AUSTRALIA
Retail sales decline
Australian retail sales last month declined for the first time this year, suggesting that households are beginning to feel the strain of faster inflation and rising interest rates. Sales dropped 0.2 percent from September, confounding estimates for a 0.5 percent gain, Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed. “The October fall in retail turnover ends a run of nine straight monthly rises and suggests increased cost-of-living pressures including interest rate rises have started to weigh on consumer spending,” Australian Bureau of Statistics head of retail statistics Ben Dorber said, adding that the reemergence of overseas travel further threatens to shift spending abroad. The country’s department stores had the largest fall, down 2.4 percent, followed by clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailing, down 0.6 percent, while food retailing rose 0.4 percent, the data showed.
PHILIPPINES
Debt-to-GDP ratio falls
The Philippines expects the government’s debt-to-GDP ratio to decline to about 50 percent by 2028 due to strong economic growth, Secretary of Finance Benjamin Diokno said. The ratio climbed to 62 percent this year from lower than 40 percent before the COVID-19 pandemic, as revenue fell while pandemic-related spending rose, Diokno said on Saturday. Debt is sustainable as long as the economy expands faster than the increase in public debt, he said. “After a likely over 7 percent growth in 2022, yes, we may slow down, given still-elevated external headwinds and internal challenges, but the economy will remain comparatively strong in 2023,” National Economic and Development Authority Secretary Arsenio Balisacan wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
SOUTH KOREA
Truckers continue to strike
South Korea failed to reach agreement with a striking truckers’ union in the first session of talks yesterday, the fifth day of a nationwide walkout, the union said, as supply chain glitches worsen and concrete runs out at building sites. The government, which estimates daily losses at about 300 billion won (US$224 million) as supplies of cement and fuel for gas stations run short, raised its warning of cargo transport disruption to the highest level. The lack of a resolution for the second major strike in less than six months by thousands of truckers demanding better pay and working conditions makes it more likely that the government would legally compel the strikers to return to work. The Cargo Truckers Solidarity Union said the next round of talks had been set for Wednesday.
ENERGY
Global crude prices tumble
Oil prices yesterday tumbled to the lowest level since December last year, as a wave of unrest in China punished risk assets and clouded the outlook for energy demand, adding to stresses in an already-fragile global crude market. West Texas Intermediate sank toward US$74 a barrel following three weeks of losses. “Sentiment in the oil market remains negative, and developments over the weekend in China will certainly not help,” ING Groep NV commodities strategist Warren Patterson said. Aside from China, traders were assessing a US move to grant Chevron Corp a license to resume oil production in Venezuela after sanctions had halted all drilling activities three years ago.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained