Increasing operational costs have prompted private gas station operators to demand higher margins from selling the state-owned refiner’s products, the Chinese-language China Times reported yesterday.
The National Association of Petrol Station Businesses of the ROC has requested that CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) raise the gross profit for unleaded gasoline by NT$0.2 per liter in the wake of a higher minimum wage and other operational costs, the report said.
Gas station operators’ margins have been constrained since 2016 due to adjustments in the workweek policy, an increase in the minimum hourly wage from NT$120 to NT$140 and stricter environmental rules, association executive director Lin Cheng-kuan (林政寬) said.
Huang Jen-hung (黃仁弘), head of CPC’s marketing business division, said the refiner would discuss the issue after conducting a comprehensive study, the newspaper said.
Separately, CPC yesterday announced that it would lower fuel prices this week, as crude oil prices dropped last week amid continued increases in inventories and US crude oil production.
Its average crude oil cost fell by US$0.17 per barrel to US$62.24, the refiner said in a statement, adding that CPC would cut gasoline and diesel prices by NT$0.1 per liter from today, after factoring in the New Taiwan dollar’s appreciation of NT$0.035 against the US dollar.
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