Investment limits lifted
The government freed domestic mutual funds to invest as much as they want abroad, 10 days after President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) announced limits on overseas investment in the stock market would be scrapped.
The central bank said it's revoking a rule that limited local mutual funds to a combined NT$160 billion (US$4.6 billion) of overseas investment as part of the government's deregulation of financial markets. The funds investments were about NT$7 billion below the limit.
ABN-Amro Asset Management Taiwan Ltd, Prudential Securities Investment Trust Co and JF Asset Management (Taiwan) Ltd are among the international fund managers operating in Taiwan.
Government approval will still be needed for domestic funds to invest overseas, the central bank said in a statement.
Yu promotes investment
With Motorola Inc and Intel Corp deciding to set up research and development centers in Taiwan, Premier Yu Shyi-kun said yesterday that foreign investors are optimistic about the nation's economy and, "this is the best time to invest in Taiwan."
Yu made the remarks when he attended the opening of a project sponsored by the Ministry of Economic Affairs to help small and medium-sized enterprises solicit talent.
Under the project, 24 cities and counties will set up service counters for local businesses to recruit personnel.
MasterCard releases forecast
Taiwan's economic growth will reach 3.8 percent this year and 5.5 percent next year, according to a forecast released Thursday by MasterCard International.
Yuwa Hedrick-Wong (王月魂), economic advisor for MasterCard International in the Asia-Pacific region, said Taiwan has strong momentum to boost its economy as the country has a well-educated workforce.
She suggested that Taiwan should put more effort into developing knowledge-intensive industries and that relevant government agencies should create a favorable climate for young people to establish their own businesses.
Liao eyes Holland Village
Chunbao Tungsten Steel Group, a Taiwanese company in China that makes materials used in tools and machine parts, may buy orchid grower Euro-Asia Agricultural (Holdings) Co's (歐亞農業控股) Holland Village, the Hong Kong Economic Times reported, citing Chunbao's chairman Liao Wanlong.
Liao is the first to show interest in purchasing the village from Hong Kong-listed Euro-Asia, which is facing liquidation.
The 400-hectare tourist attraction and agricultural production site in Shenyang comes complete with windmills, gabled roofs and replications of Dutch sculptures.
The city's government has been in talks with more than one company about selling the site since April, the Times reported.
Liao told reporters yesterday at a conference he will visit the village today, the newspaper said.
NT dollar dips
The New Taiwan dollar fell as the amount of money put into stocks by global investors yesterday and today totaled less than a fifth of the other days this week, spurring speculation among traders demand for the currency will slow.
The New Taiwan dollar fell NT$0.048, or 0.1 percent, to NT$34.468 against its US counterpart on the Taipei foreign exchange market, its lowest close since July 2 and largest decline in a week.
Turnover was US$394 million.
``Less net overseas demand for stocks will have some psychological impact on the NT dollar,'' said Joseph Lee, a Taipei-based currency trader at United World Chinese Commercial Bank (世華銀行).
Agencies
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