FINANCE
Bad loan ratio drops: FSC
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) on Tuesday last week said the nation’s bad loan ratio dropped to 0.36 percent at the end of January from 0.38 percent a month earlier on better asset quality in the banking sector. Overall, bad loans amounted to NT$87.4 billion (US$2.88 billion) in January, down NT$2.5 billion from December last year, while outstanding loans gained NT$352.1 billion to NT$24.16 trillion, the commission said.
EMPLOYMENT
Ministry forecasts jobs rise
The nation’s manpower needs for next month are expected to increase by 36,676 jobs over the slow season in January, the Ministry of Labor said on Tuesday. A ministry survey showed that businesses with 30 or more employees will open 48,358 jobs by next month, though 11,682 other roles will be cut. Manufacturing led with 19,432 openings, followed by wholesale and retail business with 5,034, and the hotel and dining sector with 2,899, the survey said.
STEELMAKERS
CSC eyes Q2 rise in output
China Steel Corp (中鋼) on Monday last week said its output for the second quarter would rise about 2.5 percent from the previous quarter on increased orders. The company also said the annual maintenance of its first and second furnaces will be completed by the end of the second quarter.
TELECOMS
Lai to lead Vibo, too
Vibo Inc (威寶電信) last week said its board had approved Cliff Lai’s (賴弦五) appointment as president, after parent company Taiwan Star Cellular (台灣之星) hired Lai as president. Taiwan Star is a unit of the Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際集團).
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts