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Future Foods Opens New Revenue Opportunities for Restaurant Operators

Born out of the Kitchens business, Future Foods was created to help restaurant operators generate additional revenue through virtual delivery brands. Today, it is the largest virtual brand company in the restaurant space, with more than 1,500 live locations.

The Future Foods model allows restaurants to launch established delivery brands from their existing kitchens without investing in another location or major infrastructure. With their existing kitchens, operators can optimise food costs, reach more customers and increase delivery sales.

Future Foods also provides support with storefront setup, delivery platform integration, marketing and operations, allowing restaurant teams to focus on preparing great food while strengthening their delivery business.

Restaurant partners can choose from a portfolio of nationally recognised brands across a range of cuisines, including Pasta Glory, Brooklyn Calzones, Sunny & Fine’s, Poke Picnic and Brekkie Bagels, fulfilling customer demand in the market.

Picnic Brings a Simpler Workplace Dining Experience

Alongside Future Foods, NAMAA has introduced Picnic, a workplace dining platform built around the idea of “food at work, simplified.” By combining CloudKitchens with local brick-and-mortar restaurants, Picnic gives employees a wide variety of lunch options through a digital food court experience.

Orders are delivered to a designated Picnic shelf on each office floor within a 20 to 30-minute delivery window, making lunchtime easier while reducing the need to manage individual food deliveries.

Picnic also offers a more cost-effective approach to workplace dining. With no delivery fees, tips, administrative charges, nor minimum order requirements, both employers and employees benefit from greater convenience at no extra cost.

The platform offers flexible corporate solutions, including subsidised lunch programmes, non-subsidised daily deliveries, group ordering and fee-free catering for larger corporate events, allowing businesses to tailor to their employees’ needs.

Together, Future Foods and Picnic reflect NAMAA’s commitment to supporting restaurant growth while making workplace dining easier. As food delivery continues to evolve across the Middle East, both platforms give restaurants, businesses and consumers more flexibility and choice.

Hashtag: #NAMAA

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About NAMAA

NAMAA is a leader in driving the growth of digital food solutions, quick commerce, and the underlying real estate foundations. The founding members have been laying the groundwork since 2019, guided by a philosophy centred on developing infrastructures that give consumers fast and dependable access to meals, groceries, and essentials. Part of the wider ATOMS Group, the company has since grown into a multi-sector network with operations spanning the Middle East.

The Hangzhou-based AI developer released Ascend versions of several key components on September 30, including its DeepGEMM matrix-multiplication library and DeepEP communications software. The projects are designed to work with Huawei’s Ascend processors while keeping public interfaces aligned with versions built around Nvidia hardware, reducing the amount of code developers may need to rewrite when moving workloads.

That portability targets a critical part of Nvidia’s competitive advantage. Nvidia’s CUDA software platform has become deeply embedded in AI development, giving programmers mature libraries, tools and optimisation techniques built over years. Competing chips therefore have to overcome not only differences in raw computing performance but also the cost and complexity of shifting software away from CUDA.

DeepSeek’s DeepJIT project takes a further step by providing a shared runtime interface for Nvidia CUDA graphics processors and Huawei Ascend neural-processing units. It handles compilation, caching, loading and launching of specialised AI kernels while retaining backend-specific code where necessary. The approach does not make the two architectures interchangeable, but it can reduce friction for developers maintaining software for both.

DeepGEMM-Ascend is fully API-compatible with DeepSeek’s original DeepGEMM package and supports BF16, FP8 and FP4 calculations used in demanding AI workloads. DeepSeek says the library uses Ascend-specific optimisation methods to approach the hardware’s performance limits while shielding programmers from lower-level complexities including memory layouts, alignment constraints and address calculations.

Its DeepEP-Ascend library similarly aligns its public buffer interfaces with the Nvidia version while using Huawei’s communications technologies underneath. DeepSeek has also added Ascend support to DeepSelect, a specialised component used for sparse-attention and sampling operations, and released Ascend sparse-attention kernels for its model infrastructure.

