BOFT eyes Middle East market
The Board of Foreign Trade will organize two trade missions to the Middle East and help more than 50 companies promote their products in the "2003 Middle East Industrial Exhibition" in the United Arab Emirates from Oct. 19 to 22.
A board official said yesterday that the government sees great trade opportunities in many countries in the Middle East, and that it is time for the country to promote its products in that region because the war in Iraq is over and the UN has lifted trade sanctions on that country.
The first trade mission will visit the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Lebanon and some other countries from Aug. 23 to Sept. 6. The second mission will visit Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt from Sept. 18 to Oct. 4.
Cathay delays restoring flights
Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd (國泰航空) will restore all its flights to Taipei starting Sept. 1 now that Taiwan has ended its SARS quarantine policy on visitors from Hong Kong.
The airline will operate eight daily flights to Taipei starting July 1, 12 daily flights from Aug. 1 and increase the number to 103 weekly flights starting from the beginning of September, it said in a statement.
Cathay cut flights on the Taipei route by about 80 percent last month because of the SARS epidemic. The Hong Kong-Taipei route normally accounts for 13 percent of Cathay's passenger volume.
Pact reached with Cambodia
Taiwan signed an agreement with Cambodia Thursday on the Indochinese country's accession to the WTO, which may take place before September.
Representative to the WTO Yen Ching-chang (顏慶章) inked the agreement with Cambodian Vice Minister of Commerce Sok Siphana. The two countries wrapped up some 10 months of bilateral market-access talks recently, paving the way for the agreement.
Yen said Taiwan -- the largest foreign capital source of Cambodia -- will reap more than economic and trade benefits from the pact.
Cambodia has pledged to lower tariffs on 110 agricultural, forest, fishery and industrial products from Taiwan. It also promised that it will talk with Taipei first before adjusting tariffs on Taiwan's top five export products to Cambodia, namely dyed and woven fabrics and yarns, color-printed weaved fabrics, synthetic fibers and related products, knitted fabrics and clothes and zippers, in the future.
HSBC and Polaris offer funds
The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp (HSBC) yesterday joined forces with the Polaris Securities Co (寶來證券) to launch three exchange-traded funds (ETFs), entering a head-on-head competition with Citibank Taiwan.
ETF is a fund that tracks an index, but can be traded like a stock. Each share of the current versions of ETFs tracks a basket of stocks in some index or benchmark, providing investors with a vehicle that closely parallels the performance of these benchmarks while allowing for intraday trading.
At a product launching ceremony held yesterday in Taipei, HSBC vice president Michelle Maa (馬文玲) said the bank expects to see over US$3 million in monthly sales of these newly launched ETFs in Taiwan.
Bai Win-chen (白文正), chairman of Polaris Securities, said that the new investment tool will help investors to diversify their asset management in global markets while Paul Leech, HSBC's Taiwan CEO, claimed that the ETF is a landmark product in the nation's wealth management industries.
NT dollar weakens
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday turned weak against its US counterpart, dropping NT$0.02 to close at NT$34.576 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$478.5 million.
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
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
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the