■ Investment
Taiwan ranked joint fifth
Taiwan tied with Norway as the world's fifth best country for foreign investment, according to a recent report by the US-based Business Environment Risk Intelligence (BERI) market research company. Taiwan scored 72 points in the BERI's third 2005 investment climate risk evaluation survey and tied with Norway at fifth in the world ranking. Taiwan only lagged behind Switzerland, Singapore, Japan and the Netherlands and was included along with them in the low-risk 1A category, which is highly recommended by BERI for foreign investors, the officials noted. In Asia,Taiwan was the third best country in terms of foreign investment climate, second only to Singapore and Japan. In terms of business risk, Taiwan ranked third in the world after Switzerland and Singapore. In terms of political risk, Taiwan placed 15th in the world and third in Asia, the same as in 2004.
■ Cargo
Ships to call in Keelung
CMA-CGM, the world's third-largest container shipping line, will include Keelung Harbor on its Asia-Latin America service, CMA-CGM's representative in Taiwan said yesterday. "Starting March, CMA-CGM ships will make port call at Keelung Harbor on its Asia-Latin America route, serviced by eight 3,300-TEU vessels. This is because CMA-CGM is using larger ships and wants to pick up more cargo," CMA-CGM (Taiwan) President James Chow said. CMA-CGM's port calls at the Keelung Harbor is good news to Taiwan ports which are losing their competitiveness due to Taiwan's five-decade ban on shipping links with China. In recent years several foreign lines have cancelled port calls to Taiwan and switched to using feeder service to send goods from Taiwan ports to mother vessels in the Hong Kong Port. CMA-CGM, based in Marseille, France, cancelled port calls to Kaohsiung Harbor in 1996 but resumed them again in 2004.
■ Fraud
Former fair trade VC indicted
Chen Chi-yuan (陳紀元), a former vice chairman of the Fair Trade Commission, was indicted on Wednesday on charges including fraud and embezzlement. The Taipei District Prosecutors' Office, which presented the indictment on Wednesday night, is seeking a four-year prison sentence for Chen. According to the indictment, Chen allegedly acted to steal public funds from the Ministry of Economic Affairs during a period of time between 1998-2003 when he was commissioned by the ministry to plan and carry out governmental research-oriented projects. He was then the head of a private business management consultant company.
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
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