ENERGY
Ghana mulls gold for oil
Ghana’s government is working on a new policy to buy oil products with gold rather than US dollar reserves, Ghanian Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia wrote on Facebook on Thursday. The move is meant to tackle dwindling foreign currency reserves, coupled with demand for US dollars by oil importers, which is weakening the local currency and increasing living costs. Ghana’s gross international reserves stood at about US$6.6 billion at the end of September, equating to less than three months of imports cover. That is down from about US$9.7 billion at the end of last year, the government said. If implemented as planned for the first quarter of next year, the new policy “will fundamentally change our balance of payments and significantly reduce the persistent depreciation of our currency,” Bawumia said.
JAPAN
Tokyo inflation acceleratesl
Tokyo’s inflation picked up more speed to hit its fastest pace in 40 years, the Ministry of Internal Affairs said yesterday, an acceleration that suggests nationwide price growth would also quicken this month. Consumer prices excluding fresh food rose 3.6 percent in the capital this month, driven by further gains in processed food prices, the ministry said. That was the highest reading since April 1982 and outpaced a 3.5 percent forecast by analysts. The accelerating pace of inflation raises doubts over Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s view that the current cost-push inflation is only temporary. The figures showed that processed food prices rose 6.7 percent this month, contributing about 1.4 percentage points of overall inflation to outstrip the impact of energy.
MACROECONOMY
IIF sees weak global GDP
The world economy would be as weak next year as it was in 2009 after the financial crisis, as the conflict in Ukraine risks becoming a “forever war,” the Institute of International Finance (IIF) said. Global growth is expected to slow to 1.2 percent next year, economists including Robin Brooks and Jonathan Fortun wrote in a note on Thursday. When adjusted for base effects, that is as weak as it was in 2009. “The severity of the coming hit to global GDP depends principally on the trajectory of the war in Ukraine,” the analysts wrote. “Our base case is that fighting drags on into 2024, given that the conflict is ‘existential’ for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.” The slowdown would be led by Europe, which is affected most by the war, the institute said. The eurozone economy would shrink by 2 percent following sharp declines in consumer and business confidence, it said.
PROPERTY
PBOC to offer cheap loans
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) is to offer cheap loans to financial firms to buy bonds issued by property developers, four people with direct knowledge of the matter said, the strongest policy support yet for the crisis-hit sector. The Chinese central bank hopes the loans would boost market sentiment toward the heavily indebted property sector, which has lurched from crisis to crisis over the past year, and rescue a number of private developers, the people said. Many developers defaulted on their debt obligations and were forced to halt construction. The nation’s biggest banks this week pledged at least US$162 billion in credit to developers. The PBOC loans are expected to be at much lower than the benchmark interest rate and would be implemented in the coming weeks, giving financial institutions more incentive to invest in private developers’ onshore bonds, two sources said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the