Huawei, meanwhile, has been opening more of the software surrounding Ascend. Its CANN platform — the company’s counterpart to the programming infrastructure required to exploit AI accelerators — supports frameworks including PyTorch and works with open-source projects such as Triton, vLLM and veRL.

Huawei said last month that CANN had moved to sustained community-driven open-source development, with external programmers accounting for 61 per cent of its CANN developers. The company said the community had more than 5,200 monthly active developers, while more than 40 models had been natively pre-trained using Ascend and CANN.

The combination matters because China’s challenge to Nvidia has increasingly shifted from producing an alternative accelerator to assembling a usable full computing stack. Hardware can win orders only if model developers can train and run workloads efficiently without sacrificing too much engineering time or performance.

DeepSeek’s software also gives Huawei an influential independent developer helping test and improve that stack. The AI laboratory became prominent for building capable models with an emphasis on computational efficiency, and its infrastructure code is closely watched by developers seeking lower-cost approaches to training and inference.

The effort comes as US export controls continue to restrict China’s access to Nvidia’s most advanced processors, creating stronger incentives for technology groups to adopt domestic alternatives. Those restrictions have helped expand the strategic importance of Huawei’s Ascend line, even though China still faces constraints in advanced semiconductor manufacturing.

Nvidia nevertheless retains formidable advantages. CUDA has a vast installed developer base and an extensive collection of mature libraries, while Nvidia’s leading accelerators remain central to major AI training systems outside China. Compatibility layers and open-source libraries also require sustained testing, documentation and optimisation before they can match the reliability of an established platform across diverse workloads.

Richard Yu joined Huawei in 1993, working on early developments like the first-generation program-controlled switch and participating in the establishment of Huawei’s wireless communications business, which started with GSM. Over the past decade, Yu has led Huawei’s consumer business with the vision to deliver a seamless AI life experience to all consumers across five key scenarios: HIMA-powered Smart Travel, HarmonyOS Office, Smart Home, Fitness & Health, and Entertainment, which he said is also the long-term strategy for Huawei’s consumer business over the next 10 years.

Between 2007 and 2025, Huawei invested more than CNY1.8 trillion into R&D shifting from roughly 10% of annual revenue in early years to over 20% recently. Huawei has continued to increase investment into the core technologies of the ICT domain and basic research, which has translated into robust core capabilities, extensive intellectual property, and a vast patent portfolio, and helped with achieving a series of breakthroughs in technological innovation.

The Mate 90 series smartphones Huawei just launched come with the latest Kirin 9050 Pro chip. The overall device performance is 31% higher than the previous generation. The Balong modem, image sensor processor (ISP), mobile security processor (MSP), Lingxi CPU, Maleoon GPU, and the NPU that adopts Huawei’s Da Vinci architecture for AI processing are all designed by Huawei. They offer higher energy efficiency and deliver much-improved overall system-level performance.

Even though Yu admitted that Huawei has limited access to advanced semiconductor processes, Huawei recently made a new breakthrough in the semiconductor domain – the LogicFolding technology under the Tau Scaling Law. Unveiled by He Tingbo, head of Huawei’s Semiconductor Business Department this May, this technology vertically stacks the logic layers of chips and restructures the circuit layout through inter-layer high-density interconnect to shorten critical paths and reduce latency. This technology was adopted on Kirin 9050 Pro chip, which shows very strong AI processing power. The Mate 90 series powered by this chip can run a 30B MoE on-device AI model.

In the AI domain, Yu talked about the Ascend compute foundation that Huawei provides, by remarking Huawei’s large models called openPangu, AI capabilities for intelligent driving, and HarmonyOS Celia, which is similar to Gemini in the Google Android ecosystem. Huawei is also using AI to improve the O&M of communications network equipment. By combining AI computing power with domestic open-source large models, Huawei’s vision is to help enterprises and industries around the world to become more productive and bringing more convenience to everyone.

