■ Wholesale sales rise
Sales of wholesale, retail and bar and restaurant industries totaled NT$925.6 billion (US$28.9 billion) in March, up 5.42 percent over the same month of last year, according to figures released yesterday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA). Sales of the three industries amounted to NT$2.67 trillion in the first quarter of this year, representing a rise of 6.87 percent from the year-earlier level.
In March, sales of the wholesale industry amounted to NT$648.3 billion, up 7.21 percent from a year earlier.
Sales in the retail industry amounted to NT$253.5 billion, up 1.10 percent. While sales of fuel products rose 11.74 percent, other retail products grew 11.51 percent.
Sales in the bar and restaurant industry amounted to NT$23.8 billion in March, up 5.33 percent over the year-earlier level.
■ MOEA to study AmCham report
The government attaches great importance to the opinions of the foreign business community and will continue reforms to improve Taiwan's business environment, MOEA officials said yesterday.
They were responding to the 2006 Taiwan White Paper that the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Taipei released on Tuesday. In the report, AmCham urged the government to speed up the launch of direct transport links with China, enhance intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and accelerate economic integration with China.
The officials said an IPR court will be set up next year to provide better IPR protection and the government is also planning to lift the restrictions on foreigners in investing in financial, land transportation and rental industries.
■ Taiwan is morally weak: poll
People think the recent stock market insider-trading scandal shows that the nation's moral standards have declined, according to the results of an opinion survey the Chinese-language Business Weekly released on Tuesday.
The poll surveyed 828 people aged 20 and over and found that 86 percent of the respondents believe that moral standards are lower than they were 10 years ago.
Forty-eight percent agreed that to get things done, one needs to rely on privilege, while 45 percent said they would seek help from "influential figures" if necessary. Almost 40 percent said that they would engage in insider trading.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last