JAPAN
Output rises for fifth month
Manufacturing activity this month expanded for a fifth consecutive month, while services continued to shrink amid measures to contain COVID-19. The au Jibun Bank’s purchasing managers index (PMI) for activity in the manufacturing sector fell 1.5 points to 51.5, while its measure of service sector activity gained 0.7 points to 47.2. Numbers above 50 indicate an expansion, while those below signal a contraction. Despite this month’s improvement, the services PMI has shown shrinking activity every month since February last year.
SINGAPORE
Rich to soar 60% by 2025
The city-state’s count of millionaires could increase by more than 60 percent over the five years from last year to 2025, Credit Suisse Group AG said, part of a surge in millionaires expected in Asia as financial capitals emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. The city-state might have 437,000 millionaires by 2025, up from 270,000 last year, the bank’s 2021 Global Wealth Report said. The 62 percent pace would be faster than Hong Kong’s estimated 60 percent for the same period, but slower than the growth forecast in Taiwan, Australia, China, India and South Korea.
ITALY
PM eyes long-lasting growth
The country needs an EU-wide expansionary fiscal policy to achieve long-lasting growth after the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Mario Draghi told the lower house of parliament yesterday ahead of an EU leaders meeting. “Our aim is to overcome in a long-lasting and sustainable way the low growth rates Italy reported before the pandemic,” Draghi told the Chamber of Deputies. As his government is lifting most of the curbs imposed to contain COVID-19 infections, Draghi said that the spread of new, dangerous variants has to be carefully monitored. “They could slow down the reopening program, and hamper internal demand and investments,” he said.
SWEDEN
GDP growth revised upward
The country’s economy this year is to grow substantially faster than previously expected, as it recovers from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government said yesterday. GDP this year is expected to expand 4.7 percent, up from 3.2 percent growth predicted in a forecast made in April, the government said in a statement. Next year, growth is expected to slow to 2.9 percent, compared with a previous forecast of 3.8 percent growth, as a result of the quicker recovery this year. The hit to the country’s economy from the pandemic turned out to be milder than first feared last year, when GDP shrank 2.8 percent.
INTERNET
Google retools remote work
Google on Tuesday unveiled a platform that lets its workers calculate pay and benefits for remote work, and how this would change if they move to a cheaper — or more expensive — city. With the company’s new hybrid workplace, “more employees are considering where they live and how they work,” a Google spokesperson said in response to a media inquiry. The new Work Location Tool shows workers how their compensation would be adjusted depending on their location, as pay is based on costs of living in places and tuned to local job markets. Google, which employs about 140,000 people worldwide, expects that in the post-pandemic work model 20 percent of its employees are to work from home, the spokesperson said.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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