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.
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
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