CHINA
PMI rose to 51.3 last month
Factory activity ticked marginally upward last month, official data showed yesterday, beating forecasts as analysts expected the trade war with the US to weigh more heavily on manufacturing. The purchasing managers’ index (PMI), a key gauge of factory conditions, came in at 51.3 for the month, up from 51.2 in July, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. The number held comfortably above the 50-point mark that separates expansion from contraction.
JAPAN
Unemployment rises to 2.5%
The jobless rate edged up to 2.5 percent in July, official data showed yesterday, with the number of available positions far outstripping job hunters as the country’s labor shortage persists. The data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is only a marginal increase from 2.4 percent in June and 2.2 percent in May, a 26-year low. The jobs-to-applicants ratio in July was the highest in 44 years, with 163 job offers going for every 100 job hunters, a separate survey by Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said.
SOUTH KOREA
Interest rate maintained
The Bank of Korea yesterday left its key interest rate unchanged as it weighed escalating trade battles and signs that Asia’s fourth-largest economy might be losing steam. Bank Governor Lee Ju-yeol said that external risks were on the rise, but the economy was still on track to meet the central bank’s growth forecasts. Lee said there were upside and downside risks to growth, while inflation is still expected to rise toward the bank’s 2 percent goal later this year.
PROPERTY
UK housing market cools
British house prices last month grew by a weaker than expected 2 percent year-on-year, mortgage lender Nationwide said, slipping back to a level last seen in June, when prices rose at their slowest annual rate in five years. The slowdown is the latest sign of how the housing market has cooled down since the 2016 Brexit vote. Economists in a Reuters poll had expected prices to rise by a stronger 2.7 percent annually. In monthly terms, prices fell by 0.5 percent last month from July.
TECHNOLOGY
Line to issue cryptocurrency
Japan’s Line Corp yesterday said that it would launch a cryptocurrency this month as the company tries to build up a wide range of businesses using its popular messaging app as a platform. The digital coin “Links” will be given as rewards to users of its services and could be traded with other cryptocurrencies at its crypto exchange, Bitbox, the company said. The coin would not be available for users in Japan and the US for regulatory reasons, it said. Line said Link digital coins would be used as payments or rewards within its blockchain-based app services.
AIRLINES
AirAsia China plans on hold
AirAsia Group Bhd’s planned foray into China for a wider regional footprint suffered a setback, after Southeast Asia’s largest budget airline failed to secure a deal with its local partners to tap the world’s second-biggest aviation market. A preliminary agreement signed last year for a venture with China Everbright Group and the Henan government has lapsed and will not be extended, AirAsia said in a filing late on Thursday, without providing further details.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) forecast that its wafer shipments this quarter would grow up to 7 percent sequentially and the factory utilization rate would rise to 75 percent, indicating that customers did not alter their ordering behavior due to the US President Donald Trump’s capricious US tariff policies. However, the uncertainty about US tariffs has weighed on the chipmaker’s business visibility for the second half of this year, UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said at an online earnings conference yesterday. “Although the escalating trade tensions and global tariff policies have increased uncertainty in the semiconductor industry, we have not
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