■ TRADE
Exports set to soar: bureau
Taiwan's export volume is expected to post double-digit growth this year despite the slowdown in growth momentum in the first half of the year, Bureau of Foreign Trade officials said yesterday. The officials said the second half of each year is usually the brisk season for Taiwanese exports, especially consumer electronic products. Ministry of Finance tallies show the nation's exports rose 7.6 percent year-on-year to US$135.12 billion for the first seven months of this year, while imports increased 7 percent year-on-year to US$1124.13 billion. This translates into a trade surplus of US$10.99 billion, up 14.9 percent compared with the same period last year, the tallies show.
■ MACROECONOMICS
IMF reassures on turmoil
The IMF said on Friday that global financial market turmoil sparked by the troubled US mortgage sector and a related credit crunch should be "manageable." The multilateral lender said global economic growth should not be derailed by the mortgage and credit jitters. "While the situation is still evolving, we continue to believe that the systemic consequences of the reassessment of credit risk that is taking place will be manageable," IMF spokesman Masood Ahmed said. "The fundamentals supporting strong global growth remain in place, and the re-establishment of credit discipline that is occurring is a healthy development," the spokesman said.
■ INTERNET
Hackers raid Norwegian data
Hackers have stolen confidential data on 60,000 Norwegians, including the head of the agency for safeguarding them, the agency itself revealed on Friday. It said they had used a weakness on the Web site of the telephone operators Tele2 to procure the personal identity numbers and addresses of subscribers, amounting to 1.3 percent of the country's population. The information would enable the hackers to change the addresses of the people concerned so as to intercept their mail, or order goods on their account. Tele2, which had been warned several times to make its Web site more secure, has promised to do so, while police are investigating.
■ PETROLEUM
Caracas wants to keep cuts
Venezuela will urge OPEC to maintain existing oil production cuts and keep output levels unchanged, Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said on Friday. "We believe that the oil cuts must be left in place, and we have carried them out," Ramirez told reporters at a summit of Caribbean leaders participating in a Venezuelan oil-supply pact called Petrocaribe in Caracas. Ramirez said Venezuela would make its proposal when the OPEC meets in late September.
■ ELECTRONICS
Sanyo denies sale rumor
Sanyo Electric Co, undergoing a restructuring plan led by creditors including Goldman Sachs Group Inc, denied a media report that it is in talks to sell its mobile-phone business as soon as this year. Japanese state-run broadcaster NHK said yesterday that Osaka-based Sanyo Electric was negotiating the sale with other Japanese cellphone manufacturers, citing people with knowledge of the talks. The report didn't specify the potential buyers or the price. "We are currently considering measures to enhance our cellphone business and at this moment we haven't made any decision regarding such a sale," Ahikiko Oiwa, Sanyo Electric's spokesman, said yesterday by telephone.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by