■ 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.
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
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purpose: Tesla’s CEO sought to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the rollout of its ‘full self-driving’ software in China and approval to transfer data they had collected Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing yesterday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of "full self-driving" (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang (李強) in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. Musk confirmed his meeting with the premier yesterday with a post on social media platform X. "Honored to meet with Premier Li