Chunghwa ownership rate up
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation's largest phone company, had its overseas ownership limit raised to 35 percent from 20 percent, an executive said.
The government raised the limit because "foreign investors are buying more and more Chunghwa Telecom shares," company vice president Chen Cheng-chang (陳成章) said in a telephone interview.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications owns about 65 percent of Chunghwa Telecom. Overseas investors currently hold 17 percent, according to Chen.
The government earlier this year said it aims to sell a 14 percent stake in Chunghwa Telecom this year to help plug the budget deficit, estimated at a record NT$312.9 billion (US$9.12 billion). The company has yet to reach an agreement with its union about the planned sale, Chen said.
Bailout funds for banks sought
The Financial Supervisory Comm-ission plans to ask the Legislative Yuan to add NT$280 billion (US$8 billion) to the banking bailout fund, a Chinese-language newspaper said yesterday, citing commission vice chairman Susan Chang (張秀蓮).
The Financial Restructuring Fund (金融重建基金), a NT$140 billion bailout fund, was created in July 2001 to help banks clean up bad loans and dispose of failed lenders. The fund is now left with some NT$40 billion in available capital after clearing debts for 44 financial institutions.
Governance discussed
The Financial Supervisory Com-mission held discussions with various insurance companies regarding corporate governance over the last few months, the commission said in a statement yesterday.
"Promoting corporate governance is not only in line with the world trend, but also a move to better company management and is in best interests of both shareholders and policy holders," the commission said.
CPC hikes gas prices
State-run Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC, 中油) yesterday announced price hikes on home and industrial liquefied petroleum gas by NT$1 per kilogram and NT$1.1 per kilogram respectively, the company said in a statement. The new rates went into effect at midnight today, the statement said.
The adjustment was made due to the soaring costs, the company said. Bearing the pressure of rocketing oil prices, it is speculated that CPC may again raise wholesale gasoline prices in the near future.
More construction approved
A total of 22,491 licenses for construction projects were approved by the government in the first half of this year, a significant increase of 56.2 percent over the same period last year, according to the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statis-tics (DGBAS).
The statistics released yesterday by the agency show that the approved construction projects occupied a total of 19.18 million square meters of floor space, a growth of 65.3 percent over the same period last year.
Residential buildings account for almost half, a considerable annual growth of 102.8 percent.
Thanks to preferential low interest rates offered by the government to encourage citizens to buy houses, banks offered loans worth NT$3.16 trillion (US$92 billion) in the first six months, an increase of 15.4 percent over the same period last year, the DGBAS said.
NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday turned weak against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.042 to close at NT$34.140 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$456 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