■ Taiwan meets APEC target
Taiwan last year achieved the goal of paperless trading set by the APEC forum to enhance the administrative efficiency of customs clearance and trade, officials with the Council for Economic Planning and Development said yesterday. The measures taken by the government included providing online processing of trading documents, with more than 400,000 applications having been filed this way since the service was launched last March, the officials said.
■ Voucher limits highlighted
Revealing the findings of its survey conducted in late October, the Consumers' Foundation (消基會) said yesterday that half of the 14 kinds of gift vouchers collected for the study carried an expiry date. These vouchers issued by a variety of retailers have validity periods ranging from six months to two years. Voucher owners forfeit their rights if they inadvertently let them expire, the foundation said. Some vouchers could not be used at certain times, while others were precluded from being used to buy discount items or with buyers club membership cards. The foundation urged those consumers in possession of gift vouchers to read the fine print and find out about the restrictions.
■ NT dollar rises
The New Taiwan dollar gained against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, rising NT$0.032 to close at NT$32.818. A total of US$517 million changed hands during the day's trading.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
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