A government survey this month found that 25 percent of light emitting diode (LED) toys sold on the local market were unsafe, while 65 percent failed to specify product information, a senior official of the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
The ministry’s Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection randomly inspected 20 China-made LED toys to protect children’s safety and safeguard consumer’s rights.
“Five of these toys failed to meet national safety standards as they have sharp edges that can easily harm children,” Wang Cheng-huei (王正輝), the bureau’s deputy director, said at the press conference, unveiling the results of the survey conducted this month.
Except for having sharp edges, the surveyed products met other safety standards, including those concerning flammability and heavy metal concentration, Wang said.
As for product information, 13 of the 20 inspected toys had no written labels, Wang said, adding that the toy importers evaded inspections before placing the toys on the market.
“Such furtive moves violate the Commodity Inspection Act, which requires that all LED toys must undergo government inspection and labeling before being sold on the market,” Wang said.
Penalties for toy importers who evade inspections range between NT$200,000 (US$6,579) and NT$2 million, he said.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS