Gasoline, diesel prices up
Gasoline and diesel prices will increase by NT$1.1 and NT$1.2 per liter respectively today, state-owned oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) and its private rival Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday.
After the adjustment, CPC’s price for a liter of 98-octane unleaded gasoline will be NT$26.6. The price of 95-octane unleaded gasoline will be NT$25.1, and 92-octane unleaded gasoline will cost NT$24.4 per liter, the company said. Diesel will be priced at NT$21.7 per liter, it added.
Home sales enjoy turnaround
Home sales rose for the first time in nine months after the stock market surged, a real estate broker said.
The transaction volume of residential apartments increased by about 30 percent in the first 20 days of this month compared with all of last month, said Stanley Su (蘇啟榮), senior researcher at Sinyi Realty Co (信義房屋), Taiwan’s biggest property broker.
Sinyi would provide a full-month tally next week, Su said.
“The economic environment is showing signs of recovery and falling home prices also helped boost housing sales,” Su said.
The volume of housing transactions had been declining month on month since June, he added.
Compal revenues down
Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦), the world’s second-largest notebook computer maker on a contract basis, yesterday reported consolidated revenue of NT$478.75 billion (US$14.17 billion) for last year, down 4 percent from NT$498.27 billion in 2007.
The company posted consolidated net income of NT$13.55 billion last year, a 15 percent decrease from 2007, according to the firm’s financial report released yesterday.
Taiwan excels in ICT: report
Taiwan is the 13th most networked economy in the world, with a well-developed information and communication technology (ICT) industry, the World Economic Forum said on Thursday.
Taiwan continues to deliver a convincing performance in networked readiness, climbing four places to 13th on the Networked Readiness Index (NRI), a measure of ICT competitiveness, according to a report released by the group.
The NRI examines how prepared countries are to use ICT effectively on three measures: in general business as well as in the regulatory and infrastructure environment; the readiness of three key stakeholder groups — individuals, businesses and governments — to use and benefit from ICT; and actual usage of the latest information and communication technologies.
In the Global Information Technology Report 2008-2009 released on Thursday, Taiwan ranked first in cluster development and utility patents and ranked high in areas including high-tech exports, tertiary enrollment, buyer sophistication and prevalence of foreign technology licensing, according to the report.
NT dollar continues good run
The New Taiwan dollar completed a fourth weekly advance, the best run in a year, as signs the global recession may be easing fueled a rally in stocks and increased demand for emerging-market assets.
The NT dollar gained 0.1 percent this week to NT$33.779 at the 4pm close, according to Taipei Forex Inc. The currency has climbed 3.6 percent this month, trimming the quarter’s loss to 2.8 percent.
The local currency would slide 6.2 percent to NT$36 by the end of June and stay at around that level for the remainder of the year as recessions in the US and Europe take their toll on exports, Richard Yetsenga, HSBC Holdings PLC’s head of Asian currency strategy in Hong Kong, said in a report yesterday.
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