In the past years, Huawei has launched a broad series of products and solutions, including smartphones, PCs, tablets, wearables, TWS audio products, Smart TVs, home routers, smart home control solutions, as well as intelligent electric vehicles together with partners. Underlying these products and solutions are Huawei’s chip hardware platform and HarmonyOS – another OS ecosystem after iOS from Apple and Android from Google that Huawei developed to support all the smart devices and smart hardware across all scenarios.

Development of HarmonyOS began in 2019. Before that, Huawei was a major contributor to the Android community as well as the entire Android ecosystem. Now, more than 90 million devices, including smartphones, PCs, and tablets, currently run on HarmonyOS 6 and HarmonyOS 7. This figure is expected to hit the 100 million mark by the end of this year. The number of apps and services in the HarmonyOS ecosystem has already exceeded 450,000. Its global registered developer count has reached 11 million, and Huawei now has over 23,000 app innovation partners. Expressing his special thanks to all partners and developers for their trust and support, Yu also pointed out that Huawei is considering gradually bringing HarmonyOS to the global market in the future.

Globalization is another topic of the conversation. Yu mentioned that Huawei had very good collaboration with many companies from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, delivering huge business value and benefits to those partners. When it comes to the difficulties that Huawei overcame since 2019, Yu said that relying on homegrown technologies and capabilities, Huawei gradually designed its own operating system and developed basic tools and software by themselves, putting a domestic supply chain in place. In 2023, Huawei started to manufacture the chips used by smartphones domestically again. With these chips and HarmonyOS, and by relying on China’s domestic supply chain, materials, and process nodes, Huawei has basically gotten rid of the dependence on US technologies.

While Huawei’s global market share was once No. 1, nowadays it only sells several million units of smartphones outside China every year. However, Yu revealed that Huawei is trying to return to the overseas market step by step.

Taking wearables as an example, Huawei is No. 1 in terms of the market share both in China and globally. Other innovative products such as TWS earphones, are also growing fast and have reached No. 1 in many countries. While Huawei’s tablet and PC business was greatly affected after it was denied access to Windows and Intel x86 chips, the HarmonyOS-based tablets are now performing strongly. Another example would be CPE, which is a mobile router that provides connectivity to the unconnected in remote and rural areas. These products are also very well received across many regions outside China, helping more people connect to the rest of the world and live better lives.

Question: Both the Huawei XT 2 and the two most advanced models of the Mate 90 series use a LogicFolding chip. Will LogicFolding chips be used for more phones in the future? We understand that Huawei’s chip production capacity is still limited. Huawei has launched SuperPoDs, and AI infrastructure is a huge business. They are both very important in China. How do you secure a larger share of the chip supply internally?

Richard Yu: We started introducing the chip that adopts the LogicFolding technology powered by the Tau Scaling Law to the Mate XT 2 tri-fold phone. To answer your question, yes, more of our phones will definitely use these LogicFolding chips in the future.

Currently, the production capacity for advanced semiconductors in China still cannot meet the rapidly growing demand. Huawei’s Ascend chips for the AI domain also use such capacity. But we have developed a requirement plan, which also covers the chip requirements of smartphones.

The sharp price increase for memory components over the past two years has somewhat limited the smartphone sales volume. Even though the production capacity remains tight right now, generally it is sufficient to meet our market shipment needs.

We hope that production capacity will ramp up in China’s semiconductor industry so that we can manufacture more advanced products for consumers in the Chinese market as well as the overseas market in the future.

To read the full Q&A session:
https://www.apmultimedianewsroom.com/multimedia-newsroom/continuous-innovation-securing-our-competitive-edge-through-technological-breakthroughs

Hashtag: #Huawei

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

By Dr. Gyan Pathak On the very first day of the protests on October 2, by INDIA bloc and other opposition political parties, Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), Civil societies, and common people against CEC demanding his resignation across the country, particularly in Delhi and Mumbai, the campaign entered a consequential phase and at a political […]

The article Battle Over CEC Enters Consequential Phase, A Political Flashpoint appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

Initiative combines housing support with fire insurance protection to provide greater financial security for Orang Asli families

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA – Media OutReach Newswire – 2 October 2026 – MSIG Insurance (Malaysia) Bhd (“MSIG Malaysia”), the country’s third largest fire insurer, has reaffirmed its long-term commitment to strengthening community resilience through its continued collaboration with EPIC Homes. The initiative reflects the joint effort of MSIG Malaysia and EPIC Homes to support Orang Asli families through housing initiatives and fire insurance protection.

As part of this long-standing collaboration, MSIG Malaysia continues to provide fire insurance protection for homes built by EPIC Homes for the Orang Asli families. This insurance coverage helps families manage the financial impact of unforeseen incidents while reinforcing the long-term resilience of the Orang Asli community, reflecting the company’s continued efforts to protecting communities beyond traditional insurance solutions.

This year, MSIG Malaysia supported Orang Asli families in Simpang Pulai with the completion of two new homes. In July, 31 employees, including Chief Executive Officer Ms. Ang Yien Chia, worked alongside EPIC Homes volunteers over three days to complete the first home. In September, another 25 employees came together for the second build. Through these efforts, MSIG Malaysia helped provide beneficiary families with improved living conditions and a stronger sense of stability.

Chief Executive Officer of MSIG Insurance (Malaysia) Bhd, Ms. Ang Yien Chia, said:

“We aim to give Orang Asli homeowners greater confidence that they have financial support, should unforeseen events occur. The value of this protection has already been demonstrated, such as in 2025, a home covered under the programme was damaged during a storm, and the insurance claim helped fund the necessary repairs.”

“This reinforces the important role insurance can play in helping families recover more quickly and protecting the homes they have worked so hard to build. Through our continued collaboration with EPIC Homes, we remain committed to strengthening the resilience of underserved communities.”

As of August 2026, MSIG Malaysia has contributed towards the protection of over 300 homessince partnering with EPIC Homes in 2018. The collaboration supports Orang Asli families by pairing sustainable housing initiatives with fire insurance protection, reinforcing the long-term resilience of these communities.

Mr. John-Son Oei, Founder and CEO of EPIC Homes, said:

“We are grateful to continue our partnership with MSIG Malaysia, whose unwavering commitment has helped transform the lives of families through safe and dignified housing. Building a home is about much more than constructing walls and a roof—it creates the foundation for families to live with security, stability and hope for the future.

What makes this collaboration especially meaningful is MSIG Malaysia’s commitment to extending insurance protection beyond the build itself through its fire insurance coverage. This thoughtful addition provides beneficiary families with greater financial security while highlighting the importance of long-term resilience and financial preparedness. Together, we are creating sustainable impact that will benefit not only individual families but the wider community.”

The continued collaboration with EPIC Homes translates MSIG Malaysia’s commitment to championing inclusive and community-empowering initiatives into meaningful action through funding, employee volunteerism and insurance protection for the Orang Asli communities.

Hashtag: #MSIG

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About MSIG Insurance (Malaysia) Bhd

MSIG Insurance (Malaysia) Bhd (“MSIG Malaysia”) is one of the leading general insurers in Malaysia, providing a comprehensive range of insurance protection for both personal and business needs. With over 100 years of general insurance experience and a nationwide network of 20 branches, MSIG Malaysia offers strong capabilities across key classes including Fire, Engineering, and Motor, and is the No.1* in Marine Cargo.

The company continues to strengthen its market presence through ongoing investment in digital innovation, customer focused service enhancements, and the development of insurance solutions that meet the evolving needs of Malaysians. It has also developed exclusive B2B business tools for its business partners to support more efficient collaboration and service delivery. As part of its ongoing sustainability journey, MSIG Malaysia remains committed to supporting initiatives that strengthen community resilience.

MSIG Malaysia is a subsidiary of Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Company, Limited and a member of the MS&AD Insurance Group, Inc. (MS&AD), an insurance group with operations across Asia and various international markets. The Group manages a diverse portfolio of insurance companies worldwide and is recognised for its longstanding presence in the industry.

For more information on MSIG Malaysia, visit www.msig.com.my or facebook.com/MSIGmy.

*As of Dec 2025

About EPIC Homes

EPIC (Extraordinary People Impacting Communities) is a multiple award-winning social enterprise. Its flagship movement, EPIC Homes, builds relationships across the urban-rural divide through the act of building homes for underprivileged communities, with a current focus on the indigenous Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia.

Since 2010, EPIC Homes has mobilised 9,000+ individuals and 200+ organisations to provide safe homes for over 350 families in need. EPIC Homes team building programmes foster empathy, leadership, and cross-functional collaboration – enabling companies and organisations to forge stronger teams while contributing to long-term community development.

PTT Oil and Retail Business Public Company Limited secured 12 awards across international, industry and consumer sectors in 2026, reflecting broad recognition of its vision to link business growth with opportunity, quality of life and a sustainable future for all stakeholders.

BANGKOK, THAILAND – Media OutReach Newswire – 2 October 2026 – PTT Oil and Retail Business Public Company Limited (OR), the retail and lifestyle arm of Thailand’s PTT Group, has received 12 awards in 2026 spanning three sectors of recognition: international capital markets, domestic industry and consumers. These include six awards from the 16th Asian Excellence Awards organised by Hong Kong-based financial magazine Corporate Governance Asia, the Thailand Top CEO of the Year 2026 by BUSINESS+ magazine and the Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy, Thammasat University, and five brand awards from Marketeer No.1 Brand Thailand 2026, each affirming a different dimension of the company’s vision: “Empowering All Toward Inclusive Growth.”

At the heart of OR’s vision is a commitment to ensure that business growth creates tangible value beyond financial returns, expanding opportunity, raising quality of life and building a sustainable future for investors, communities, partners and consumers alike. This vision is executed through four core missions: Seamless Mobility, All Lifestyles, Global Market and OR Innovation, each underpinned by three sustainability pillars: Economic Prosperity, Living Community and Healthy Environment. Also, OR’s Sustainability concept “OR Term Okad Dee Dee Dee” empowering opportunity for three Good Dimension, Good Community, Good Environment and Good Growth.

Under the leadership of M.L. Peekthong Thongyai, Chief Executive Officer, OR has expanded its operations across 10 countries, delivered 2025 EBITDA of 20,357 million baht (approximately USD 623 million), up 15.2% year-on-year, with net profit rising 47.8% to 11,304 million baht (approximately USD 346 million), and grown blueplus+, its lifestyle and membership application, to 9.3 million registered members. These results underpinned both the Thailand Top CEO of the Year 2026 in the retail and wholesale category and Asia’s Best CEO at the Asian Excellence Awards.

The remaining five Asian Excellence Awards reflect the financial and social dimensions of OR’s vision. Asia’s Best CFO, Best Investor Relations Company and Best Investor Relations Professional recognise OR’s structured stakeholder communication, including quarterly analyst meetings, non-deal roadshows and bilingual disclosure for domestic and international investors. The Sustainable Asia Award and Asia’s Best CSR reflect OR’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than one third against a 2022 baseline by 2030, progressing towards Net Zero by 2050, alongside programmes such as Thaidet, which supports over 500 local entrepreneurs through OR’s retail network, and Café Amazon for Chance, which creates employment for people with disabilities, senior workers including underprivileged people. OR is also a constituent of the Dow Jones Sustainability Best in Class Indices in the Emerging Markets category for 2026.

