CHINA
Trading hours to increase
The country plans to extend the yuan’s trading hours as it seeks to increase global investor participation in onshore currency trading as part of its internationalization push. Regulators led by the People’s Bank of China have told some banks to prepare for an extension of onshore yuan trading hours, people familiar with the matter said. The trading would close at 3am the next day, instead of 11:30pm local time, the people said. It is not known when the change would take effect. The bank had pledged to extend currency trading hours last month after the IMF lifted yuan’s weighting in the Special Drawing Rights currency basket.
THAILAND
Rate hike in works
The central bank signaled an imminent rate increase, saying timely monetary policy adjustment in line with changing economic and price trends would help steer broader inflation expectations. Gradual rate hikes would not derail an economic recovery given the real negative interest rates stemming from “ultra-low” policy rate and high inflation, Bank of Thailand officials said yesterday. They ruled out an off-cycle rate hike, saying the three remaining meetings of the rate-setting panel for this year were appropriate. The Monetary Policy Committee left the key rate unchanged at a record low 0.5 percent for a 16th straight meeting early this month.
INDIA
Recession might aid prices
Recessions in advanced economies might benefit India in a “perverse way,” as a moderation in global commodities prices would help cool domestic inflation, said Samiran Chakraborty, managing director and chief economist for India at Citigroup. “India being a net importer of commodities should benefit on the inflation front,” Chakraborty said in an interview with Bloomberg Television yesterday. He added that the country would still face pressures from a global slowdown, as it would crimp exports and economic growth.
IRAN
Steel firm halts production
One of the country’s biggest steel companies yesterday said that it was forced to halt production after being hit by a cyberattack, apparently marking one of the biggest such assaults on the country’s strategic industrial sector in recent memory. The state-owned Khuzestan Steel Co said in a statement that experts had determined the firm was unable to continue operations “due to technical problems and will be closed until further notice” following “cyberattacks.” A local news channel, Jamaran, reported that the attack failed to cause any structural damage to the steel mill, as the factory happened to be non-operational at the time due to an electricity outage.
OBITUARY
EssilorLuxottica boss dies
Leonardo del Vecchio, the chairman of spectacles maker EssilorLuxottica and one of Italy’s wealthiest business figures, has died aged 87, Italian media reported yesterday. There was no immediate comment from his company, but a source confirmed the reports. The Italian businessman founded Luxottica in 1961 and built up a company which owns the Ray-Ban brand and combined forces with France’s Essilor in a major merger in 2018. His Delfin holding company is the largest shareholder in Italian financial services group Mediobanca SpA and has a stake of just under 10 percent in Italy’s largest insurer Generali SpA.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day