■FINANCE
BOT to open in Shanghai
Bank of Taiwan (BOT, 臺灣銀行) plans to open a branch in Shanghai to offer banking services to Chinese clients. The move follows the bank’s establishment of yuan business in Hong Kong last year, BOT chairwoman Susan Chang (張秀蓮) told reporters yesterday in Taipei. With the rising number of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan, Taiwan will offer cash withdrawal services to Chinese Unionpay cards through automated teller machines from 18 banks in Taiwan by the end of the month, Chang said. Separately, Taiwan Financial Holding Co (台灣金控), the parent of BOT, does not have any share sale plan this year or next year, Chang said.
■ENERGY
Huaneng to start reactors
China Huaneng Group (華能集團), China’s biggest power company, plans to start operating high-temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactors in Shandong Province in 2013, company vice president Huang Yongda (黃永達) told a climate conference in Beijing. China Huaneng and its partners, including Tsinghua University, are building the 200-megawatt trial nuclear plant using domestic technology, Huang said yesterday. The high-temperature gas-cooled reactors are “highly efficient and safe” and have support from the central government’s strategy to boost energy security, Huang said.
■TRANSPORTATION
Cruise ship visits Keelung
Keelung Harbor welcomed a liner from Star Cruises, the largest cruise line in the Asia-Pacific region, on Friday as it began its seasonal cruise service connecting Keelung and Japan’s Ryukyu Islands. The vessel, the SuperStar Libra, was scheduled to depart from Keelung at 10pm on Friday with 1,400 passengers on board for Japan’s Yonaguni Island. The four-day cruise will make port calls at several destinations in the Ryukyu Island chain, including Ishigaki Island. The SuperStar Libra, which has 740 cabins, is scheduled to operate 74 tours between Keelung and the Ryukyu Islands from now until Oct. 24.
■SPAIN
Economy up in first quarter
Spain’s economy took a tentative step out of recession by growing in the first three months of this year after six quarters of contraction, the Bank of Spain said on Friday. GDP rose 0.1 percent from January to March, but shrank 1.3 percent from a year earlier, the bank said. Spain’s large budget deficit remains a concern to the EU amid fears that the crisis over Greece’s large debt load could spread to other countries with large budget shortfalls, the bank said. Spain’s economy is four times the size of Greece’s, and last week Standard & Poor’s cut Spain’s credit rating from AA+ to AA.
■SHIPPING
Oil tanker launched
Brazil on Friday launched the first of 10 domestically built oil tankers it will use to boost its trade in “black gold” and give new life to its shipbuilding industry. The 274m-long vessel, named the Jaoa Candido after a famous black Brazilian sailor, cost US$120 million and can transport 1 million barrels of crude — approximately half the daily output of Brazilian state oil company Petrobras. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva led the launching ceremony, telling the 3,700 shipyard workers that the tanker symbolized “a people’s high affirmation.” Brazil is sitting on 14 billion barrels of proven reserves of crude oil and expects to more than triple that with recent offshore finds, propelling it into the ranks of major oil exporters.
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