■ Fishing sanctions `unlikely'
The chance of an international fishery meeting imposing sanctions on Taiwan for its fishing practices is slim, a Fisheries Administration official said yesterday. Fisheries Administration Deputy Director-General Sha Chih-yi (沙志一) made the remarks as the second annual meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission began yesterday.
Sha said Japan is expected to make fresh allegations about Taiwan's fishing practices on the high seas, but Taiwan will defend its fishing rights and elaborate on its fishing policies over the past year. Owing to pressure from Japan, which complained about Taiwan's overfishing, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) decided last month to cut Taiwan's bigeye tuna quota from 14,900 tonnes this year to 4,600 tonnes for the coming year. As a result, 42 fishing vessels specializing in catching bigeye tuna in the Atlantic will not be able to operate next year. Only 15 Taiwanese vessels will be allowed to continue fishing bigeye tuna in the Atlantic next year. The Council of Agriculture has offered to compensate each boat operator whose vessel is not fishing NT$5.97 million (US$178,200), but shipowners have estimated that they will lose an estimated NT$14.23 million.
■ NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar declined against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, losing NT$0.037 to close at NT$33.554. A total of US$688 million changed hands during the day's trading.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by