TAIEX up a cautious 0.2 percent
Share prices closed 0.2 percent higher yesterday, steadying after a week of heavy losses as investors rotated into non-tech industrial and financial stocks, dealers said.
They said the market may have hit or is approaching the bottom, as investors appear to have done most of their selling, opening up the possibility of a rebound next month after the close of the first quarter.
The TAIEX added 12.02 points to close at 6,376.62, on turnover of NT$76.86 billion (US$2.35 billion). Gainers led decliners 448 to 436, with 182 stocks unchanged.
No delays, THSRC says
Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC, 台灣高鐵), contractor of the nation's first bullet train, yesterday said it would inaugurate its full-line service as scheduled at the end of October, a public relations official said.
THSRC made the remarks in response to a Japanese-language Yukanfuji report, which cited sources in Taiwan and Japan as saying that the high-speed rail will only run from Banciao (板橋) in Taipei County to Kaohsiung City by the end of October, rather than from the Taipei Railway Station to Kaohsiung due to delays in communication and electrical system installations around the stations.
The report also said that the Taipei-Banciao segment will not start operating until the eve of the next Lunar New Year.
THSRC said it had completed 93.49 percent of the project at the end of January and will deliver the whole project by October.
Money supply growth slows
Money supply growth slowed last month for the first time in three months due to a decrease in net capital inflows, weak growth in bank loans and Lunar New Year distortions, the Central Bank of China said.
M2, the broadest measure of the nation's money supply, rose 6.5 percent last month from a year ago after gaining 7.2 percent in January, the Bank said in a statement yesterday.
M1A, which tracks net currency in circulation plus checking accounts and passbook deposits, expanded 6.0 percent last month after increasing 9.9 percent in January, the Bank said.
M1B, which excludes time deposits and foreign-currency deposits included in M2, rose 5.6 percent last month, after expanding 8.4 percent the previous month.
China investments approved
The Investment Commission yesterday said it approved 13 China-bound investment plans worth US$333.01 million this week, including those by Asustek Com-puter Inc (華碩電腦) and AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電).
Asustek, a leading notebook computer and mobile communications manufacturer, was given the green light on Thursday to invest US$50 million to set up a wholly owned unit, North Tek (Shanghai) (恭碩科技), to manufacture cellphone related products, the commission said.
The commission also approved the application by flat-panel display maker AUO to invest US$50 million in Xiamen and US$30 million in Suzhou to manufacture backlight modules and other components for flat-panel display use.
In the first two months of this year, the commission approved a total of US$913 million in China investment applications, up 31.9 percent from a year earlier.
The commission said it also approved on Thursday five applications for inbound investments totaling US$830.27 million, pushing the combined authorized value so far this year to US$1.79 billion.
NT$ dollar falls further
The New Taiwan dollar continued to lose ground against the US dollar on the Taipei foreign exchange market yesterday, sliding NT$0.091 to close at NT$32.669.
Turnover was US$951 million.
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