CEPD adjusts numbers
The Council for Economic Plan-ning and Development (CEPD) estimated that the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) would cut half the nation's economic growth this year, after the government reported the largest one-day rise in cases of the illness yesterday.
"The economic growth is likely to slow to 1.75 percent this year from the original 3.5-percent forecast, due to the disease," the council's advisor Lee Kao-chao (李高朝) said yesterday. Lee didn't elaborate on the time frame that how the disease could affect the economy that much.
"To offset the negative impact of SARS on economy, the government needs to speed up its pace in promoting the NT$70 billion public works projects and expansionary fiscal policy," he said.
The impact of the contagion has been felt primarily in tourism, airlines, transportation and other business activities, and even exports, Lee said. Every one percentage point drop in GDP will generate one percentage point rise in unemployment, he added.
The private Taiwan Institute of Economic Research last week said it would cut its forecast for the nation's economic growth from 3.5 percent to somewhere between 1.74 and 1.44 percent this year.
Chung Shing bashes accusation
The Central Depository Insurance Co (中央存保), which took over the management of debt-ridden Chung Shing Commercial Bank (中興銀行) in 2000, yesterday lambasted the failed bank's former chairman Wang Yu-yun (王玉雲) for his groundless accusation of Central Depository's inappropriate take-over measures.
Chung Shing's previous poor credit policies, its growing non-performing loans and the sluggish property market have all attributed to the lender's further losses in assets after it was managed by Central Despository, the statement said.
In a newspaper advertisement yesterday, Wang who run the bank for eight years accused the governmental insurer of deteriorating the bank's assets during its stewardship, saying the insurer should be held responsible for the bank's liability of NT$80 billion.
Bankers support anti-NPL bill
In an effort to push forward early passage of the Financial Res-tructuring Fund (金融重建基金) bill, the Ministry of Finance has asked banks to exert pressure on the legislature.
The Bankers Association of ROC (銀行公會) yesterday expressed its support to the ministry's move. "We'll ask our member banks to communicate with legislators and lobby for their support for the restructuring fund bill," Kuo Yu-chyi (郭玉麒), the association's secretary general, said yesterday.
Kuo declined to say whether he supports the ministry's proposal to increase the fund to NT$908 billion from the current NT$140 billion.
Yuan appoints bank chairman
The Executive Yuan is expected to appoint Herbert Chung (鍾甦生), president of the Export-Import Bank of the Republic of China (中國輸出入銀行), to head the Bank of Overseas Chinese (華僑銀行) on Saturday.
As its biggest shareholder with 20 percent shares, the Cabinet's Development Fund (開發基金) committee has nominated six designated board members including David Jou (周國瑞), a finance professor from National Taiwan University, and Hsu Chin-chou (許欽洲), deputy executive secretary of the development fund committee as well as one supervisor candidate.
NT dollar declines
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday traded lower against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.044 to close at NT$34.856 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$582 million.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts