projection for France this year to 0.7 percent, down from the 1 percent it had forecast in April.
Unemployment in the eurozone’s second-largest economy is predicted to remain high until 2016, while stalling economic growth means that France’s public deficit is likely to exceed EU targets and hit 4 percent this year.
“The French economy has shown great resilience during the global financial crisis, but the pace of recovery has been slow,” the IMF said in a statement.
It also called for “deeper structural reforms” to help turn the economy around.
French President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government is struggling to boost growth in France’s sluggish economy and stem rising unemployment.
The number of registered unemployed in France has meanwhile suffered a big jump in May, rising by 24,800 to a new record of 3.388 million.
France had been supposed to get its public deficit down to 3 percent of output, but won a reprieve from the European Commission, and was aiming for 3.8 percent this year.
National audit body, the Accounting Court, this month warned France’s future growth could be threatened by its growing public deficit.
The government has pledged cuts in planned spending totaling 50 billion euros (US$68 billion) by 2017 to restore export competitiveness, boost growth and create jobs.
The IMF said France would have to carry on with these policies noting that there was “little room for deviation.”
For next year, it predicted France’s economic growth would rise to 1.4 percent, accelerating to 1.7 percent in 2016, 1.8 percent in 2017 and 1.9 percent in 2018 and 2019.
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
IMAGE SENSORS: The Japanese company would be the controlling shareholder of the venture, with development and production lines to be set up in Kumamoto Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corp to create a joint venture to develop and produce next-generation images sensors. The partnership seeks to explore and address emerging opportunities in physical artificial intelligence (AI) applications, such as automotive and robotics, paving the way for innovations and expanded technological advancements, TSMC said in a statement. Sony would be the majority and controlling shareholder of the joint venture, the statement said, adding that the company would set up development and production lines in its newly constructed fab in Kumamoto Prefecture’s
RSS