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■ Wellcome expanding
Wellcome Supermarket (惠康), the nation's largest supermarket chain with 156 outlets, said yesterday it had bought eight Sunmart (全日清) stores.
"The integration project is expected to further enhance Wellcome's leading status among Taiwan's supermarket chains as well as strengthen our foothold in the domestic food retail market," Alex Tay (鄭朝豐), Wellcome's chairman, said in a statement.
Sunmart, a Japanese supermarket chain, came to Taiwan in 1999. Its eight stores were all in the north of the country.
"Sumart's know-how in managing fresh and cooked food can help Wellcome improve its service to customers in this field," Howard Tsai (蔡裕人), chief operations officer at Wellcome, said in a statement.
The consolidation project is scheduled to be finalized at the end of February.

■ Emergency gravel arrives
The first shipment of 5,000 tonnes of gravel from China has arrived in Makung, Penghu, to relieve a serious shortage of the material in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
Importers will get a NT$150 per tonne from the government for gravel imports until Feb. 15 or until a 3 million tonne quota of emergency gravel imports has been reached.
A further 8,500 tons of gravel will arrive at Anping Harbor, Tainan, from the Philippines, the officials said.
They also said that the import of foreign gravel is only a contingency measure and that the ministry's Water Resources Agency is speeding up dredging operations in rivers. This, coupled with the gravel imports, will ensure the supply of gravel in the first quarter of this year, they said.

■ Job Web site opens
The Industrial Development and Investment Center of the Ministry of Economic Affairs has established a Web site to help overseas high-tech experts search for jobs in Taiwan, a Taiwanese official said in Texas.
Ling Chia-yu (凌家裕), director of the commercial division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Houston, said the Web site (http://hirecruit.nat.gov.tw) is aimed at inviting overseas high-tech experts to work in Taiwan.
Once registered as a member, individuals can post their resumes on the Web site and search for job opportunities in various private enterprises as well as academic, research and governmental organizations.
More than 270 private enterprises and 90 academic and research organizations have joined in the program, named "Hirecruit." More than 200 job opportunities are being offered on the site, he added.

■ Vacancies fall in Hsinyi
Top-grade office space in Taipei's Hsinyi district remained in demand during the fourth quarter of last year, bucking a city-wide trend, Jones Lang LaSalle said in a report yesterday.
Vacancies in the district fell from 19.2 percent in the third quarter to 12 percent in the fourth, with some 8,000 ping of office space being taken up by tenants including Proctor & Gamble, 3Com and ABN Amro, the report said.
Overall vacancy rates in Grade A buildings in Taipei rose to 17.7 percent in the fourth quarter from 16.8 percent the previous quarter, the report said.
Grade A achievable monthly rents fell 1.1 percent to NT$2,100 per ping during the quarter, which was the smallest quarterly decline in more than two and a half years, reflecting the solid economic recovery seen in the second half of last year, the report said.
But pressure on rents remains, with relatively high vacancy rates and increasing supply, it added.

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