Kaohsiung has slipped from the list of the world’s top 10 container ports as container traffic continues to be hit hard by the global economic downturn, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday.
Last year, container-handling volume at Kaohsiung totaled 9.68 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), down 5.6 percent from 2007 when it was 10.26 million TEU, the ministry said.
The decrease dragged the port’s world ranking down from 8th in 2007 to 12th last year, the ministry said.
The ministry, however, was optimistic that Kaohsiung’s competitiveness would pick up as a result of the direct shipping links launched between Taiwan and China in December. The volume of cross-strait containers handled by the port reached 74,000 TEU in March, it said.
The ministry’s data show that the world’s five busiest container ports in 2007 maintained their rankings last year.
They were Singapore with 29.92 million TEU, Shanghai with 27.98 million TEU, Hong Kong with 24.25 million TEU, Shenzhen with 21.41 million TEU and Busan with 13.43 million TEU.
Dubai moved from 7th to 6th with 11.83 million TEU; Ningbo from 11th to 7th with 11.23 million TEU; and Guangzhou from 12th to 8th with 11 million TEU.
Ninth place was held by Rotterdam with 10.80 million TEU, dropping from 6th the previous year, while Qingdao maintained its position as the world’s 10th-busiest container port with 10.32 million TEU.
Among the top 10 ports, six were Chinese — Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Ningbo, Guangzhou and Qiangdao.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure