Aurelia Butler

“Vietnam demands Netflix comply with the Vietnamese regulations on game online services,” the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information (ABEI) said a statement on its website.”We order Netflix to stop advertising and publishing the Netflix’s video games on the Netflix application and on Appstore Vietnam and Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Play store Vietnam before April 25,” the statement added. The streaming platform, which has been ordered by the government several times to block domestic access to various content, is seeking to open an office in Vietnam, Reuters has reported. Netflix begun its push into gaming by launching Netflix games on mobile phones in November 2021. The company did not immediately reply to a request for comment. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday said recent industrial policy initiatives pursued by the United States, Europe and other countries to steer innovation in certain sectors were no panacea to boost economic growth.The IMF, in a chapter of its forthcoming Fiscal Monitor, said industrial policy could drive innovation if done well, but history was full of cautionary tales of policy mistakes, high fiscal costs and negative spillovers in other countries.Focusing mainly on subsidies and tax breaks posed risks, given high fiscal costs, the risk of capture by special interests and possible massive mis-allocation of resources, said Era Dabla-Norris, a deputy director of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department. Policies that discriminated against foreign firms could also trigger retaliation, entrenching geo-economic rifts.IMF officials, in the chapter, urged countries to adopt a broader mix of policies to support innovation, including public funding for fundamental research, R&D grants for innovative start-ups and tax incentives to encourage broader applied innovation.Boosting public spending on fundamental research by about 0.5 percentage point of gross domestic product annually could raise GDP by up to 2% and reduce a country’s debt-to-GDP ratio for an average advanced economy over the next eight years, the chapter said.The chapter cited recent industrial initiatives undertaken by various countries, including a U.S. measure to fund domestic research and semiconductor manufacturing, the European Union’s plan to support the bloc’s transition to climate neutrality, and steps being taken in Japan and South Korea, as well as longstanding policies in countries like China.Dabla-Norris said governments had shifted away from funding public R&D in recent decades while nearly tripling subsidies for private research, although the higher private-sector activity had not led to productivity gains.”If we want there to be more applied research, we need to ensure that tax incentives are … more accessible to large swathes of firms and not just restricted to large established firms that use these types of tax incentives to cement their market power and potentially stymie innovation done by other firms,” she said in an interview broadcast by the IMF. The IMF in January warned that overall growth in the global economy and trade remained well below the historical average, weighed down by thousands of fresh trade restrictions. The global lender will release an updated forecast on Tuesday.Dabla-Norris said the IMF would issue a separate report on fiscal approaches to artificial intelligence in May.She said less technologically advanced countries should focus more on policies that promoted the diffusion of technology developed elsewhere by investing in education, transportation infrastructure, and digital skills.”Closing the gap with advanced economies can actually lead to faster technology transfer, greater adoption of existing technologies, and also lead to a higher growth of about 2% over the medium term,” she said. More

(Reuters) – The Federal Reserve will wait until September before starting to cut interest rates, traders bet on Wednesday, after a government report showed inflation was stronger than expected last month for a third month in a row.    U.S. short-term interest-rate futures plunged after the report, which showed the core consumer price index rose 0.4% in March from February and was up 3.8% from a year earlier. The Fed targets 2% inflation, and traders bet the latest reading is too hot for central bankers to cut in June, as they had been expecting before the report, or even by the Fed’s late-July meeting. Traders are also betting the Fed will only cut rates twice this year, less than the three cuts they had been pricing in before and which Fed policymakers had signaled likely in March. More

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BEIJING (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs has raised its forecast for China’s year-on-year economic growth this year to 5.0% from 4.8% in November last year, the investment bank said in a note on Wednesday.It also raised the first-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast for the world’s second-biggest economy to 5.0% from 4.5% thanks to manufacturing strength, according to the note. More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.UK adults are increasingly reducing the amount they save and invest as price rises continue to weigh on household finances.The percentage of people in the UK who either stopped or reduced saving or investing as a result of the high cost of living rose to 44 per cent in January this year, compared with 40 per cent a year ago, according to a survey from the Financial Conduct Authority. The rate of inflation in the UK peaked at 11.1 per cent in October 2022 but has not yet come down to the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target. Despite wages increasing during this period, the rate of price rises has put fierce pressure on household finances.While the data from January shows improvements from a year ago, it is still worse than historic data, the FCA said. Some 14 per cent — equal to 7.4mn people — said they were struggling to pay bills and credit repayments in January, down from the 10.9mn a year before but far above the 5.8mn recorded in February 2020, before the cost of living began its sharp rise.The survey, which included answers from 3,450 UK adults questioned between December 2023 and January this year, showed nearly four-fifths of the population were spending less or working more to make ends meet, and just over half — 52 per cent — had reduced the amount of electricity or gas they used to save money.Despite this, just 3 per cent of respondents stopped or reduced their pension contributions to make ends meet, and only 2 per cent cashed in a pension fully or took out a lump sum to cover day-to-day expenses. Tom Selby, director of public policy at investment platform AJ Bell, said it was “encouraging” that the vast majority of people had chosen to keep saving for retirement. “While raiding your pension early might be tempting as living costs rise, taking out too much, too soon from your pot could risk you running out of money in later life and land you with a fat income tax bill to boot.” More