The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said yesterday that none of the 1,800 Taiwanese companies operating in Thailand reported any damages from Tuesday night's coup d'dtat, but it will closely monitor the situation in the kingdom to ensure their safety.
Taiwanese business associations have told Taiwan's representative office in Thailand that their operations were unaffected by the coup, Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (陳瑞隆) told reporters.
"The coup was bloodless and people are conducting their normal lives ? we are used to this kind of military action as it happened before," a manager of a Thai company in Taiwan said yesterday on condition of anonymity.
Local listed companies with factories in Thailand include Cal-Comp Electronics (Thailand) Pub Co (
According to their filings with the Taiwan Stock Exchange, their Thai operations were normal yesterday. The companies said their factories are in the suburbs of Bangkok or outside the city.
A drop in the Thai baht would not gravely harm the companies, as transactions and most material purchases are conducted in US dollars, a Cal-Comp official said.
Government statistics show that as of the end of June, Taiwanese companies reported 1,849 investments worth US$11.79 billion in Thailand, including electronics manufacturing and textiles.
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