Foreign reserves grow
The nation's foreign-currency reserves rose to US$182.21 billion last month, which is an increase of US$5.52 billion from June and a growth of US$20.55 billion from the end of last year, the central bank said in a statement. The figure is the third-highest in the world after Japan and China.
The central bank said the growth of foreign-exchange holdings is partly due to state-run Chunghwa Telecom Co's (中華電信) fundraising of US$1.6 billion through through its initial public offering in New York last month, as well as Cabinet's Development Fund's selling part of its share holdings in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturer Co (台積電) worth US$822 million on Wall Street.
Another reason for the increase was the influx of foreign funds for local investments and interest gains from the central bank's foreign-exchange deposits in overseas banks.
CPI falls in July
Consumer prices dropped 0.98 percent last month from the year before as clothing costs fell, official data showed yesterday.
The consumer price index (CPI) for last month fell 0.42 percent from June, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said.
In the seven months to last month, CPI fell 0.28 percent.
The wholesale price index last month rose 2.43 percent from a year earlier and was up 3.32 percent for the first seven months of this year, DGBAS said.
Taipei-Brunei flights resume
Royal Brunei Airlines yesterday resumed its Taipei-Brunei flight services, which were suspended in April due to the SARS outbreak.
The airline is resuming its Boeing 757 Taipei-to-Brunei flights departing at 11am on Tuesdays and Fridays, and its Brunei-to-Taipei flights departing at 3:15pm on Mondays and Thursdays, said Pan Chian-hua (潘建華), president of Royal Brunei Airlines' Taiwan operations.
The flight between Taipei and Brunei takes about three and a half hours. About 100,000 tourists from Taiwan visit Brunei each year.
LCD industries growing
The Kaohsiung Export Processing Zone (KEPZ) has become an important base for manufacturing liquid-crystal display (LCD) and its related products, an official of the zone's administration said yesterday.
The official said manufacturers of LCD and its related industries invested NT$1.21 billion (US$35.2 million) in the zone last year. The same kind of investors spent NT$654 million in new projects and NT$3.13 billion in expanding their production facilities in the zone in the first half of this year.
Business revenues received by the LCD and related industries in the zone amounted to NT$47.77 billion last year and NT$20.41 billion in the first half of this year, the official said.
Compal says Q2 profits rose
Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶), the world's No. 2 maker of notebook computers, had a bigger-than-expected 35 percent increase in second-quarter profit after it cut costs by moving more production to China.
The company's net income rose to NT$2.6 billion (US$75 million) from NT$1.9 billion a year ago. Sales rose 9 percent to NT$31 billion.
Meanwhile, Silicon Integrated Systems Corp (矽統), the world's third-largest maker of chipsets for personal computers, said sales last month rose 9 percent from a year ago to NT$1.2 billion ($34.9 million).
AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), the world's fourth- largest maker of flat-panel displays for electronic products, said July sales rose 30 percent from a year ago to NT$7.9 billion ($229.5 million).
NT dollar weakens
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday turned weak against its US counterpart, falling NT$0.036 to close at NT$34.466 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$635 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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained