Carrefour to add three stores
Carrefour Taiwan, the nation's largest hypermarket chain, expects to add three new stores in the north this year to its existing 37, spokesman Allan Tien (田中玉) said yesterday.
Although small rivals are conservative about store expansion plans this year as consumer bad loans are weakening people's consumption power, Carrefour remains aggressive, seeing huge opportunities in second or third-tier cities, Tien said.
Carrefour also expects to take over British retailer Tesco's six outlets and two development sites in Taiwan this year following an asset-swap deal. But the original merger date of May 1 will have to be delayed as Slovakia's fair trade commission has not yet granted its approval, he said.
The pending acquisition has slashed Tesco Stores (Taiwan) Co's revenues by 20 percent, as long-term marketing campaigns can't be launched to attract customers, he added.
Automation fair opens
The Tainan Automation Industry Exhibition opened yesterday, with 217 exhibitors from home and abroad taking part.
Exhibitors are displaying their wares in 550 stalls at the exhibition, which is held at the Taiwan BERU Exhibition Center in Jente Township (仁德), Tainan County.
The Kaohsiung-based Metal Industries Research and Development Center occupies its own special area where it displays its research results with a focus on micro-mold and die technology.
The exhibition will be open from 10am to 6pm daily through Tuesday. Entry is free.
Investors to be lured back
The Ministry of Economic Affairs unveiled a new loan project on Thursday to attract overseas Taiwanese businesspeople to return home to rebuild their business.
According to the draft plan, the Executive Yuan will appropriate NT$200 billion (US$6.19 billion) for offering low-interest loans to Taiwanese businesspeople who have invested in other countries, including China, and now intend to launch new investment projects at home.
The new loan project will be put into practice by the end of next month if all goes well, ministry officials said.
It will enable prospective investors to apply for loans for land acquisition, factory construction, procurement of automated production facilities and pollution-control equipment, as well as manpower training, research and development, and short-term working capital.
HSBC poll shows pessimism
About 24 percent of the nation's middle-market enterprises -- companies with annual turnover between US$45 million and US$1.3 billion -- said they considered the current world economy to be "good" and 17 percent said they expected it to improve by the end of the year, according to a company survey.
But 36 percent said the economy is now "fairly bad" or "very bad" and 23 percent expect conditions to become worse by the end of the year, according to the latest Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp (HSBC) survey.
The survey, covering 4,000 businesses in the Asia-Pacific, Europe and the Americas, also showed that 70 percent of China's middle-market enterprises are happy with the current world economy, while 41 percent of middle-market enterprises in Hong Kong considered the current economy to be "very good" or "fairly good," according to the survey.
NT dollar remains strong
The New Taiwan dollar remained strong against its US counterpart yesterday, edging up NT$0.002 to close at NT$32.309 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$1.082 billion.
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