LABOR
Bali woos digital nomads
Indonesia plans to issue a special five-year visa for remote workers and business-leisure travelers to lure visitors back to Bali and other destinations. About 95 percent of surveyed “digital nomads” have said Indonesia is their “top of mind” destination for remote work and they are ready to travel, Tourism Minister Sandiaga Uno said in an interview with Bloomberg Television yesterday. Indonesia has scrapped most of its travel restrictions, allowing fully vaccinated visitors to enter without testing or quarantine requirements, as COVID-19 cases stay low and booster doses are rolled out.
THAILAND
Retail inflation quickens
Thailand’s retail inflation quickened last month to its highest in nearly 14 years, a level that may test the central bank’s resolve to stand pat on borrowing costs. Consumer prices rose 7.1 percent from a year earlier, accelerating from 4.7 percent a month ago, official data showed yesterday. That is faster than the median 5.9 percent gain predicted by economists in a Bloomberg survey and the highest since July 2008. The uptick in the inflation rate was driven mostly by energy and food items, and inflation may accelerate this month, Trade Policy and Strategy Office Director-General Ronnarong Phoolpipat said.
FRANCE
Le Maire undaunted
The French economy will grow this year despite soaring inflation and uncertainty over the war in Ukraine, Minister of Finance Bruno Le Maire said on Sunday. The minister declined to give an estimate, saying he would update the country’s growth forecast once a revised budget bill is presented following the legislative elections later this month. “It was 4 percent, it’s obvious that with the war in Ukraine, inflation, all that will call the outlook into question, but we will have positive growth in 2022,” Le Maire said in an interview with CNews TV and Europe1 radio.
OIL
Vitol eyes more from Iran
Vitol Group said the US may allow more sanctioned Iranian oil onto global markets even without a revival of the 2015 nuclear accord that the EU sees as increasingly unlikely. Vitol, the world’s biggest independent crude trader, said Washington might turn more of a blind eye to sanctioned barrels flowing from Iran if US midterm elections are dominated by the need to reduce gasoline prices. “Uncle Sam might just allow a little bit more of that oil to flow,” Vitol Group head of Asia Mike Muller said on Sunday on a podcast produced by Dubai-based Gulf Intelligence.
RETAIL
Sainsbury’s to vote on wages
Shareholders in Sainsbury’s will get to vote on a resolution at next month’s annual meeting calling for Britain’s second-biggest supermarket group to commit to paying the so-called real living wage to all its workers by July next year. Responsible investment group ShareAction, which coordinated the filing of the resolution in March by an investor coalition that includes Legal & General and Nest, said yesterday negotiations with Sainsbury’s had reached an impasse and the resolution would definitely go to a vote at the July 7 meeting. ShareAction said the first living wage shareholder resolution to be filed at a British company “will be a litmus test for investors’ Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) commitments to protect workers amid a spiralling cost of living crisis.”
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
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