RC shoes bad news
Imported footwear from China has substantially damaged the domestic industry, the International Trade Commission ruled yesterday after months of investigation.
The commission will notify the Ministry of Finance of its final ruling and the latter will decide on whether to impose anti-dumping taxes on Chinese shoes by July 13 at the latest, officials said.
The Ministry of Finance imposed a provisional anti-dumping tax of up to 43.46 percent on footwear imported from China on March 13 after locally manufactured footwear manufacturers had filed a complaint with the commission last August.
Nation's reserves `adequate'
The nation's foreign-currency reserves "are adequate" because they can pay for 15.7 months of imports, longer than the world average of 7.5 months, the central bank said.
"The average amount would already be okay," Duann Jin-sheng (段金生), chief of the central bank's foreign-exchange department, said in Taipei yesterday.
Foreign-currency reserves fell 0.3 percent from a month earlier to US$265.7 billion on May 31, the third straight monthly decline. The drop was in part because of increased overseas assets held by Taiwanese residents, the central bank said on June 5.
Taiwan Liquor predicts growth
State-run Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp (TTL, 台灣菸酒公司) expects to record 12 percent growth on beer sales this year, driven by persistent efforts to attract young consumers, president Lai Shung-tang (賴舜堂) said yesterday.
The firm posted brisk sales of NT$24.5 billion (US$746.1 million) in beer products last year, up by 10 percent from a year ago, thanks to the powerful endorsement of pop diva Chang Hui-mei (張惠妹), known as A-mei, he said.
With a market share of over 80 percent, TTL plans to launch a marketing campaign emphasizing the freshness of its beer, its biggest advantage compared with imported rivals.
Following several years of efforts to increase sales, its star product, Gold Medal Taiwan Beer (金牌台灣啤酒), which appeals to the young, comprises 40 percent of its beer sales, he said.
Bank of Taiwan chairman stays
The Ministry of Finance yesterday said the state-run Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行) is scheduled to take over smaller rival, the Central Trust of China (中央信託局), on Sunday, and the bank's chairman Tsai Jer-shyong (蔡哲雄) and president Peter Lo (羅澤成) will remain on their posts. Deputy Minister of Finance Liu Teng-cheng (劉燈城) will double as the chairman of the Export-Import Bank of ROC (輸出入銀行) for three months starting on Sunday after Pauline Fu's (符寶玲) term expires tomorrow.
The state-funded Financial Information Service Co (財金公司) is scheduled to hold a shareholder meeting today. Chen Yung-cheng (陳永誠) is expected to be elected as chairman and Robin Huang (黃瑞屏) will remain as president.
Car anti-theft system certified
Yulong Nissan Motor Co (裕隆日產), a Taiwan-Japan joint venture, has received the nation's first certificate from the Ministry of the Interior for its newly developed vehicle anti-theft system called "Anti Theft Vehicle Identification Number."
The system protects a vehicle by tagging vehicle identification numbers on important components, Yulong Nissan spokesman Jack Wu(吳新發) said on Wednesday. These security labels are invisible and very difficult to remove. Even if the labels are scratched off, ultraviolet marks will be left on the vehicle for tracing, Wu said.
All of the cars produced by Nissan will be fitted with the system starting on Sunday.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to