01/06/2026

BIZ & FINANCE MONDAY | JUNE 1, 2026

17

PARIS: Japanese tech investor SoftBank will spend €75 billion (RM347 billion) on artificial intelligence infrastructure in France, its founder Masayoshi Son told a French newspaper in an interview released on Saturday. “This will be the largest investment in Europe in infrastructure related to artificial intelligence: €75 billion in total,“ Son told La Tribune Dimanche weekly ahead of a French investment conference hosted by President Emmanuel Macron. He said it included €45 billion to be spent by 2031 on data centres in the Hauts-de-France region of northern France. Sri Lanka raises fuel prices after IMF loan instalment COLOMBO: Sri Lanka raised fuel prices by up to six per cent yesterday, in line with IMF plans to recover energy costs and phase out subsidies to stabilise the economy. Petrol was raised to 434 rupees (RM5.28), up from 410, while diesel increased to 407 rupees a litre from 392, the state-run Ceylon Petroleum Corporation said. The price hike came days after the International Monetary Fund released a US$695 million (RM2.7 billion) instalment of a US$2.9 billion bailout loan, agreed in early 2023 to stabilise the cash-strapped South Asian nation. The International Monetary Fund wants Sri Lanka to ensure cost recovery for both fuel and electricity tariffs, which have been subsidised by the government since the start of the conflict in the Middle East in February. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, in a letter to the International Monetary Fund made public by the Washington based international lender, said fuel subsidies will be phased out by September. Since the United States and Israel began attacking Iran on February 28, triggering a global energy crisis, Sri Lanka has raised petrol and diesel prices by about 48 per cent. Electricity has increased by a third. The Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway through which about 20 per cent of global oil exports pass in peacetime, has been effectively closed by Iran. Sri Lanka imports all its oil and also buys coal for electricity generation. Colombo has warned that the fighting in the Middle East, and any prolonged conflict, could seriously undermine its efforts to emerge from the economic meltdown of 2022. Sri Lanka defaulted on its US$46 billion foreign debt in 2022 after running out of foreign exchange. Since then, Colombo has been drawing down the IMF bailout loan to stabilise the country. – AFP

China factory activity stalls in May as demand weakens

o Input costs remain elevated even as raw material price gains slow

BEIJING: China’s factory activity stalled in May as new export orders contracted and input costs kept rising, an official survey showed yesterday, adding to concerns the world’s second-largest economy is losing momentum despite pockets of strength in services and high-tech manufacturing. The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) dropped to 50 from 50.3 in April, matching the forecast in a Reuters poll of economists and straddling the 50-mark separating growth from contraction, according to a survey by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). It was the lowest reading in three months and followed data earlier in May showing China’s growth momentum cooled in April despite a rebound in exports. Supply improved while demand weakened, as the sub-indexes for production and new orders came in at 51.2 and 49.9 in the manufacturing PMI survey. New export orders fell more sharply, dropping to 48.6 from 50.3 in April, heaping pressure on policymakers to reduce the

global demand for semiconductors and other AI-related goods have bolstered advanced manufacturing. High-tech and equipment manufacturing outperformed the overall sector in May, logging PMI readings of 52.9 and 52.1, NBS data showed. Activity in high-energy consuming industries, meanwhile, contracted. A summit between Chinese and U.S. leaders in Beijing in mid-May did not result in an extension of the trade truce the two governments reached late last year, although the two sides agreed to explore areas for tariff cuts on goods worth some $30 billion from each. The non-manufacturing PMI, which includes services and construction, rose to 50.1 from 49.4 in April, NBS data showed, helped by a surge in travel spending during the five-day May Day holiday. The services activity gauge improved to 50.3, its highest in nine months, suggesting Beijing’s push to expand the services sector may be gaining some traction as policymakers seek to offset sluggish demand for manufactured goods. – Reuters

strategic Strait of Hormuz, has sent energy prices surging, threatening to squeeze manufacturers’ profits as costs soar. The gauge for raw material prices in the manufacturing PMI survey came in at 60.5, down from 63.7 in April but still well above the 50-point mark, suggesting input costs continued to rise, albeit at a slower pace. “The purchase price index remained in expansionary territory, showing that raw material prices continued to rise, which also kept prices at the product end increasing,” Wen said. For Chinese manufacturers, external factors have had an uneven impact. The petrochemical sector and other upstream industries have borne the brunt of imported producer price inflation, but stockpiling by buyers concerned about further cost hikes as well as

economy’s reliance on overseas demand and strengthen domestic consumption. “The slowdown in foreign demand was particularly prominent ... mainly due to a marked contraction in the exports from the consumer goods manufacturing sector,” said Wen Tao, an analyst at the China Logistics Information Centre. Weakness in the property market, employment and consumer spending continues to dampen growth, leaving China reliant on global demand to absorb goods produced by its manufacturing sector. China’s government has vowed to address the supply-demand mismatch and has set a less ambitious GDP growth target for 2026, allowing more room for reforms. External pressures have added to the strain on manufacturers. The US-Israeli war with Iran, which started in late February and led to the effective closure of the

An employee works on the production line for Caltrate, a calcium supplement, at a Haleon factory in the China city of Suzhou. – REUTERSPIC

SoftBank to spend €75b on AI centres in France

and Amiens, he added. France says it has 35 venues ready to provide enough energy and other infrastructure for data centres. Macron has repeatedly said that Europe must not let the United States and China take an insurmountable lead in AI. Son said that “catching up with the United States, currently the global centre of gravity for innovation, is a challenge for most other countries”. Europe must, he added in the interview with Tribune, “find the right path” to reach a “balance” between innovation and regulation. – AFP

company has an 11 per cent stake in the OpenAI giant that runs the ChatGPT chatbot. The Japanese tycoon said he had also been impressed by Macron’s “strong personal commitment to ensuring France’s economic success, even though our investments have so far been concentrated primarily in the United States, and Japan and Asia”. Blum said that Schneider would take part in the design and supply of all the equipment with a factory to be built at the channel port of Dunkirk. The first three data centres would be at Dunkirk and near the northern cities of Cambrai

competition with other European nations. The French president is to host an international investment conference at Versailles palace this week. Son, 68, said his decision was made after meeting Macron during a visit to Tokyo in April and that France’s status as an energy exporter had played a key role. Data centres are huge consumers of energy. “The fact that the country is an energy producer and exporter is absolutely crucial for infrastructure investments in artificial intelligence, especially for data centres,“ said Son, whose

French electrics giant Schneider will be a partner in the huge project, its chief executive Olivier Blum told AFP. “This is a significant partnership, a major project, the largest ever undertaken in France” in the sector, said Blum. “Up to now, there is roughly 1.5 gigawatts of installed data centre capacity in France at the end of 2025, and what’s being announced now is that there will be an initial phase of 3.0 gigawatts followed by a second phase that could reach up to 5.0,“ he added. The announcement is a major boost to Macron’s efforts to attract hi-tech industries to France, in