SG Morning Highlights: Singapore launches online marketplace for infrastructure projects

Advancers / Decliners is 40 to 56, with 36.65 million securities worth S$68.04 million changing hands.

An online portal that links up governments, developers and financiers has been launched by Infrastructure Asia, a government facilitation office set up by Enterprise Singapore and the Monetary Authority of Singapore to support infrastructure development.

Announcing its launch at the Asia Infrastructure Forum on Tuesday (Aug 2), Second Minister for Finance Indranee Rajah said the portal will serve as a marketplace to connect various parties interested to develop infrastructure projects in Asia and also to improve the visibility of the region’s infrastructure project pipeline.

Lavan Thiru, executive director of Infrastructure Asia, said there are about a dozen projects on the portal, worth a total of S$4 billion.

A 12th monkeypox case was detected in Singapore on Monday (Aug 1).

The man, 59, is a local unlinked case with no recent travel history, said the Ministry of Health on its website on Tuesday (Aug 2) evening.

He is the seventh local unlinked case.

India, one of the biggest exporters of diesel in Asia, halved levies to boost shipments after the trade gap swelled to a record last month.

The government on Tuesday (Aug 2) cut export taxes on diesel to 5 rupees (S$0.09) a litre from 11 rupees, apart from slashing levies on jet fuel to zero. This is the second decrease since the tariffs were imposed on Jul 1.

The measures come hours after data showed India's trade deficit ballooned to a record high in July, as elevated commodity prices and a weak rupee inflated the country's import bill.

Gold hit a 4-week high on Tuesday (Aug 2), as a weaker dollar and a dip in US Treasury yields boosted demand for the safe-haven metal amid mounting worries over an economic slowdown.

Spot gold was up 0.4 per cent at US$1,778.69 per ounce, as of 12.44 am GMT, its highest since Jul 5.

US gold futures gained 0.2 per cent to US$1,791.10 per ounce.

New Zealand house prices fell the most since the global financial crisis in the 3 months through July as soaring interest rates curbed buyer demand.

Prices fell 2.5 per cent, the biggest 3-month decline since October 2008 when the economy was in the grip of the GFC-driven recession, CoreLogic New Zealand said on Wednesday (Aug 3) in Wellington. Prices fell for a fourth consecutive month, easing 0.9 per cent from June, and rose 9.5 per cent from a year ago - the slowest annual increase since November 2020.

Net profit for the 3 months ended Jun 30, 2022 stood at S$1.48 billion, compared with S$1.16 billion last year.

Net interest income for the quarter gained 16 per cent to a new high of S$1.7 billion, on the back of asset growth and margin expansion. Net interest margin rose 13 basis points to 1.71 per cent for the quarter, from 1.58 per cent from a year ago, as asset yields outpaced higher funding costs amid a rapidly rising interest rate environment, said OCBC.

During the half-year period, the REIT's distributable income increased by 6.3% y-o-y to $330.7 million. The amount was split among a higher base of 4.20 billion applicable units in the REIT, 3.5% higher y-o-y.

Singtel has a 35 per cent stake in Telkomsel, an Indonesian telecommunications operator. Mitratel is a subsidiary of PT Telkom Indonesia, which provides and manages telecommunication towers. It has managed nearly 35,000 telecommunication towers across Indonesia.

Revenue for the quarter rose to S$515.3 million, up from S$340.2 million a year ago, the company said in a business update. BRC's order book was about S$1.1 billion as of end-June.

The company's net profit for the 9 months ended Jun 30 stood at S$60.2 million, more than double the S$29.3 million the year before. Its revenue for the same period rose to S$1.3 billion from S$832.9 million year on year.

In a bourse filing on Tuesday (Aug 2), the mainboard-listed company said that net profit for the 6-month period rose to S$12.1 million from S$10.8 million in the year ago period. Earnings per share improved from S$0.0082 to S$0.0092.

The board declared an interim cash dividend of S$0.015 per share, up from S$0.007 per share in the year-ago period. The dividend will be paid on Aug 22.