Amid a decline in international wheat prices that started last month, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday prompted the state-owned Taiwan Sugar Corp’s (台灣糖業) hypermarket chain store Taisuco (台糖量販店) to take the initiative in lowering prices of flour and related products by between 20 percent and 30 percent.
“Although the actual price cut depends on various factors, the ministry has asked the Industrial Development Bureau to negotiate with local business operators to first cut flour prices,” Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) told reporters yesterday.
The ministry’s press statement yesterday said that global wheat prices had dropped between 10 percent to 20 percent since March.
In response, Taisuco yesterday decided to offer a 20 percent to 30 percent discount on promotional products, local media reported.
The ministry also urged bakery associations, major hypermarkets, convenience stores and supermarket chains to lower the prices of flour products at a suitable time, so as to help stabilize domestic commodity prices.
However, the Taipei Bakery Association (台北市糕餅同業公會) said yesterday it was unlikely that pastry and bread prices would drop in line with falling international wheat prices as wheat is only one ingredient of the product beside cooking oil, milk and eggs, which have also risen in price.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts