Wed, Jun 28, 2023 page10

• World Business Quick Take

  • Agencies
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  THAILAND

  Forex rules to be relaxed

  The country plans to ease foreign exchange rules for domestic companies and individuals to help them shore up their risk management. The Bank of Thailand aims to promote the use of the local currency among local businesses and cut their reliance on US dollars by transacting more in currencies such as the yuan, yen, ringgit and rupiah, Alisara Mahasandana, assistant governor for the Bank of Thailand’s financial markets operations group, said yesterday. The central bank would raise the limit on grant money transfer — without underlying transactions — to US$200,000 from US$50,000, Alisara said. It would also double the threshold on direct overseas investment in equities for individuals to US$10 million annually from US$5 million, she said.

  NEW ZEALAND

  Second recession forecast

  The nation could emerge from recession this quarter but it would quickly stumble into another one, said economists at three of the nation’s biggest banks, who predict a second recession beginning later this year. “Economic momentum has ground to a halt,” said Mike Jones, chief economist at Bank of New Zealand in Wellington. “It looks as if this broad state of affairs will be with us until at least the end of the year.” The Bank of New Zealand now expects the economy to contract in the final quarter of this year and the first quarter of next year.

  CONGLOMERATES

  Cheng family to buy out NWS

  Hong Kong’s billionaire Cheng (鄭) family is offering to buy the NWS Holdings Ltd (新創建集團) shares that it does not own and take the company private in a HK$35.5 billion (US$4.5 billion) deal. Chow Tai Fook Enterprises Ltd (周大福集團), the property dynasty’s investment holdings flagship, made an offer of HK$9.15 per share, the Hong Kong stock exchange said in a statement yesterday. The offer is a 14.5 percent premium over the last closing price. New World Development Co (新世界發展), which holds 2.38 billion NWS shares, would receive about HK$21.8 billion from the disposal, the statement said.

  TECHNOLOGY

  Baidu says it beats ChatGPT

  Baidu Inc’s (百度) ChatGPT-style service has outperformed OpenAI’s seminal product on several measures, China’s search leader said yesterday. Ernie 3.5, the latest iteration of Baidu’s foundation model, has surpassed OpenAI’s chatbot built on GPT-3.5 in general abilities, and outperformed the more advanced GPT-4 on several Chinese-language capabilities, the company said in a statement. It cited a test by state newspaper China Science Daily, based on datasets including AGIEval and C-Eval, benchmarks designed for evaluating such AI models. The Beijing-based search provider debuted Ernie Bot in March.

  ENERGY

  Ugandans sue TotalEnergies

  Twenty-six Ugandans yesterday sued French oil giant TotalEnergies SE in Paris for reparations over alleged human rights violations at its massive megaprojects in the country. Joined by five Ugandan and French aid groups, people from the affected communities said that the energy firm caused “serious harm,” especially to their rights to land and food. At the heart of their complaint are two vast TotalEnergies developments: the Tilenga exploration of 419 oil wells, one-third of them in Uganda’s largest national park, Murchison Falls, and the East African Crude Oil Pipeline project, a 1,500km pipeline taking crude oil to the Tanzanian coast through protected nature reserves.
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