■ Uni-President sees small impact
Uni-President Enterprises Corp (統一企業), the second-biggest instant-noodle maker in China, said the Chinese government's attempt to curb lending and temper growth will have little impact on its food business as it continues to expand. "Even if China's economic growth slows to 7 percent to 8 percent from 10 percent, that's still very high, so the impact isn't really serious," said Simon Hung (洪世民), a spokesman for the Taiwan company. "China's measures are more focused on the real estate, steel and cement industries, rather than food and drinks, which are basic necessities," he said. Uni-Splendor Corp (大統營), a home-appliance making venture of Uni-President's investment unit, plans to invest US$50 million to build a new plant in Guangdong Province, Hung said.
■ Government to sell TSMC stake
The government said it plans this year to sell in the US a 3.2 percent stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) worth NT$38.3 billion (US$1.2 billion). The sale would reduce the Development Fund stake in the world's largest supplier of made-to-order chips to about 4.1 percent, according to James Ho, deputy executive secretary of the government-owned fund. The Development Fund plans to sell a total of NT$46 billion in shares including TSMC, Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體) and Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進), Ho said. The government also plans to sell its entire 20 percent stake in Bank of Overseas Chinese (華僑銀行) by the end of year. "Today or tomorrow we will send out invitations to investment banks for the proposal of selling our 20 percent stake," Ho said.
■ Singapore plant to make profit
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world's second-largest provider of made-to-order chips, said its Singapore factory will make a profit this year. "We do expect sometime this year, barring an unforeseen market downturn, that UMCi will be profitable," said Chris Chi, president of the Singapore unit, known as UMCi, which is also partly owned by Singapore's government. UMC first invested in UMCi in April, 2001 and owns 85 percent of the Singapore company. UMCi, which went into production in March, makes chips on 300mm wafers. The factory is currently making about 2,000 chip wafers a month and needs to make about 8,000 a month to break even. It expects to be producing about 10,000 a month by the end of the year.
■ Cash-advance market grows
The nation's cash-advance market size, as of February, reached NT$181.5 billion with a total of 4.7 million cards in circulation, according to the finance ministry's bureau of monetary affairs. The non-performing ratio on cash-advance loans leveled at some 2.6 percent, which is reasonable, said the bureau's deputy director-general Huang Tien-mu (黃天牧). According to Huang, among the nation's 32 cash-advance card issuers, Cosmos Bank Taiwan (萬泰銀行), Taishin Bank (台新銀行) and the Chinese Bank (中華銀行) are the top three players with NT$70.8 billion, NT$24.5 billion and NT$14.5 billion in revenues. Cosmos, Taishi and Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中信銀), however, are the top three banks that issued the most cash-advance cards boasting 1.31 million, 0.6 million and 0.42 million cardholders.
■ NT dollar up
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday rose against its US counterpart, gaining NT$0.051 to close at NT$33.277 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$383 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
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