Oil sales have declined over the past year as more people are take the public transport and leave their private vehicles at home, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said on Saturday.
The trend is probably a result of the soaring oil prices, DGBAS officials said.
Gasoline and diesel sales totaled 13.85 million kiloliters last year, down 2.2 percent from the previous year, the officials said, citing tallies from the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
For January, gasoline and diesel sales decreased 7 percent year-on-year to 1.16 million kiloliters, with gasoline sales dropping 7.9 percent to 819,000 kiloliters and diesel sales falling 4.6 percent to 344,000 kiloliters.
MORE GAS STATIONS
As of the end of January there were a total of 2,606 filling stations countrywide, up 27 stations from the same time last year.
Citing Ministry of Transportation and Communications tallies, the officials said that passenger traffic on the Taipei metro system had increased 7.4 percent year-on-year to 36 million people in January.
Passenger traffic on the high-speed rail rose 68.6 percent year-on-year to 2 million during the same month.
The number of small cars traveling on freeways dropped 1.3 percent year-on-year to 38 million in January, the officials said.
NO PRICE HIKE
In related news, state-owned Chinese Petroleum Corp Taiwan (CPC Taiwan,
Prices will remain at their current level as part of government efforts to keep commodity prices stable, it said.
The prices for the company's gasoline and diesel should rise by 12.6 percent, or NT$2.4 and NT$2.7 per liter respectively, under a formula used by the company to price its products based on international crude oil prices, the statement said.
Since last September the government has pegged domestic oil prices to international prices, while setting limits on its fluctuation.
Without the restrictions, based on international prices, domestic oil prices would have risen 26.13 percent since last September, CPC Taiwan said.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained