■TRADE
Exports to China drop
Although Taiwan remained China’s third-largest source of imports last year, its share declined as Chinese purchases of Taiwanese goods contracted 17.1 percent from a year earlier, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) reported yesterday. The ministry, citing data from Chinese customs, said that Taiwanese products accounted for 8.5 percent of Chinese imports last year, down from 9.1 percent in 2008. Japan remained China’s top source of imports with a 13 percent share last year, slightly down from 13.3 percent in 2008, while South Korea was second with a market share of 10.2 percent, up from the 9.9 percent of the previous year.
■MEXICO
Economy shrinks 6.8%
The country’s economy shrank 6.8 percent last year, the worst result in at least 30 years, the Treasury Department said on Friday. The decline in full-year gross domestic product outpaced the 6.2 percent fall during the currency and debt crisis in 1995. A bright spot was a 1.2 percent expansion in the fourth quarter of last year from the third quarter, the report said. Still, it was the second consecutive quarter of GDP growth. The economy expanded 2.9 percent in the third quarter. The Treasury Department said it expects GDP to grow about 3 percent for all of this year.
■BANKS
Icesave talks go nowhere
Talks between Icelandic, British and Dutch officials ended on Friday with no immediate solution to a dispute over compensation for funds lost when Iceland’s banking system collapsed. Iceland is seeking a way to avoid a potentially damaging referendum over repaying the US$5.7 billion that Britain and the Netherlands spent to compensate their citizens’ depositors in Icesave, an Internet bank that collapsed with its parent Landsbanki in October 2008. In a joint statement, the trio of countries said their ministers “exchanged views,” but declined to elaborate further on Friday’s discussions in The Hague.
■INSURANCE
IMF chief touts premium
The head of the IMF said on Friday that he would propose an “insurance premium” for the financial system to cover any eventual new crisis. “What we are trying get across [to help limit the damage of any future crisis] is that the financial system is a risk system,” Dominique Strauss-Kahn told France 24 television. “What we must avoid is the profits going only to the private sector while any losses have to be taken by society as a whole,” Strauss-Kahn said. The financial sector should pay an insurance premium to provide for the times when the system fails to work, he said.
■WORK
Young Europeans struggling
Youth unemployment across Europe has risen as inadequate training and the widespread use of short-term contracts make young workers one of the main victims of the economic downturn, EU officials said on Friday. The unemployment rate among those under the age of 25 across the 27-nation bloc hit 21.4 percent last month, up from 16.9 percent during the same period a year earlier and more than double the rate of 9.6 percent for the general population, EU statistics office Eurostat said on Friday. The jobless rate among youths last month varied greatly across the EU, from a low of 7.6 percent in the Netherlands to a high of 44.5 percent in Spain.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six