CPC lowers LNG, LPG prices
State-run refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) has lowered prices for both liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) this month to reflect declining global oil prices.
Effective today, CPC cut the price per cubic meter of LNG by 12.58 percent on average from last month, saying that an average consumption of between 30m3 and 45m3 per month would mean savings of between NT$61.2 and NT$91.8 (US$1.93 and US$2.89) for each household, according to a press release.
Prices for household LPG are to drop by NT$4.6 per kilogram and by NT$2.5 per liter for LPG used in cars, CPC said.
As a result, the price of a 20kg household gas cylinder would drop by NT$92, the company said.
Central bank auctions CDs
The central bank on Wednesday auctioned NT$120 billion in 364-day certificates of deposit (CDs), as it seeks to absorb excess funds in the market.
The auction yielded an average interest rate of 0.596 percent, the central bank said in a statement. That was lower than market expectations and declined for a third straight month.
The bank did not comment on the lower average yield in the latest 364-day CD sale.
The bank, which now has NT$1.64 trillion in outstanding 364-day CDs and two-year CDs, said its sale of such instruments was the equivalent of increasing the bank reserve requirement ratio by more than 5 percentage points.
Foreign interest boosts buys
Foreign institutional investors bought a net of more than NT$350 billion worth of local shares on the main board last year, according to statistics compiled by the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE).
The TWSE said that strong foreign institutional interest boosted the net buys to NT$354.63 billion last year, with the TAIEX rising 695.75 points or 8.08 percent from the previous year.
Accumulated turnover on the main board during the 248 trading sessions last year totaled NT$23.42 trillion, rising 17.54 percent from the NT$19.60 trillion recorded in 2013, with average daily turnover of NT$92.91 billion, compared with NT$79.69 billion in 2013, TWSE said.
Google receives green light
The Investment Commission on Wednesday said it had approved a proposal by Google Inc to add NT$2.1 billion to its investment in a data center in Changhua County.
Google has invested US$600 million to set up a data center in an industrial park in the county.
The additional investment was made through Google affiliate Kohl Holdings Ltd, according to the commission.
Last month, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported that the Google investment project might prompt Microsoft Corp to consider investing at least US$600 million to build a data center in the south this year.
HTC may unveil new Desire
Smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) might unveil a new model in its mid-tier Desire series at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, between Sunday and next Friday.
The company published a teaser image on its Sina Weibo (新浪微博) page on Tuesday that said a press event will take place on Sunday in Las Vegas, along with a tag line that reads: “Always Desire more.”
HTC saw its sales bolstered last year by mid-range phones like the Desire 816 and Desire 820. Pre-registrations for the Desire 820s surpassed 1.2 million in China, far exceeding the initial inventory of 50,000 units HTC had prepared for online sales in that country.
Nearly 18% to move to 4G: poll
About 17.7 percent of respondents in a recent survey said they intended to use 4G long-term evolution (LTE) services this year, with Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) subscribers more likely to upgrade to 4G services than subscribers of the two other major telecom operators.
About 22 percent of subscribers surveyed that use Far EasTone services said they wanted to change to 4G services next year, compared with 20 percent for Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) and 13 percent for Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Foreseeing Innovative New Digiservices (FIND), a division of the state-funded Institute for Information Industry, said in a statement on Wednesday.
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained