Despite the economic slowdown, Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport had the seventh-largest passenger traffic volume and the sixth-largest air cargo shipment volume last year in the Asia-Pacific region, a MasterCard Worldwide survey showed yesterday.
The survey, titled “Networked Cities in Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa,” said airports in Hong Kong, Dubai and Singapore had the top three biggest airport passenger traffic volumes last year after respectively handling 47.2 million, 36.6 million and 36.3 million passenger trips last year.
That was followed by Tokyo’s 34.7 million, Seoul’s 31.5 million, Bangkok’s 30.1 million and Taoyuan’s 21.9 million passenger trips last year, up 12.6 percent year-on-year.
In the air cargo shipment, Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo were ranked the top three after handling 3.6 million, 2.4 million and 2.1 million tonnes of air cargo last year, the survey showed.
That was followed by Shanghai and Singapore’s 1.9 million each, Dubai’s 1.7 million and Taoyuan’s 1.5 million tonnes of air cargo, up 6.7 percent from one year earlier.
The survey, which looked into 27 cities in the regions, yesterday concluded that Taipei played an important role as a transportation hub in Northeast Asia, connecting Tokyo, Hong Kong and Bangkok, while Shanghai and Beijing in China networked with Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul.
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last