MACROECONOMICS
War to have larger effect
The world economy would take a bigger hit than previously forecast next year due to the effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said yesterday. In a bleak report titled “Paying the price of war,” the Paris-based organization said that the conflict aggravated inflationary pressure when the cost of living was already rising quickly. Global growth stalled in the second quarter of this year and data in many economies “now point to an extended period of subdued growth,” the OECD said. The organization slashed its growth forecast for the global economy to 2.2 percent next year, down from 2.8 percent in its previous estimate in June.
HONG KONG
Flight bookings surge
Trip.com’s (攜程) Hong Kong Web site experienced a nearly 400 percent increase in outbound flight orders over the weekend compared with the previous weekend, the online travel agency said yesterday, after the territory eased virus travel restrictions, including doing away with the dreaded hotel quarantine. Most orders were for the National Day long weekend at the start of next month and Christmas, with short-haul travel in Asia proving popular. The average length of overseas hotel bookings for Hong Kong travelers is three to four days, Trip.com said. The top five flight destinations are Bangkok, Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore and Osaka, it said.
E-COMMERCE
Amazon to hold sales event
Amazon.com Inc is to hold a second Prime Day sale on Oct. 11 and 12 to boost sales among cost-conscious consumers who are expected to start their holiday shopping even earlier this year. This marks the first time the e-commerce giant has hosted the event twice in the same year. Amazon’s “Prime Early Access Sale” is to feature exclusive offers to Prime members in 15 countries. Amazon held a two-day Prime Day promotion in July that boosted online spending in the US by 8.5 percent to US$11.9 billion, Adobe Inc said. Amazon said it sold more than 300 million items over the two days.
TECHNOLOGY
Google shuns telecoms push
Alphabet Inc unit Google yesterday rebuffed a push by European telecoms to get big tech to help fund network costs, saying that it was a 10-year-old idea that was bad for consumers and that the company was already investing millions in Internet infrastructure. The comments by Matt Brittin, president of Europe, Middle East and Africa business and operations at Google, came as the European Commission said it would seek feedback from the telecoms and tech industries on the issue in the coming months before making any legislative proposal.
AUSTRALIA
RBA mulls digital currency
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is working to identify business models and uses for a central bank digital currency (CBDC), and is likely to conduct a pilot early next year. The project, which began in July, would help “further understanding of some of the technological, legal and regulatory considerations associated with a CBDC,” the RBA and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre said in a white paper yesterday. The findings would be published at the conclusion of the project by the middle of next year. The research implies no commitment from the RBA to issue a CBDC, it added.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
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
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
A new worry has been rippling across the stock market lately: Entire businesses, not just their employees, might be thrown out of work. While most economists say fears of an artificial intelligence (AI) job apocalypse are overblown, seismic shifts have happened in the past after big tech breakthroughs. The IT revolution of the 1990s led to a surge in productivity that sped up the US economy for several years. It also rendered companies or even industries largely redundant — from travel agents and stockbrokers to classified advertising and newspapers, or video rental stores. Economists expect AI would deliver higher productivity,
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