Wholesale gas prices cut
Both Chinese Petroleum Corp (中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石油) yesterday announced they would lower wholesale gasoline and diesel prices today to reflect falling international crude oil prices.
These refiners will cut the price of 98 RON, 95 RON and 92 RON grades of unleaded gasoline by NT$0.50 a liter, and diesel by NT$0.20 a liter, according to statements issued by the companies.
Crude oil prices have fallen about 9 percent in the past three months on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Yageo forecasts return to profits
Yageo Corp (國巨), the country's biggest maker of parts to control the flow of electricity in computers and mobile phones, expects to return to profit this year after six quarters of losses because sales are rising.
"We are confident in the second half of this year we'll be back to profitability," president Remko Rosman said in a TV interview with Bloomberg..
"For the next year, I'm very confident that we'll be back to profitability as well," he said.
Compared with this year, Yageo's sales will rise by one-tenth next year, helping gross margin, or the percentage of sales left after production costs, exceed 30 percent, Rosman said.
Yageo's sales have been impro-ving with personal computer makers in China, where revenue in the third quarter rose by about 25 percent from the second quarter.
Growth has lagged in Yageo's sales to mobile-phone makers in China, which reported excess inventory during the SARS epidemic earlier this year when few people went out shopping.
The company cut its second-quarter loss by more than 80 percent to NT$375 million from NT$2.4 billion in the same period a year ago.
Sales rose by 32 percent to NT$2.9 billion from NT$2.2 billion.
"Taiwan Day" in Milan
China External Trade Development Council chairman Hsu Chih-jen
(許志仁) presided yesterday over the opening of "Taiwan Day" activities sponsored by the Taiwan Trade Center in Milan, Italy.
Nearly 100 representatives from Milan's business and industrial community and 40 businessmen from Taiwan's hardware sector took part in the event, during which Hsu led the Taiwanese delegates in product presentations to promote business opportunities.
Hsu said that he would sign a cooperation accord later the same day with the chief of the Milan Chamber of Commerce.
The Milan visit was also aimed at luring Italian businesses to participate in the 2003 Taiwan Business Alliance Conference to be held next month in Taipei, he said.
Before flying into Milan late Wednesday, Hsu had visited Poland, Hungry and Germany and met with representatives from the environmental protection, solar energy and opto-electrical industries in the three countries.
He is scheduled to arrive in Slovakia today to chair a bilateral economic cooperation conference.
NT dollar rises
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday turned higher against its US counterpart, moving up NT$0.033 to close at NT$34.058 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$797 million.
UBS AG in a report recommends investors buy the NT dollar against Singapore's currency as overseas investors put more money into Taiwan's stock market.
It ``makes sense'' to buy the NT dollar against the Singapore dollar ``on the back of Singapore's data and the continued foreign inflows into Taiwan,'' Bhanu Baweja, a currency strategist at UBS in Singapore wrote in the report.
``The NT dollar has yet to move aggressively'' from overseas demand for the country's equities, he wrote.
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],”
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
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