Business Briefs

■ Visa offers personalized cards
Visa International unveiled yesterday a new card-design service, which will allow "personalized" cards to hit the local market by year-end, the company announced at a press conference in Taipei. In cooperation with the UK-based Serverside Graphics Ltd, Visa member banks are allowed the opportunity to offer cards designed by cardholders, who can use photographs or designs to create a customized credit, debit or pre-paid cards, according to Visa International. Although the new products are to be launched by at least one local bank soon, Visa International declined to offer any details citing confidentiality. According to an Internet survey conducted by Serverside Graphics last year, a whopping 93 percent of the respondents said they would like to have a payment card with a personal touch, while 61.5 percent said that personalized card services are more important in choosing a cards. Taiwan is the first market in Asia Pacific region to launch the service.

■ CPI increases slowly
The consumer price index (CPI) increased by 1.1 percent per year on average from 1994 to last year, lower than the 2.4 percent seen in the US and the 3.8 percent in South Korea, according to government statistics. The newest tallies released Tuesday by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) show that the CPI increased by between 3 percent and 4 percent each year in the first half of the 1990s. A DGBAS official said this was the result of a severe labor shortage and increases in workers' wages. The rate of increase in CPI began to slow in the second half of the 1990s due to economic globalization, output expansion and the influx of cheap products made in China into the world market. The CPI increases fell further starting in 2001 because of drops in product prices in the home market amid fierce competition.

■ Chi Mei to make lamps
Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子) plans to invest in a new venture to make cold-cathode fluorescent lamps, a flat-panel display component the manufacturing of which is dominated by Japanese firms, a Chinese-language newspaper reported. The new venture will involve an initial investment of as much as NT$500 million (US$15 million), it said. Chi Mei, the nation's second-largest maker of flat-panel displays used in computers and televisions, is expected to take a 20 percent stake. The paper didn't mention other investors in the venture.

■ Yageo's investment to fall 40%
Yageo Corp's (國巨) investment next year may drop about 40 percent from this year as the company seeks to help stabilize product prices by slowing expansion, a Chinese-language business daily said yesterday. Yageo, the country's largest resistor maker, plans to spend US$1 billion to expand production capacity next year, the paper said. That compares with US$1.7 billion estimated for this year, it added. The planned investment next year will be used to buy machinery and other equipment, the paper said. This year, the company is spending US$300 million to build a plant in Suzhou, China, and US$1.4 billion on machinery purchases, the paper said.

■ NT dollar declines
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday continued losing ground against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.012 to close at NT$33.890 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$495 million.