Wholesales, retail sales and food/beverage industies registered an increase of 2.51 percent in revenue last month from a year earlier to reach NT$1.04 trillion (US$32.5 billion). While the retail industry was the only sector to experience a decline, a Ministry of Economic Affairs report showed yesterday.
With NT$266.4 billion in sales last month, the retail industry declined 1.86 percent from a year ago. Among its sub-industries, the fuel industry saw the largest increase, at 10.56 percent, while the motor vehicles and parts industry dropped 34.76 percent from a year earlier.
Only 9,563 new cars were sold last month, the lowest monthly sales in 20 years, amid high oil prices.
“Also, sales of durable goods such as home appliances have been on the wane over the last few months,” an official at the Department of Statistics, who wished to remain anonymous, said by telephone yesterday.
Sales of the general merchandise industry, including department stores, supermarkets, convenience stores and hypermarkets reached NT$69.3 billion last month, up 3.26 percent from a year earlier.
Aided by promotions and Father’s Day last month, sales at department stores, including shopping malls, climbed 6.57 percent year-on-year to NT$17.1 billion. This compared with a 3.43 percent growth rate in the first eight months of this year.
Convenience store sales reached NT$18.1 billion last month, up 4.39 percent from a year earlier. Convenience store sales were up by 0.79 percent in the first eight months of this year, signaling that the industry may have reached maturity, the official said.
The convenience store market remained very competitive, with the four major convenience store chains operating more than 9,000 stores nationwide. As a result, business operators will have to either launch promotions or provide new services to widen their revenues, the official 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],”
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
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