Premier Frank Hsieh (
Hsieh made the remarks while delivering an administrative report at the Legislative Yuan.
With the oil price surging, the privately owned Formosa Petroleum Corp (
PHOTO: CHEN TSE-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
He said that although the price of oil has now dropped to around US$65 per barrel, analysts have diverging views on the oil-price trend and this is why the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Council for Economic Planning and Development have decided to observe the situation for three months before determining how to act.
The premier said that during the three-month period, the government is considering adjusting downward the commodity tax on some petroleum products so as to reduce the pressure on state-run Chinese Petroleum Corp (
Hsieh reaffirmed that not hiking gasoline prices and electricity fees will be given priority consideration and that other complementary measures will be taken.
He also said that the consumer price index rose last month largely because of the effect of higher agricultural-produce prices.
Separately, Hsieh said the government is not asking Chunghwa Telecom Co (
He made the remarks in reply to a question posed by People First Party legislators Wu Ching-chih (吳清池) and Chen Chao-jung (陳朝容).
The premier said that the government supports the construction of the high-speed railway but does not have a policy of asking Chunghwa Telecom to invest in the project. Inauguration of the high-speed railway service was recently postponed by a year until October next year.
As Chunghwa is now a private company in which the government is but a shareholder, the question of whether it will invest in the high-speed rail will have to be decided by its board of directors and supervisors, Hsieh said.
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