UKRAINE
GDP drop largest in 30 years
GDP fell 30.4 percent last year — the largest annual fall in more than 30 years — because of the war with Russia, Minister of Economic Development and Trade Yulia Svyrydenko said yesterday. Svyrydenko, who is also first deputy prime minister, said in a statement that the economy had suffered its largest losses since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, although the fall was less than initially expected. The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade said Russian missile attacks on energy infrastructure continued to put pressure on business activity and sentiment. Ukraine’s GDP grew 3.4 percent in 2021.
UNITED KINGDOM
Sentiment remains sluggish
Business confidence is lingering near the lows it touched during the COVID-19 pandemic, as companies brace for falling profit during a recession this year, the British Chambers of Commerce said. The employers group said its quarterly survey of almost 6,000 companies, many of them small and medium-sized enterprises, showed that just one-third of them expected profits to increase this year, while 36 percent anticipated a decline. The group said business activity has not recovered since plummeting in the third quarter of last year, with 67 percent of firms reporting further declines or no change in the final three months of last year.
MALAYSIA
EV tax break may continue
The government is planning to extend tax breaks on electric vehicles (EV) in the federal budget due next month, as part of efforts to boost green mobility, Minister of Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change Nik Nazmi bin Nik Ahmad said. The country aims to install 10,000 electric vehicle charging points by 2025, up from 900 at present, as it transits to low-emission vehicles to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, the minister said at an event in Cyberjaya. “There will be a greater push from the government to ensure we reach the 10,000 target,” he said. The government is due to present its spending plan for this year in parliament on Feb. 24.
DEBT
HK sells US$5.8bn of bonds
Hong Kong sold US$5.8 billion of green bonds denominated in three currencies on Wednesday, as markets roared back to life amid a global rush of deals. The territory priced US$3 billion of sustainable US dollar bonds across four tenors, a 1.25 billion euros (US$1.33 billion) two-tranche note and a 10 billion offshore yuan (US$1.45 billion) portion, people familiar with the matter said. Investors sent in more than US$25 billion of bids for the US dollar notes, the people said. That has enabled the issuer to trim pricing on the bond, while it has also seen a strong reception to its new green notes in the other currencies.
UNITED STATES
Manufacturers report dip
Manufacturing activity contracted for a second straight month last month, remaining at the lowest levels since May 2020 as new orders and production slipped, survey data showed on Wednesday. The Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) manufacturing index dipped 0.6 points to 48.4 percent last month, firmly below the 50 percent threshold that indicates growth. The manufacturing purchasing managers index also remains at its lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic recovery began, ISM manufacturing survey head Timothy Fiore said in a statement.
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,
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
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
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