Australia’s latest floods disaster will have a minimal economic impact nationally despite some damage to rail lines, mines and crops in certain areas, Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan said yesterday.
In recent weeks record floods have swamped large areas of New South Wales and Queensland, prompting fears of a repeat of last year’s floods, which put a significant dent in Australia’s GDP for the financial year to June last year.
“Despite the terrible impact on affected communities, we’re not expecting the flooding to have a significant impact on the national economy at this stage,” Swan wrote in a regular economic note.
“While the heavy rainfall has resulted in the temporary closure of several rail lines and caused disruption to some coal mines, it hasn’t caused any significant disruptions to major coal mining operations in the Bowen Basin or the Hunter Valley,” he wrote. “And while some crops are likely to be affected by the damage to farm land, Treasury advises the impact on the supply and prices of fresh produce is not expected to be great.”
Swan said Australia’s economy continued to do well, forecasting output in the key resources sector would increase by about 77 percent by 2020.
The floods forced thousands of people from their homes and killed one person.
On Saturday, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard toured the flood-hit town of St George in Queensland, where she said A$1.9 billion (US$2 billion) of funding had been released to the state government in recent days to help it combat the latest disaster.
However, Swan said Australia’s economy, buoyed by demand from China for iron ore and coal, is feeling the impact of a global slowdown as employers defer hiring new workers on European uncertainty.
While Australia can still expect “solid growth,” the global environment and gains in the nation’s currency will affect non-mining sectors such as manufacturing, he said.
“We shouldn’t pretend that there’s a simple solution,” Swan said. “The affected businesses will need to do more to adapt, to improve their efficiency, to spot new opportunities, to find new markets and to design new products.”
The Reserve Bank of Australia sees average growth of 3.5 percent this year, down from last year’s Nov. 4 estimate of 4 percent. Consumer prices will rise 3 percent in the year through to the fourth quarter, less than a previous prediction of 3.25 percent, the central bank said on Friday.
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
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) share of the global foundry market rose to almost 70 percent last year amid booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI), market information advisory firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Thursday. The contract chipmaker posted US$122.54 billion in revenue, up 36.1 percent from a year earlier, accounting for 69.9 percent of the global market, TrendForce said. Its share was up from 64.4 percent in 2024, it said. TSMC’s closest rival, Samsung Electronics, was a distant second, posting US$12.63 billion in sales, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, for a 7.2 percent share of the global market. In the
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
At a massive shipyard in North Vancouver, Canadian workers grind metal beams for a powerful new icebreaker crucial to cementing the country’s presence in the increasingly contested arctic. Icebreakers are specialized, expensive vessels able to navigate in the frozen far north. And “this is the crown jewel,” said Eddie Schehr, vice president of production at the Seaspan shipyard. For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who heads to Norway next Friday to observe arctic defense drills involving troops from 14 NATO states, Canada’s extreme north has emerged as a strategic priority. “Canada is and forever will be an Arctic nation,” he said ahead of
RSS