Taiwan has been ranked second in Asia in business sophistication, enhancing the country’s productivity and competitiveness, the Council for Economic Planning and Development said on Saturday, citing a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Taiwan’s business sophistication scored 5.22 on a scale of 1 to 7 in the WEF’s Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010 released in September, the 13th highest worldwide and the best ranking Taiwan has obtained since 2005.
In Asia, Taiwan’s business sophistication was ranked second only to Japan, ahead of Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and China.
CRITERIA
The criteria used by the WEF to evaluate business sophistication include local supplier quantity and quality, state of cluster development, nature of competitive advantage and value chain breadth.
Others are control of international distribution, production process sophistication, extent of marketing and willingness to delegate authority.
Taiwan’s overall competitiveness ranking improved five notches to 12th place from last year.
The report attributes Taiwan’s significant progress to the fact that the country has fully developed into an innovation-driven economy — the third and most advanced stage of development as defined by the Global Competitiveness Index framework.
SALARIES
Meanwhile, a record number of Taiwanese businesses froze their salaries last year as they were impacted by the effects of the global economic crisis, a government survey released on Friday showed.
As many as 86 percent of the polled firms said they suspended wage increases last year, up from 76.3 percent in 2007, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said in a statement.
It marked the highest level since the government started such surveys in 1997.
The survey, covering nearly 9,600 companies, said about 4 percent of the firms cut wages last year, the highest level in six years.
crisis
“The survey reflected the impact of global financial crisis, which led to a worsening domestic economy in the second half of 2008,” the directorate general said in the statement.
Last year, employees of only 10.9 percent of the businesses enjoyed wage hikes, the lowest level since 1997, the survey said.
Taiwan’s economy contracted 7.54 percent in the second quarter, following a 10.13 percent fall recorded in the first quarter.
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