ENERGY
Morocco delays solar plant
Morocco postponed without explanation the inauguration of Noor-1, a solar power plant that was due to open on Sunday in Ouarzazate, part of what will eventually be the world’s largest solar power production facility. With an electricity production capacity of 160 megawatts, Noor-1 is supposed to allow the nation to significantly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and cut carbon dioxide emissions by 240,000 tonnes per year, according to estimates from the energy ministry. The project’s next phases — Noor-2 and Noor-3 — are to follow next year and in 2017, and a call for tenders is open for Noor 4.
INTERNET
Zuckerberg Internet appeal
Facebook Inc founder Mark Zuckerberg yesterday urged India to approve a controversial plan that would provide a free Internet service to the poor. The head of the social network tried to drum up support for the Free Basics service that offers people without the Internet free access to a handful of Web sites through mobile phones, in a column in the Times of India. However, activists say the program threatens the principles of net neutrality and could change pricing in India for access to different Web sites. Critics accused the world’s largest social networking firm of favoring a limited swath of the Internet and excluding rival services.
JAPAN
November output slid 1%
Factory output fell 1 percent last month from the previous month, in the first decline since August, official data showed yesterday, as the country struggles to stimulate its fragile economy. The decline was mainly due to stagnant production of general machinery, chemical engineering and metal industry, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said. The figure was worse than market expectations of a 0.4 percent drop. For this month, the ministry expects production to rise 0.9 percent and advance 6 percent next month. Japan’s production overall is making “one step forward and one step back,” the ministry said in a statement.
EUROZONE
No new member expected
The eurozone is not expected to welcome any new members in the coming years, as the region’s long crisis seems to have put some countries off, European Commissioner for the Euro and Social Dialogue Valdis Dombrovskis said in a newspaper interview yesterday. “Before a country joins the euro, it must have a fixed exchange rate to the euro,” Valdis told the daily Die Welt. This mechanism is the waiting room for eurozone membership,” he said. However, at the moment, no EU member is in the “euro waiting room,” with the exception of Denmark, which has a special status, he said. The last countries to join the euro were Latvia last year and Lithuania this year.
SAUDI ARABIA
Riyadh expects deficit
Saudi Arabia expects to post a budget deficit of 367 billion riyals (US$98 billion) as spending came in higher than targeted and revenue dropped amid a plunge in oil prices, an official said yesterday. Spending is estimated to reach 975 billion riyals by the end of this year, overshooting the government’s target by 13 percent, Saudi official Hindi al-Suhaimi told reporters in Riyadh. Actual revenue was 608 billion riyals, compared with a forecast of 715 billion riyals at the beginning of the year. The deficit is at about 16 percent of GDP, National Bank of Abu Dhabi senior economist Alp Eke said. The median estimate of of 10 economists in a Bloomberg survey was a shortfall of 20 percent.
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
RSS