Formosa Plastics eyes Texas
Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑), the world's second-largest maker of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), plans to invest US$200 million to build a PVC plant in Texas, aiming to become the world's No. 1 maker of the product, the Commercial Times reported, citing company president Lee Chih-tsuen (李志村).
The company is a unit of Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), Taiwan's largest industrial group.
Formosa Plastics has submitted an application to US authorities to build the plant, which would have production capacity of 170,000 tonnes of PVC a year, raising the company's annual production of the product to 2.96 million tonnes, the Taipei-based paper said.
The new plant could start mass production within two years, pending approval, the paper said, citing Lee.
Banks urged to lend more
To boost the sagging economy and cut jobless rate, the government is encouraging banking institutions to provide an extra NT$200 billion of loans within a year to local small and medium sized enterprises, which account for 97.8 percent of all enterprises and hire 77 percent of workers in Taiwan, according to a statement released by the Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday.
Small and medium companies obtained 23.59 percent of their financing from banking institutions in 2001, but the figure has been consecutively declining to 20.67 percent in 2002, 20.02 percent in 2003 and 18.57 percent last year, according to official statistics.
The Cabinet hopes to push the figure to above 20 percent in a year, the statement said.
To do so, the Cabinet has loosened requirements for loan applications by companies, including allowing those that have been set up less than six months to apply for loans on credit provided by the government, it said. The government will further provide various measures to improve financial structure and transparency among small and medium companies, the statement said.
Stock futures lower
Prices on Taipei's stock futures market were lower yesterday as the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TAIEX) Capitalization Weighted Index for July moved down 40 points to close at 6,257, with 25,588 contracts changing hands.
TAIEX Index futures for August moved down 50 points to end at 6,180, with 478 contracts traded, while September futures lost 50 points to finish at 6,158, with 183 contracts traded.
December futures moved down 60 points to close at 6,146, with 34 contracts traded, while March futures moved down 69 points to close at 6,135, with 15 contracts traded.
Taiwan International Mercantile Exchange reference levels for TAIEX Index futures trading were set yesterday at 6,297 for July, 6,230 for August, 6,208 for September, 6,206 for December and 6,204 for March.
Electronics (TE) and financial (TF) futures, which are sub-index futures based on Taiwan Stock Exchange-listed electronics shares and financial stocks, were mostly lower.
July TE futures moved down 2.75 points to close at 254.5, with 3,388 contracts traded, while August TE futures lost 2.4 points to finish at 252.6, with 59 contract transactions. September TE futures moved down 2.05 points to end at 251.95, with four contracts traded.
No transactions were recorded for December and March.
NT dollar declines
The New Taiwan dollar declined against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, losing NT$0.004 to close at NT$31.365.
A total of US$408 million changed hands during the day's trading.
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],”
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
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