INVESTMENT
Bond issuance beats target
International bonds issued in Taiwan have exceeded the government’s target of NT$600 billion (US$18.94 billion) for this year, the Financial Supervisory Commission said on Thursday. As of the end of last month, the total bond issuance of NT$1.29 trillion was 214.96 percent of the target amount, the commission said. Foreign-debt issuers this year launched nine yuan-denominated Formosa bonds totaling 7.73 billion yuan (US$1.15 billion), it said. The international bonds issued in Taiwan have reaped investment returns of NT$58.4 billion over the past two years, bringing in underwriting and consulting fees of about NT$3.5 billion as well as NT$10.5 billion in tax revenues, it added.
RETAIL
Convenience store sales rise
The nation’s two major convenience store operators both reported increased sales for last month, supported by robust demand for fresh food and iced products. President Chain Store Corp’s (統一超商) sales increased 2.99 percent annually to NT$18.1 billion last month, with aggregate sales in the first nine months rising 5.48 percent annually to NT$161.5 billion. Taiwan FamilyMart Co (全家便利商店) reported revenue last month increased 2.96 percent year-on-year to NT5.03 billion. FamilyMart’s sales in the first nine months of this year increased 4.3 percent year-on-year to NT$45.3 billion.
TECHNOLOGY
HTC boosts start-up funds
HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday said it will invest an additional US$100 million in its Vive X accelerator program, which aims to fund virtual reality (VR) start-ups around the world. The new investment represents the second stage of the Vive X program, which was launched in August in Taipei, San Francisco, Beijing and Shenzhen with HTC’s first US$100 million investment. The company backed more than 30 VR start-ups in the first phase of the program.
REAL ESTATE
Occupancy rates revealed
There were 862,600 unoccupied residential properties in Taiwan last year, accounting for 10.35 percent of the total, the Ministry of the Interior said on Thursday. Of the empty properties, 118,713 were in New Taipei City and 63,890 were in Taipei, meaning that more than 20 percent of properties in the region were unoccupied, according to statistics compiled by the ministry’s real-estate information platform. The highest non-occupancy rate — 15.98 percent — was in Yilan, where 28,000 properties were unoccupied. Among the six special municipalities, Taoyuan had the highest non-occupancy rate at 11.49 percent, followed by Kaohsiung (10.86 percent), Tainan (10.15 percent), Taichung (10.02 percent), New Taipei City (7.72 percent) and Taipei (7.22 percent).
TRADE
US seeks arbitration
The US on Thursday said it was calling for a WTO arbitration panel to resolve an escalating trade dispute on Chinese export barriers for raw materials, including lead, tin, graphite, antimony, chromium and copper. “We will aggressively pursue this challenge on behalf of US steelworkers, auto workers, aerospace workers and the many Americans whose businesses, jobs and livelihoods depend on the strength of these and other industries,” US Trade Representative Michael Froman said in a statement. Froman’s office in July took the initial step of calling for consultations with China to resolve the matter. Thursday’s announcement seeking arbitration indicated such consultations had not been successful.
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