State-run oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) yesterday said it hoped the new government would adopt a more reasonable energy policy by scrapping the four-month-long approach of freezing local fuel prices in an attempt to stop widening losses.
"The price of oil is not the only thing to blame for rising consumer prices," Liao Tsang-long (廖滄龍), deputy director of industrial relations for CPC, said by telephone yesterday. "We hope the government will seek a more reasonable solution. The oil price should be decided by the market mechanism."
The CPC is expected to post less of NT$20 billion (US$654.7 million) in the first three months and to expand to NT$42 billion in the first half of the year, if the oil retail price stays at the current level.
Without a rate increase to compensate for the hike in fuel costs, the state utility, Taiwan Power Co (Taipower,
Taipower last raised its rates by 5.8 percent in July 2006, which was the only increase since 1983.
"It is not common for oil companies like CPC to post constant massive losses," Liao said.
The fuel price measures did not accomplish the CPC's goal of easing price pressure on the public, he said, as the government subsidized big oil consumers, not average consumers.
The company's remarks came ahead of a Ministry of Economic Affairs meeting this week to review the government's oil price policy. The new measure will take effect on April 1, a ministry official said yesterday.
"The ministry will come out with a decision in a meeting next [this] week," the official, who requested anonymity, said.
The Central News Agency said earlier yesterday that the ministry was considering ending the price freeze measure and resuming the mechanism of fluctuation based on global oil prices.
The report also said that the CPC may raise fuel prices as high as NT$4 per liter to make up its losses over the past few months.
Liao declined to comment yesterday on the speculation, saying that the range of price hikes is up to the government.
If the CPC decided to allow its fuel prices to fully reflect the rise in costs, it would drive the prices of 95 unleaded gasoline, the most popular gasoline, from NT$30.7 per liter to NT$34.7 per liter.
In November, the government ordered CPC to hold its fuel prices unchanged, beginning in December, after the consumer price index (CPI) increased to a 13-year high in October.
In the first two months, the CPI reading has increased an average of 3.42 percent from a year ago, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said earlier this month.
The inflation benchmark is expected to expand 3.89 percent for the full year, the agency said.
President Chen Shui-bian's (
More changes, however, are expected, as president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (
Also see: EDITORIAL: Ma faces many challenges
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS