Pau Jar Group (寶佳機構), a New Taipei City-based developer and builder, topped peers in terms of new construction volume last year with projects nationwide totaling NT$113.6 billion (US$3.74 billion), an annual survey by Housing Monthly showed.
The figures represented a 17.11 percent increase from NT$97 billion a year earlier as the company rolled out several affordable-housing projects, the Chinese-language periodical’s manager Viola Huang (黃美瑄) said.
The group plans to launch presale residential and commercial projects in Tamsui District (淡水), New Taipei City and Taoyuan County later this year, according to its Web site.
It is the fourth consecutive year Pau Jar has been the most prolific builder, with a construction volume larger than the combined developments of the two runners-up, High Wealth Construction Co (興富發) and Farglory Land Development Co (遠雄建設), Huang said.
High Wealth — Taiwan’s leading land developer — was the second-most prolific builder with NT$67.1 billion worth of new projects in in Taipei’s Wanhua (萬華) and Nehui (內湖) districts last year, up 13.7 percent from a year earlier, the magazine said.
The result seemed at odds with Highwealth chairman Cheng Chin-tien’s (鄭欽天) remarks early last year that the company would stop hunting for undeveloped plots and planned to lower price tags on its properties in Taipei by 15 percent to reflect market demand.
Farglory Land Development Co (遠雄建設) was third on the list being responsible for NT$47.1 billion worth of new apartment complexes, constructed mainly in Sinjhuang District (新莊), New Taipei City, Housing Monthly said.
The figures translated into a 31.74 percent annual decline, compared with NT$69 billion in 2012, as Farglory turned cautious in the second half of last year after the US Federal Reserve signaled plans to wind down its quantitative easing, which raised concerns over fund outflows from property markets, Huang said.
Fourth on the list was Hung Sheng Construction Ltd (宏盛建設), which made the top-10 list for the first time in a decade with NT$18 billion of pre-sale projects in Tamsui
It was followed by Hontai Life Insurance Co (宏泰人壽), Lih Pao Construction Co (麗寶建設) and Chungyuet Group (中悅建設).
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],”
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
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