Bad times won’t last long: Liu
Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) Minister Christina Liu (劉憶如) yesterday forecast that the current economic winter “will not last very long” and is likely to bottom out at the end of the first quarter.
If everything goes as expected, the economy will gradually recover after the first quarter, Liu said during an interview with UFO Radio.
Liu said the eurozone debt crisis remains the most crucial issue to be resolved in the coming three months, a peak period of debt repayments for many European nations.
Although a broader eurozone crisis has been averted over the past six months with the support of the IMF and the European Central Bank, there are no easy answers to the fundamental issues, she said.
Good time to invest: TWSE
Despite the recent slump on the TAIEX, Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (TWSE, 台灣證交所) chairman Schive Chi (薛琦) said yesterday that investors should look at the main bourse in a positive way.
“Now is a good time for long-term investment in the local bourse because of the healthy fundamentals of listed companies and their low price-to-earnings ratios,” Schive said at a media briefing. “Listed companies’ debt-to-asset ratio stood at 36 percent at the end of 2011.”
Schive said he is also expecting an increase in the number of initial public offerings this year.
“There were 46 new listings in 2011. We are targeting 50 new listings this year, including Japanese companies,” he said.
No price rises, Starbucks says
President Starbucks Coffee Corp (統一星巴克), a joint venture of Taiwan’s Uni-President Group (統一集團) and US coffee chain Starbucks Corp, said yesterday that it has no plans to raise prices for any of its beverages.
The remark came after Starbucks announced on Tuesday that it is raising its prices by an average of about 1 percent in some regions of the US, including cities such as Boston, New York, Washington, Atlanta, Dallas and Albuquerque, to offset rising ingredient costs.
After increasing its prices for coffee with milk by NT$10 per cup and by NT$5 for black coffee in October — a move that sparked outrage — the company has no plans to further adjust its prices, President Starbucks said.
Ministry to woo Japanese firms
The Ministry of Economic Affairs has set a goal to initiate 500 partnership projects between Taiwanese and Japanese enterprises within the next five years.
That would help double Japanese investment in the nation to NT$30 billion (US$991 million) and increase Taiwanese exports by an additional NT$50 billion over five years, according to a statement released yesterday.
The government would introduce a slew of measures to encourage Japanese investment, including the establishment of a venture capital fund, special financing packages and a bilateral industrial cooperation promotion office in Taipei, the ministry said.
A new Taiwan-Japan Park is also set to start operating in Tainan this month, it said.
The planned zone is designed for Japanese firms seeking to set up offshore backup production sites, for such industries as biotechnology, digital content, green energy, information technology and precision instruments.
NT dollar gains more ground
The New Taiwan dollar continued gaining ground against the greenback yesterday, adding NT$0.004 to close at NT$30.290.
Turnover totaled US$531 million during the trading session.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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