Taiwan’s shipbuilding market is still depressed despite recent economic growth and might not significantly rebound until next year, the nation’s leading ship manufacturer said yesterday.
Industry prices, which have fallen sharply since the economic recession took hold in 2008, have only recovered to 80 percent of pre-crisis levels, said Paul Tang (譚泰平), chairman of the state-owned shipbuilder, CSBC Corp, Taiwan (CSBC, 台灣國際造船).
Taiwan has failed to provide better mortgage conditions for foreign companies and many buyers are still delaying having new vessels delivered to avoid having to make early payments, Tang said, adding that those factors are hampering market growth.
CSBC will increase its production capacity by 50 percent to meet the challenges of the sluggish market, said Tang, who was president of the shipbuilder before taking over the chairmanship from Cheng Wen-long (鄭文隆) in December.
Although Japan is reeling after the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis, its shipbuilding industry has not been affected and remains one of the world’s top three shipbuilders. along with China and South Korea, Tang said.
CSBC’s orders of raw materials and equipment from Japan have therefore not been affected by the earthquake, he added.
Tang said the company planned to pay out a cash dividend of NT$1.80 a share on last year’s earnings. The Kaohsiung-based shipbuilder reported a net income of NT$1.7 billion (US$57.7 million) last year, down 30.8 percent from NT$2.46 billion the previous year, according to a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Tuesday.
Earnings per share were NT$2.3 last year, compared with NT$3.39 in 2009. Last year’s revenue also declined 16.1 percent to NT$26.17 billion from NT$31.19 billion in 2009.
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