At the consumer level, five brands — PTT Station, EV Station PluZ, Café Amazon, PTT LPG and PTT Lubricants — claimed top positions at the Marketeer No.1 Brand Thailand 2026, affirming the All Lifestyles mission through a network serving 3.9 million users daily, EV charging infrastructure covering all 77 provinces, and a Café Amazon footprint of 4,830 domestic outlets and 256 international locations.

“These awards reflect recognition from the people and institutions that matter most to OR — our investors, our industry peers and our customers,” said M.L. Peekthong Thongyai, Chief Executive Officer of PTT Oil and Retail Business Public Company Limited. “Each one affirms that our vision of building an integrated ecosystem, one that creates opportunity, improves quality of life and drives sustainable growth, is delivering results across every dimension of our business.”

Across all 12 awards, each recognition maps to OR’s four missions in action: Seamless Mobility and Global Market through network expansion and digital platform growth; All Lifestyles through consumer brand leadership across energy, food and beverage, and services; and OR Innovation through the digital infrastructure connecting it all. Together, they confirm that OR’s “Empowering All Toward Inclusive Growth” vision is producing measurable, multi-dimensional results across every stakeholder group the company serves.

Hashtag: #OR

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

The Singapore state-owned investment company said on Wednesday that the two offices, subject to statutory approvals, would operate as strategic hubs for Temasek and its portfolio companies. Some portfolio companies are expected to co-locate at the new sites, giving them a base from which to develop business and partnerships in Gulf markets.

Temasek said it sees broad opportunities in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. It intends to increase engagement with institutions in Qatar and other Middle Eastern markets while using the Riyadh and Abu Dhabi bases to improve access to investment opportunities across Central Asia and Africa.

“The Middle East is an important part of Temasek’s global network,” chief executive Dilhan Pillay Sandrasegara said. He cited the pace of economic transformation across the region and said its long-term fundamentals remained attractive, with strong alignment between regional priorities and Temasek’s investment focus.

Pillay said Temasek had built relationships in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar over several years through partnerships, co-investments and the activities of its portfolio companies. The planned offices represent a shift from managing those relationships remotely towards maintaining permanent teams in two of the Gulf’s principal financial and investment centres.

The expansion comes as Gulf governments continue programmes intended to diversify their economies, develop infrastructure and attract international capital. Temasek said its investment experience, global networks and partnership-led approach, together with the sector expertise of companies in its portfolio, could support opportunities created by that transformation.

Temasek said the new hubs would also give portfolio companies closer access to local partners and markets, allowing them to collaborate alongside the investor while pursuing opportunities generated by economic diversification and infrastructure spending.

Chia Song Hwee, chief executive of Temasek Global Investments, was appointed chairman for the Middle East and Africa with effect from September 1. Temasek said he would provide senior leadership and oversight for its engagement and long-term growth in the two regions.

Chia said having teams on the ground would strengthen engagement with partners and improve access to investment opportunities for Temasek and its portfolio companies. He added that the offices would allow the group to bring expertise from across its wider ecosystem into regional markets.

Ankit Khemka will remain managing director for the region and continue to lead Temasek’s strategy and expansion. The leadership arrangements put the Middle East and Africa under dedicated senior oversight as the investor increases its institutional presence beyond its established Asian, European and American locations.

The two offices will increase Temasek’s global network to 15 offices across 11 countries in 2027, from 13 offices in nine countries. Its existing locations include Singapore, Beijing, Hanoi, Mumbai, Shanghai and Shenzhen in Asia, alongside Brussels, London, Mexico City, New York, Paris, San Francisco and Washington.

Temasek’s net portfolio value reached S$518 billion for the financial year ended March 31, 2026, up from S$469 billion a year earlier. Its one-year total shareholder return was 10.5 per cent, while its 10-year and 20-year returns were 7.1 per cent and 6.8 per cent respectively.

The investor’s portfolio remains anchored in Singapore while spanning major global markets. Singapore-based portfolio companies accounted for 43 per cent of the portfolio at the end of the financial year, while direct investments in companies globally represented 38 per cent. The remaining 19 per cent was held through partnerships, funds and asset-management businesses.

Temasek has also been increasing investment activity across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Earlier this week, it acquired a 9 per cent minority stake in the management company of Milan-based private equity group FSI and committed capital to future FSI investment vehicles targeting growing Italian companies.

By Dr. Gyan Pathak On the morning of September 30, 2026, Delhi witnessed display of a series of hoardings, unclaimed by any organization but believed to have been put on behalf of the BJP, that targeted leaders of opposition before INDIA bloc meeting, and claiming rift among their leaders. BJP separately criticised Leader of Opposition […]

The article ‘Save Democracy’ Rallies From Oct 2-8, INDIA Bloc March To ECI On Oct 6 appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

The sale of about ¥2.8 trillion of two-year Japanese government bonds attracted demand above its 12-month average, improving markedly from the weak August auction. The result suggested that higher yields are beginning to compensate investors for the risk of additional increases in official interest rates.

The two-year JGB yield was around 1.95% before the auction, close to 2% and its highest region since 1995. Short-dated bonds had gained earlier in the session, tracking an overnight advance in comparable US Treasuries, with the two-year yield edging lower as prices rose.

Demand at the auction was closely watched because two-year debt is particularly sensitive to expectations for Bank of Japan policy. The central bank raised its policy rate to 1.25% in September, the highest level in 31 years, as policymakers confronted persistent inflation pressures, elevated energy costs and the effects of a weaker yen on import prices.

Minutes of the Bank of Japan’s July meeting, released this week, showed policymakers had discussed whether interest rates might need to rise faster if inflation risks intensified. Several board members stressed the importance of anchoring inflation around the central bank’s 2% target, reinforcing market expectations that policy normalisation has further to run.

Those expectations have driven yields sharply higher across Japan’s government bond curve. The benchmark 10-year yield was around 3.09% on Tuesday, near the 30-year high of 3.115% touched last week. Five-year yields have also reached record levels, while yields on super-long bonds remain elevated as investors weigh inflation, fiscal spending and the outlook for government issuance.

Wednesday’s auction nevertheless indicated that the repricing is creating buying opportunities at the shorter end of the curve. Investors receive greater income from newly issued bonds than they did earlier in the year, providing a cushion against the possibility of further price declines if the central bank raises rates again.

The result followed a strong sale of 40-year government bonds on Tuesday. The Ministry of Finance received ¥928 billion of competitive bids for ¥299.7 billion accepted at that auction, producing a bid-to-cover ratio of about 3.1. The highest accepted yield was 4.125%, according to ministry data. Demand for the longest maturity was the strongest in several years.

The two auctions offered evidence that elevated yields can draw buyers back even as Japan’s bond market adjusts to a markedly different interest-rate environment. The Bank of Japan has been reducing the scale of its government bond purchases, leaving private investors to play a larger role in determining prices after years of exceptionally heavy central-bank intervention in the market.

The adjustment has been accompanied by unusually large moves in yields. Japan’s 10-year yield crossed 3% this month for the first time since 1996, while the two-year yield has climbed substantially during 2026 as traders repeatedly brought forward expectations for monetary tightening.

Inflation remains central to those calculations. Higher oil and other commodity costs linked to the Middle East conflict have added pressure to import prices, while the yen’s weakness has increased the local-currency cost of goods purchased overseas. Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda has said currency movements can have a significant impact on the economy and prices.

Global bond markets have also been under pressure from persistent inflation concerns, heavy government borrowing and expectations that major central banks may keep interest rates higher for longer. Rising US Treasury yields have at times amplified moves in JGBs, particularly as investors reassess relative returns between Japanese and overseas debt.

Japan’s Finance Ministry had announced the two-year auction for Wednesday as part of its regular issuance programme. The previous two-year sale in August produced substantially weaker demand, with its bid-to-cover ratio falling below the preceding 12-month average as investors positioned for a September Bank of Japan rate increase.