UNITED STATES
Chamber warns over India
The Chamber of Commerce on Monday said that the Indian economy — the world’s sixth-largest — could falter as a result of a spike in COVID-19 cases, creating a drag for the global economy. Chamber executive vice president Myron Brilliant said that the risk of spillover effects was high, given that many US companies employ millions of Indian workers to run their back-office operations. “We expect that this could get worse before it gets better,” Brilliant told reporters, citing a “real risk” that the Indian economy would falter. “There’s a big concern about the drag on the economy by a devastating, spreading virus in India.”
SOUTH KOREA
Investments help economy
South Korea led the developed world to join China in exceeding the size of its pre-COVID-19-pandemic economy, as investment and exports helped it expand faster than expected. GDP in the first quarter grew 1.6 percent from the previous quarter, the Bank of Korea said yesterday, easily beating economists’ consensus for a 1.1 percent expansion. That pushed GDP above the level at the end of 2019, before the pandemic. From the previous quarter, facilities investment jumped 6.6 percent, while exports increased 1.9 percent. Government spending was up 1.7 percent and private consumption rebounded 1.1 percent. From a year earlier, overall GDP increased 1.8 percent.
HONG KONG
Bonuses data released
Finance executives got the territory’s biggest bonuses last year, defying the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw more than one-third of respondents say that they missed out on incentive payments, a survey by KPMG showed. Finance workers got annual bonuses equivalent to 2.83 months’ salary last year, while real-estate was second with 2.16 times, KPMG’s annual review of employment trends showed. They were the only sectors to increase their payouts. The value of the average bonus across all sectors in the territory slumped to 1.83 months’ salary last year, compared with 2.23 a year earlier.
CHINA
Industrial firms’ profit soars
Profit at industrial firms soared last month, supported by a booming economy and rising factory gate prices, as well as statistical distortions from last year’s low base of comparison. Industrial profits climbed 92.3 percent from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday, retreating from an increase of 179 percent in the first two months of this year, but still outpacing a 20.1 percent gain in December last year. The bureau said that the steady recovery was partly due to faster production and sales, but warned of a number of risks clouding the outlook.
JAPAN
Growth forecast raised
The Bank of Japan yesterday raised its growth forecasts for the world’s third-largest economy, citing expected stronger demand, and left its ultra-loose monetary policy in place. However, the central bank said that the outlook remains “highly unclear” and could change depending on how the COVID-19 pandemic evolves, and affects the domestic and international economy. Still, it revised up its forecast for the 2020-2021 fiscal year ended on March 31, projecting that the economy would shrink 4.9 percent, compared with a 5.6 percent contraction it predicted in January. For the current fiscal year, it now expects 4 percent growth, compared with its January forecast of 3.9 percent.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured