South Africa is expected to end its longest run of quarterly growth in nearly a decade as Q2 GDP likely contracted 0.1% QoQ, versus a 0.5% expansion in Q1, the median of a 14-economist survey showed. The decline reflects the Iran war that began Feb. 28 — whose initial effects only partly showed in Q1 but fully hit Q2 — lifting Brent and agricultural input prices and constraining traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a route for about one-fifth of seaborne oil and LNG. Retail sales rose only 0.4%

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued its information and communications “15th Five-Year” development plan, directing stepped-up core technology R&D. It mandates accelerated 6G core R&D and continued 6G trials; expanded R&D in ultra‑high‑speed, large‑capacity optical transmission, optical access and submarine‑cable optical systems; fast‑tracking new fiber technologies including hollow‑core fiber and their deployment; industry convergence work on vehicular optical communications and industrial‑control optical networks; data‑communications innovation to tackle IP wide‑area lossless transmission and flow‑level load balancing; R&D of compute‑transmission channels that sense compute and network resources; key satellite‑communications work on efficient space‑to‑ground transmission, inter‑satellite networking and routing; and accelerated frontier deployment in optoelectronic fusion and integration of quantum encryption with information and communication networks.

德賽電池：子公司湖南電池儲能電芯目前處於滿產狀態。