Responding to farmers' complaints about rising fertilizer prices, the Council of Agriculture (COA) vowed yesterday there would be no further price hikes until the end of this year.
“There won’t be any price hikes in the next seven months,” COA Minister Chen Wu-hsiung (陳武雄) told a legislative committee yesterday.
Taiwan Fertilizer Co (台灣肥料), the nation’s largest fertilizer manufacturer and supplier, agreed on Friday to absorb 15 percent of the price hike, while the government would subsidize 70 percent of the increase. The remaining 15 percent will be paid for by farmers.
However, legislators yesterday urged Taiwan Fertilizer to absorb the other 15 percent, as the company has profits coming from non-operating activities, such as land development and Al-Jubail Fertilizer Co, a joint venture between Taiwan Fertilizer and Saudi Basic Industries Corp.
“Taiwan Fertilizer can absorb the additional 15 percent price and should subsidize [fertilizer prices] all the way,” Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Liao Cheng-ching (廖正井) told the legislature’s Economics Committee.
Liao said that Taiwan Fertilizer had non-operating revenues of NT$4.5 billion last year, and NT$1 billion in the first quarter of this year. The company’s net profit in the first quarter was NT$950 million.
But Taiwan Fertilizer president Lee Jen-chieh (李仁傑) said that as a listed company, with 76 percent of its shares held by the public, it has an obligation to uphold the interests of its shareholders.
Taiwan Fertilizer, originally a state-owned enterprise under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, was privatized in September 1999.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the