As a result of rising international crude-oil costs, state-run Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC,
CPC, which has a 75 percent market share, yesterday took the initiative to raise the wholesale price of gasoline by NT$0.5 and diesel by NT$0.2 per liter, or 2.45 percent, the company said.
Prices of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for household use is expected to increase today by NT$0.4 per kilogram, or 2.6 percent, and for car use by NT$0.6 per kilogram, or 4.2 percent. Some of Taiwan's taxis have converted to using LPG.
The company said that it had recently been under pressure from rising crude oil prices as a result of the looming war in Iraq and the general strike in Venezuela.
The oil-price hike, however, may not be reflected in retail pump prices, the company said. Nevertheless, if CPC-related stations act on the price hike, the retail price of 98 unleaded gasoline will increase from NT$21.4 to NT$21.9 per liter, while 95 unleaded gasoline will increase from NT$20.1 to NT$20.6 per liter and diesel from NT$15.5 to NT$15.7.
Formosa responded to the CPC price hikes hours later, announcing similar increases.
Commenting on the hike, a market watcher yesterday said he believed few industries would be affected.
"It's a reasonable increase since crude oil has risen from last year's US$24 at the lowest to this year's US$32 a barrel," said Murphy Huang (
Huang added that shippers and airlines are two major industries that will be negatively affected by the hike since oil prices account for a big proportion of their costs.
However, he said that the impact should be minimal since most airlines have secured fixed oil prices with futures.
The plastics industry, on the contrary, is expected to benefit from the oil-price hike since the basic raw material in plastic -- polymers -- will increase in line with the oil increases, Huang said.
"Domestic plastic industries can take advantage of the polymer price rise and take a bigger jump in their product prices to beef up revenues," Huang said.
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Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day