The nation’s industrial parks yesterday reported no damage as a result of Typhoon Matmo, while banks had prepared sufficient funds to ensure smooth ATM withdrawals, government agencies said.
Industrial Development Bureau Deputy Director-General Lien Ching-chang (連錦漳) said that although the typhoon brought heavy rain and strong winds to some areas of the country, it uprooted only one tree in one industrial park and no serious damage was reported.
Operations at the Hsinchu Science Park, where several leading Taiwanese high-tech firms such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and United Microelectronics Corp (聯電) have production lines, remained normal, he said.
Tu Chi-hsiang (杜啟祥), acting deputy director of the science park’s administration bureau, said the impact of the rain and wind caused by the typhoon in Hsinchu was limited and electricity supply in the park was not interrupted.
Meanwhile, local banks allocated NT$87.7 billion (US$2.92 billion) exclusively for withdrawals from their ATMs yesterday, about 2.5 times the amount prepared for a normal business day, the central bank said.
The central bank said it had also instructed the Taiwan Payments Clearing System Development Foundation (台灣票據交換所) to temporarily relax its rules on bad checks to prevent checks from bouncing because of disruptions from the natural disaster.
Check issuers will be given a short grace period to cover their obligations if they were held back by the typhoon, the bank said.
In addition, the Financial Supervisory Commission said that a total of 24 local banks would provide financial relief to individuals and businesses affected by the storm.
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