■ECONOMY
Cabinet to provide loans
Taiwan’s Cabinet plans to provide NT$900 billion (US$27.4 billion) in loans to help businesses through the economic slowdown, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday, citing Minister without Portfolio Chu Yun-peng (朱雲鵬). Under the plan, the Cabinet will first provide small and medium enterprises with NT$300 billion in loans and then start coordinating with seven state-run banks next month to offer NT$600 billion in loans to large corporations over the next two years, the report said. The Cabinet’s loan plan is part of the government’s effort to help companies obtain credit lines from banks and stave off layoffs. On Oct. 31, the Cabinet approved a short-term job-creation plan that aims to offer up to 56,000 jobs by June.
■ECONOMY
Export forecast lowered
Taiwan’s Bureau of Foreign Trade has reduced its export growth forecast for this year from 10 percent to 8 percent after exports declined in September and last month. Bureau Director-General Huang Chih-peng (黃志鵬) also said on Friday that growth next year was forecast at 8 percent, with a trade surplus of US$10 billion. Citing customs statistics, Huang said that Taiwan’s exports last month totaled US$20.81 billion, down US$1.88 billion, or 8.3 percent, from the same month last year.
■AVIATION
EVA to lead across Strait
EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), the nation’s second-largest air carrier, will be able to fly a total of 23 charter passenger flights to China each week, along with its affiliate UNI Airways Corp (立榮航空), the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday, citing the Civil Aeronautics Administration. China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), the nation’s largest carrier, and its subsidiary, Mandarin Airlines Ltd (華信航空), will run a total of 22 charter passenger flights to China weekly. Their smaller rival, TransAsia Airways Corp (復興航空), will operate nine weekly flights, the report said. The new flights arrangement came after Taiwan and China signed an agreement on Tuesday in Taipei that allows the number of charter passenger flights to triple from 36 to 108 per week.
■ENERGY
Chavez hails Russia venture
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez inaugurated his country’s first Venezuelan-Russian offshore natural gas project on Friday, hailing his country’s increasingly close energy cooperation with Russia as a counterweight to US imperialism. Donning hard hats, Chavez and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin mingled with workers from Venezuela’s government-controlled oil company and Russia’s state-run gas giant, Gazprom, as exploration began at a Gulf of Venezuela drilling platform. Gazprom won the contract to help develop two natural gas blocks in the gulf in 2005.
■AVIATION
Carrier, pilots ink pay pact
Singapore Airlines Ltd, the world’s largest carrier by market value, yesterday reached an agreement with pilots on pay and other benefits after a year of negotiations. The accord “forms the basis of a Points of Agreement that has been signed,” Singapore Airlines spokesman Stephen Forshaw said in an e-mailed statement that called the wage negotiations “challenging.” Singapore Airlines on Thursday reported that quarterly profit fell 36 percent, the biggest decline in more than three years to S$323.8 million (US$219 million), after it paid more for jet fuel and filled fewer seats.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained