FINANCE
BOJ to buy more bonds
The Bank of Japan (BOJ) said it would boost scheduled bond purchases as an intensifying sell-off of Treasuries puts upward pressure on global yields and weakens the yen. The BOJ said it would buy ￥550 billion (US$3.8 billion) of five to 10-year bonds at its regular operations, up from its scheduled purchase of ￥500 billion. The move comes as Japan’s benchmark 10-year yield hit 0.245 percent, approaching the 0.25 percent upper limit of the BOJ’s tolerated trading band. BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda has emphasized his determination to stick with rock-bottom interest rates.
COMMODITIES
Illegal gold mining surges
The sharp rise in gold prices has driven a surge of illegal mining in Brazil, much of it in the Amazon rainforest, a study published on Tuesday said. Gold output in Brazil, the world’s 14th-biggest producer last year, has soared since the COVID-19 pandemic pushed international prices to record highs. Of the 112 tonnes of gold produced in Brazil last year, at least 7 percent was illegal and 25 percent potentially illegal, the Federal University of Minas Gerais said.
STEEL
Storm shutters plants
A powerful storm that lashed South Korea’s southern coast earlier this week has left one of the country’s biggest steelworks shuttered, spurring concerns over the nation’s production. POSCO Holdings Inc, the country’s biggest steelmaker, as well as Hyundai Steel Co, suspended operations at their plants in Pohang after Super Typhoon Hinnamnor flooded facilities there, the companies said yesterday. POSCO views the power outage as a force majeure event, and plans to restart a flooded power substation in one or two days, it said.
METALS
Speira cuts aluminum output
Aluminum producer Speira GmbH is to cut output at its smelter in Germany by 50 percent in response to soaring energy costs. The plant is to reduce output of the key industrial metal to 70,000 tonnes a year until further notice, and is looking to source metal externally to feed its processing plants, it said. Europe’s aluminum and zinc production capacity has fallen by about 50 percent within the past year, and industry groups have warned of further closures over the winter months.
INTERNET
Group calls for oversight
An industry group for tech and telecom giants in India has urged the central government to control Internet shutdowns in the country to help avoid uncertainties stemming from states giving these orders, sources and a letter seen by Reuters showed. The current system “causes significant inconvenience to local public at large,” the Internet and Mobile Association of India — which represents Google, Twitter Inc, Facebook and Reliance Ltd among others — said in the letter.
PROPERTY
London leads UK price rise
UK house prices rebounded last month, led by the strongest growth in London in six years, mortgage lender Halifax said. The lender said its measure of property prices rose 0.4 percent after a 0.1 percent dip the month before, bringing the average cost of a home to a record ￡294,260 (US$338,136). The increase defied predictions that a cost-of-living crisis and rising mortgage costs would puncture the strength of the property market, which kept growing through the COVID-19 pandemic and last recession.
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
New vehicle sales in Taiwan plunged about 37 percent sequentially last month as the long Lunar New Year holiday and 228 Peace Memorial Day holiday cut short the number of working days, along with the lingering uncertainty over import tax cuts on US vehicles, market researcher U-Car said in a report yesterday. New car sales last month totaled 22,043, slumping from 35,073 units in January and down 19.89 percent from 37,515 in February last year, U-Car data showed. Sales of imported luxury cars, led by Mercedes-Benz, plummeted about 45 percent to 3,109 units last month from 5,663 units in the previous month,
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
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