TAIEX closes at year’s high
Taiwanese shares rose 2.01 percent yesterday to close at a new high for the year, boosted by hopes that a special budget for a government stimulus package would be passed.
The weighted index, the market’s key barometer, advanced 114.16 points to close at 5,781.96, following gains on Wall Street and regional markets.
The TAIEX rose 252.33 points, or 4.56 percent, for the week.
Finishing higher for the second consecutive session, the local bourse opened at 5,784.90 and fluctuated between 5,788.21 and 5,696.56.
A total of 7.95 billion shares changed hands on market turnover of NT$160.14 billion (US$4.74 billion), the second-highest turnover in a session this year.
Foreign investors were net buyers of NT$12.1 billion in shares.
One analyst predicted that the market would sustain its upward moment because of sufficient liquidity even as profit-taking and other pressures try to pull the market lower in the coming days.
Gas, diesel prices raised
Gasoline and diesel prices will increase by NT$0.60 and NT$0.70 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 price adjustment, CPC’s price for a liter of 98-octane unleaded gasoline will be NT$27. The price of 95-octane unleaded gasoline will be NT$25.50, and 92-octane unleaded gasoline will cost NT$24.80 per liter, the company said. Diesel will be priced at NT$22.1 per liter, it added.
Formosa reopens facility
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) restarted a fuel oil unit after closing it for 35 days for scheduled maintenance.
The 80,000 barrel-a-day residue desulphurization facility in Mailiao resumed production on Sunday, Lin Keh-yen (林克彥), a company spokesman, said by telephone yesterday.
The facility was closed on March 1.
Formosa Petrochemical expects to process an average of 450,000 barrels of crude oil a day this month, higher than 400,000 barrels a day last month, after the stoppage ended, Lin said.
The company has the capacity to process 540,000 barrels of crude oil daily.
ProMOS delays settlement
ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技), the nation’s most unprofitable memory chip maker, said settlement of its discounted tender offer for convertible bonds had been postponed from last Friday to next Friday, it said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
Fubon’s profit drops 34 percent
Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), the nation’s second-largest listed financial-services company, posted a first-quarter profit of NT$2.24 billion (US$66 million), or NT$0.28 a share, it said in an exchange filing yesterday.
That was 34 percent lower than the NT$3.37 billion in profit a year earlier and included a loss from Antai Life Insurance Co (安泰人壽), which Fubon Financial acquired in February, the company said.
NT dollar ends week down
The New Taiwan dollar recorded its first weekly decline since February after the central bank reportedly stepped in to weaken the currency and help exporters weather a global recession.
The NT dollar closed at NT$33.795 against the greenback yesterday, down from NT$33.777 on Thursday and NT$33.38 at the end of last week, Taipei Forex Inc said.
The local currency dropped 1.2 percent versus the US dollar this week, the worst performer among Asia’s 10 most-active currencies.
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