The Ministry of Finance yesterday said it would discuss on Friday the possibility of resuming sales of state-owned properties in Taipei in line with the city government’s efforts to develop the city.
A freeze on sales of government property holdings has been in place since March amid growing concern that sales could fuel already soaring property prices.
On March 2, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) put a halt to the National Property Administration’s plan to invite bids for state-owned land at a previously scheduled auction aimed at preventing worsening price gouging among construction companies.
The legislature’s Finance Committee then passed a resolution that public land auctions in Taipei City and Taipei County be halted for six months and that the ministry conduct a review on the reinstatement of the contentious bidding in half a year.
Minister of Finance Lee Sush-der (李述德) told reporters yesterday that the government was reconsidering selling state-owned assets to support urban renewal projects and generate better value for the properties.
In May, the ministry also established a “buy back” mechanism to prevent land hoarding, allowing it to repurchase public land of 100 ping (330m²) or more in the Taipei area that hasn’t been developed within two or three years of its initial auction.
Government data showed that nearly 30 percent of public land auctioned by the National Property Administration from 2004 to last year had not been developed, and as much as 50 percent of it had changed hands.
As of the end of last year, 75 of the 199 public land parcels that had been left undeveloped accounted for 33.67 percent of the combined 19.1 hectares of auctioned public land.
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
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
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