HONG KONG
Opening hinges on jabs
The territory’s full reopening to the outside world hinges on further boosting COVID-19 vaccination levels, Financial Secretary Paul Chan (陳茂波) wrote in a blog. It has been an extremely challenging balancing act to try to curb the COVID-19 pandemic and facilitate travel, while preserving the economy, Chan wrote in the blog post on Sunday. Just under 75 percent of the territory’s population aged 12 or older have received three doses of COVID-19 vaccines, the latest official data showed. Chan did not give a target for immunization levels before additional reopening could occur.
TURKEY
Account deficit widens
The current-account deficit widened more than expected, driven by higher energy prices. The gap was US$4.01 billion in July, widening US$3.7 billion from a year earlier, the central bank said on its Web site yesterday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of nine analysts was for a US$3.7 billion shortfall in July. The country’s current-account deficit is expected to reach 5.9 percent of its GDP this year, fueled by an estimated trade deficit of US$105 billion due to a rally in energy prices, economists said.
DENMARK
CPI near four-decade high
Inflation reached the highest level in almost four decades, as prices for food and energy soared, threatening to halt economic growth in the Nordic economy. The consumer price index (CPI) jumped 8.9 percent last month from a year earlier, the fastest pace since early 1983, Copenhagen-based Statistics Denmark said yesterday. That is up from 8.7 percent in July. Core inflation, which excludes the effects of energy, rose to 6 percent from 5.5 percent the month before.
ENERGY
Widodo eyes Russian oil
Indonesian President Joko Widodo is considering joining India and China in buying Russian oil to offset increasing pressure of rising energy costs, the Financial Times reported yesterday. “We always monitor all of the options. If there is the country [and] they give a better price, of course,” Widodo said in an interview with the paper when he was asked whether Indonesia would buy oil from Russia. Any move to purchase Russian crude at prices above the cap agreed by G7 countries could subject Indonesia to US sanctions.
TOURISM
UAE revenue tops US$5bn
The United Arab Emirates’ tourism revenue surpassed US$5 billion in the first half of this year, while hotel occupancy was up more than 40 percent year-on-year, Prime Minister and Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said on Sunday in Abu Dhabi. “Our tourism sector’s revenues surpassed 19 billion dirhams [US$5.2 billion] in the first half of 2022,” he said. “The total number of hotel guests reached 12 million, achieving 42 percent growth, and we expect a strong tourism performance in this winter season.”
AUTOMAKERS
Nissan to extend suspension
Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co is to extend its suspension of an assembly plant in St Petersburg, Russia, for three months until late December, it said yesterday. The plant, which was idled in March after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was originally set to resume late this month. The Nissan plant suspension was extended because of continuing difficulties obtaining parts from Europe and Japan, the Nikkei Shimbun reported.
The US dollar on Friday rose against the euro, but pared gains late in a session that was muddied by quarter-end trading, while riskier commodity-led currencies fell sharply after European inflation hit a record high and US consumer spending increased faster than expected. Although the dollar index was showing its biggest quarterly gain since the first quarter 2015, but was registered its first weekly decline in three weeks. Sterling rose against the dollar after falling earlier in the day. The pound last showed four straight sessions of gains followed by wild declines on concerns about Britain’s plan to slash taxes and pay
SAMSUNG DISTANT SECOND: Top local chip fims served nearly two-thirds of the global market in Q2, while Samsung kept South Korea competitive with its 16.5 percent share Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remained the world’s largest contract chipmaker in the second quarter of the year with a 53.4 percent share of the global pure-play foundry market, the Taipei-based market information advisory firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a research report on Tuesday. Despite TSMC’s market share dipping slightly from 53.6 percent in the first quarter, it was still far ahead of its rivals, TrendForce said. TSMC continued to benefit from emerging technologies, such as high-performance computing devices, the Internet of Things and automotive electronics, as it posted US$18.15 billion in sales in the second quarter, up 3.5 percent
Moderna Inc has refused to hand over to China the core intellectual property behind the development of its COVID-19 vaccine, leading to a collapse in negotiations on its sale in the country, the Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical company turned down China’s request to disclose the formula for its mRNA vaccine because of commercial and safety concerns, the newspaper said, citing people involved in negotiations that took place from 2020 to last year, adding that the vaccine maker is still “eager” to sell the product to China. The company had “given up”
GLOBAL EXPANSION: The Taichung bank is expected to complete the takeover of the Los Angeles-based lender in the spring, in a transaction valued at US$82.1 million Taichung Commercial Bank (TCB, 台中商銀) on Saturday said that its board of directors has approved a plan to acquire California-based American Continental Bank as part of an effort to expand its global reach. Pending regulatory approvals, TCB said it would create a subsidiary to acquire American Continental Bancorp, the holding company of American Continental Bank, through a reverse triangular merger. That would allow the Taiwanese bank to hold a 100 percent stake in American Continental Bancorp, it said. TCB said it plans to acquire the US bank at US$41.48 per share, but the actual cash consideration would be determined at the deal’s close. The
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