SOCIETY
Nation’s workforce shrinking
An extremely low birthrate means Taiwan will face a shrinking workforce in the coming years, with four in every 10 Taiwanese to be 65 or older by 2060, the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) has said. The working population — aged 15 to 64 — which numbered more than 17.3 million at its peak, will start to decline in 2015, the council said. The old-age dependency ratio, which measures the percentage of economically inactive elderly people against the number of workers, is expected to surpass the young-age dependency ratio — the number of economically inactive young people compared with the workforce — by 2016. This means that the number of unemployed elderly citizens will outnumber the nation’s unemployed youth. Last year, the old-age ratio climbed to 15 percent, nearing the young-age ratio, which fell to 19.7 percent.
ENERGY
CPC shutters No. 6 cracker
CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 中油) shut its new No. 6 naphtha cracker in Greater Kaohsiung earlier this month to fix an unspecified fault, the company said yesterday. The state-run refiner began trial runs at the plant on Aug. 14 and was awaiting local government approval to begin commercial production, spokeswoman Jessica Tang (唐苑莉) said. CPC’s original plan to halt its No. 4 naphtha cracker for repairs for two months now depends on the successful operation of the No. 6 plant, Tang 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