CHINA
Drought hits Guangdong
Guangdong Province is grappling with a drought that has prompted the central government to investigate and cities to urge people to conserve water. Residents of Guangzhou, capital of the largest Chinese province by GDP, should use less water and store supplies, city officials said in a statement on Friday. The Dong River, which supplies nearly one-third of the city’s water, was suffering its worst drought since 1963, they added. The river, a tributary of the Pearl River, is also a major source of drinking water for Hong Kong, although there is no sign the former British colony is short on supplies. Shenzhen also urged residents to cut water use last week, Caixin Global reported.
SAUDI ARABIA
Budget surplus forecast
The kingdom on Sunday approved the budget for next year, projecting a surplus for the first time since oil prices collapsed in 2014. King Salman said the improved fiscal situation for the world’s biggest oil exporter comes “after the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has overcome the economic repercussions and the exceptional stages of the coronavirus pandemic.” Cited by the Saudi Press Agency, he said total expenditures were budgeted at 955 billion Saudi riyals (US$255 billion) and revenues estimated at 1.045 trillion riyals, resulting in a surplus of 90 billion riyals. The last time that the kingdom saw a surplus was in 2013, when it reached 206 billion riyals.
CANADA
Supply summit planned
In the aftermath of disastrous floods last month that cut off Canada’s main port, Ottawa is to convene a summit of industry figures and shippers to discuss strengthening supply chains, a government source said on Sunday. The event is to take place early next year and would bring together shippers, ports, terminals, and the railway and trucking sectors, as well as organizations that run critical infrastructure, to discuss how to ensure the supply chains can recover fully and make them more resilient, the source said.
MINING
Rio cancels Mongolia debt
Rio Tinto Group is to cancel US$2.3 billion in debt owed by Mongolia as the miner seeks to push forward with expanding the giant Oyu Tolgoi copper project that has been beset by years of disputes, delays and cost blowouts. Rio CEO Jakob Stausholm proposed improved terms for a 2015 financing agreement in a letter yesterday to Mongolian Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai. Writing off the debt would speed up the timeline for when the country can start to receive dividends, it said. The Mongolian government has 34 percent ownership of Oyu Tolgoi, with the rest held by Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd, which is 51 percent owned by Rio.
TEXTILES
Reliance bids for Sintex
Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd, along with a partner, are among those bidding to take over bankrupt Indian textile firm Sintex Industries Ltd, according to a stock-exchange filing, as the billionaire attempts to diversify from an oil empire and into telecommunications, green energy and fashion. Reliance is partnering with Assets Care & Reconstruction Enterprise Ltd to bid for the company under a court-appointed bankruptcy resolution process, Sintex said in a filing on Sunday. Other bidders are Easygo Textiles Pvt, GHCL Ltd and Himatsingka Ventures Pvt, which is working with Shrikant Himatsingka and Dinesh Kumar Himatsingka.
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
AT HIGH CAPACITY: Three-month order visibility on stable customer demand would push factory utilization to between 80 and 85 percent, Vanguard’s president said Foundry service provider Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) yesterday said it is unable to fully satisfy surging demand for chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) servers and data centers, amid an AI infrastructure investment boom that is crowding out production of less advanced chips. Vanguard is facing an “undersupply of chips” made using mature process technologies, due to strong demand for AI products and improving demand from customers in the commercial, industrial and auto sectors, which are digesting excess inventory to a healthier level, company chairman Fang Leuh (方略) told a virtual investors’ conference. However, Vanguard gave a more conservative view on
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