South Korea is considering lowering this year’s economic growth forecast to reflect sluggish performance by the semiconductor industry, Yonhap News Agency said.
The South Korean government might cut its projection to 1.4 to 1.5 percent from 1.6 percent, Yonhap reported, citing unidentified officials. from the South Korean Ministry of Finance.
South Korea has not announced when it would release its economic policy direction for the second half of the year or its detailed contents, the finance ministry said in an e-mailed statement about the Yonhap report.
Photo: AFP
Last month, the Bank of Korea revised down its forecast for the year to 1.4 percent from 1.6 percent in February.
Bank of Korea Governor Rhee Chang-yong cited a downturn in the chip industry, which he said would bottom out in the fourth quarter.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Korea Development Institute, a state-funded think tank, predict growth of 1.5 percent for this year.
Meanwhile, South Korean airlines are temporarily suspending some flights to China as demand withers amid strained relations between the two countries, Yonhap reported.
Korean Air Lines Co will halt its Gimpo-Beijing route from Aug. 1 through Oct. 28, Yonhap reported on Saturday, citing unidentified industry sources.
The airline is also suspending flights to and from Gimpo to China’s Xiamen starting on Aug. 9 through Oct. 28, Yonhap said.
Asiana Airlines Inc will temporarily stop flights between Gimpo and Beijing from July 6, and suspend the Incheon to China’s Shenzhen service starting July 8, the report said.
Asiana’s flights between Incheon and Xian in China have been halted since June 20, Yonhap said.
All the flights are to resume on Oct. 28, Yonhap said.
Relations between Seoul and Beijing have soured since the South Korean government denounced China for committing a “serious diplomatic discourtesy” after a Chinese official said recent comments by South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Taiwan amounted to verbal meddling, Yonhap reported.
Ties between the two countries have never fully recovered after China opposed the US deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile defense system about six years ago.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS