Domestic gasoline and diesel prices will go down by NT$2.3 and NT$2.5 per liter respectively today to reflect the recent fall in international crude oil prices.
The latest price adjustment represents not only the biggest drop since the government announced weekly oil price adjustments, on Aug. 1, but also brings the prices of gasoline and diesel products under NT$30 per liter.
After the price adjustment, CPC’s price for a liter of 98-octane unleaded gasoline is NT$29.4, 95-octane unleaded gasoline is NT$27.9, 92-octane unleaded gasoline is NT$27.2 and premium diesel is NT$24.5.
Both state-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) and the nation’s only publicly traded oil refiner, Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), announced the same price drop yesterday.
The average price of the nation’s crude oil imports last month was US$111.50 a barrel, while crude oil imports fell 20.7 percent from a year earlier to 25.08 million barrels last month as refiners shut units for maintenance, the Ministry of Finance reported on Tuesday.
CPC closed a crude distillation unit at its Talin (大林) refinery in Chiayi County early last month. Formosa shut a fuel-oil unit in Mailiao Township (麥寮), Yunlin County, on Sept. 1 for a scheduled turnaround.
CPC will shut a crude-oil processing unit in its Kaohsiung refinery this month for regular maintenance.
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