The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said yesterday it respected a legislative resolution to impose a ceiling on domestic gasoline and diesel prices at certain levels, while state-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said it would evaluate the measure’s impact on its balance sheet.
The ministry and the state-run oil refiner’s responses came after the Legislative Yuan’s Economics Committee passed a resolution on Wednesday asking the ministry to cap prices of 95-octane unleaded gasoline at NT$32.5 per liter and NT$28 per liter for premium diesel to help ease the impact of rising oil prices on low-income households.
The 95-octane unleaded gasoline is currently priced at NT$30.8 per liter and premium diesel is sold at NT$27.6 per liter at stations run by CPC and rival Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化).
“The MOEA respects the Legislative Yuan’s opinion for a review of the floating oil price mechanism after lawmakers expressed concerns about the financial burden of the rising oil prices on people,” the ministry said in a statement yesterday.
Stressing that oil prices should be decided by the market mechanism, the MOEA said it already established a special task force within the ministry to review the floating oil price mechanism and, if necessary, it would act in accordance with the conclusions reached in April’s National Energy Conference to mitigate the impact of rising oil prices.
The Economics Committee’s resolution — which will become binding after it passes a second and third reading in the following legislative sessions — suggested the MOEA either freeze prices or hike prices by a smaller size than the rises in global oil prices.
Taiwan only began to allow domestic fuel prices to adjust according to world oil prices in May last year, after the former Democratic Progressive Party government imposed a four-month price freeze.
CPC first adjusted its domestic prices on a monthly basis, but changed it to weekly adjustments after August last year to better reflect market prices.
CPC spokesman Lin Maw-wen (林茂文) yesterday said the company respected the committee’s resolution and would assess the possible impact on its bottom line, but added that it was too early now to talk about freezing fuel prices.
He cited company president Chu Shao-hua (朱少華) as saying that CPC would consider a price freeze only when global crude oil prices top US$100 per barrel, compared with about US$80 per barrel in recent trading.
Tine Olsen, economist at Moody’s Economy.com in Sydney, however, said cheap fuel prices would prevent fuel users from migrating to green technology and encourage over-consumption.
“The potential freeze is popular among consumers and businesses, and it could help to lift sentiment on the island. But consumer sentiment is already recovering, so a boost from expensive fuel subsidies may not be worth the cost,” Olsen said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
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