US labor dispute stalls ships
Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮) has been unable to unload 11 ships carrying tons of cargo amid a labor dispute involving longshoremen at several ports along the US's East Coast.
The ships, carrying merchandise to be delivered to retailers, including Costco Wholesale Corp and Wal-Mart Stores Inc, remain at docks at the Port of New York and New Jersey. Others were diverted to Canada or Panama.
International Longshoremen's Association members have refused to handle Evergreen cargo since May 14 after the company refused to recognize a 3-2 vote in December to join the ILA by five office workers.
Chips off the old block imported
Taiwan plans to import 8.1 million tonnes of gravel from China over one year as part of efforts to ease the country's shortage of construction material, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
The ministry agreed on Thursday after finishing marathon negotiations with construction- sector representatives to set the annual gravel import volume from China at 8.1 million tons for the year beginning this month.
Since January, domestic gravel importers have filed applications with the ministry's Board of Foreign Trade for imports of Chinese gravel amounting to 63.5 million tonnes, according to board officials.
Taiwan began to import Chi-nese gravel in 2001, when the nation's imports for the year totalled 1.8 million tonnes. The figure surged to 9 million tons last year.
Quanta reports sales rise 79.8%
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), the nation's largest notebook computer maker, said last month's sales rose 79.8 percent from a year earlier.
Sales rose to NT$20.7 billion (US$596 million) from NT$11.5 billion. Sales increased from NT$20.6 billion in the previous month.
Compal predicts laptop growth
Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦), the world's second-largest maker of notebook computers, expects new PC chips from Intel Corp to help lift global laptop sales by about 20 percent, a local newspaper said, citing the company's president.
Price cuts for Intel's Centrino chips that connect notebook computers to the Internet with a radio link should help stimulate demand, the report said, citing Compal president Ray Chen (陳瑞聰).
Growth in sales of notebook computers this year will exceed the 5 percent rate for desktop computers, the report quoted Chen as saying.
Compal, which also makes products such as cellphones, last year posted NT$117.2 billion (US$3.4 billion) in sales, up 51 percent from 2001.
No Iraqi oil order yet
Chinese Petroleum Corp (中油) said yesterday that it will not bid for the first post-president Sad-dam Hussein crude, but is interested in signing a long-term contract with Iraq.
"As a state-run company, we are conservative and want stable oil supply. Therefore, we sign long-term purchase contracts - sometimes longer than five years -- with foreign oil companies," a company official said, asking not to be named.
"After the war, Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization [SOMO] is just starting to operate. We will watch what negotiation terms SOMO gives to other importers and how much flexibility it has. If it can give us preferential terms, we do not rule out signing long-term contract with SOMO," she said by phone.
NT dollar holds steady
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday traded unchanged against its US counterpart at NT$34.665 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$346 million.
Agencies
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last