Premier Sean Chen (陳冲) yesterday instructed Cabinet officials to closely monitor the evolution of the European debt crisis and follow through with short-term and medium-to-long-term strategies to rebalance the economy into one that could adapt to changes in the international economic situation, an official said yesterday.
Minister Without Portfolio Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) and Executive Yuan spokesperson Hu Yu-wei (胡幼偉) called a press conference last night to brief the media about a meeting presided over by Chen earlier yesterday about the impact of the eurozone debt crisis on Taiwan’s economy.
A decline in the first quarter of this year was partly caused by sluggish global demand amid the eurozone debt crisis, said Kuan, who leads a Cabinet-level task force considering policy responses to the global economic situation.
CONFIDENT
Despite that, Kuan said the Cabinet remains confident of keeping the annual growth at about 3 percent — 3.03 percent, which was recently revised down from the previous forecast of 3.83 percent growth by the government’s statistics agency — unless the eurozone debt crisis degenerates into an even worse situation.
For the moment, the impact of the debt crisis is limited in the industrial sector, but Europe is China’s largest export market and many local businesses use China as a production base for onward export. The impact on the financial sector is minimal because overseas operations of locally owned banks in Europe are limited, Kuan said.
Kuan said the government would pay close attention to the evolving situation in Europe, including France’s parliamentary election on Sunday and June 17, and the general election in Greece on June 17, after which it would be clearer whether Europe would continue with austerity measures or replace them with growth measures.
STRATEGY
The government would continue to implement seven short-term measures and five medium-and-long-term strategies to facilitate an economic recovery, Kuan said.
Some new measures pertaining to the relaxation of rules to attract foreign talent and overseas investments are also being formulated, Kuan said.
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