Taiwan should be more aggressive in enhancing trade with Europe after bilateral trade saw a significant drop in January, the European Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (ECCT) said yesterday.
Hurt by the global downturn, the country’s exports to the EU contracted for the fourth consecutive month to a 32.8 percent year-on-year drop in January while EU exports to Taiwan fell 51 percent during the same period, the chamber’s statistics showed.
EU investment in Taiwan, meanwhile, dropped about 73 percent year-on-year to US$1.9 billion last year, the chamber said.
Taiwan should redouble its efforts in pushing for Trade Enhancement Measures with the EU, in lieu of which Taiwan would risk losing its global competitiveness after an EU-South Korea free-trade agreement is activated, ECCT chairman Philippe Pellegrin said yesterday.
It reaffirmed its support for an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) between Taiwan and China, which it said would create opportunities for local and European firms.
The chamber said the nation’s 20 percent withholding tax on income from outsourced services had prompted European businesses to consider shutting down their local operations.
The government should also refrain from imposing additional taxes on luxury goods, which would go counter to its goal of spurring domestic consumption.
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