The Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) yesterday inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Tiki, Vietnam’s second-largest e-commerce platform, in a move to expand digital sales channels for Taiwanese companies in Southeast Asia.
“Vietnamese customers are savvy about what they want,” Tiki founder and customer experience officer Tran Ngoc Thai Son said at a signing ceremony in Taipei, adding that Vietnam is a growing market with great potential.
Cosmetics, such as face masks supplied by Dr Wu Skincare Co Ltd (達爾膚生醫科技), should quickly grab the attention of young Vietnamese, he told the Taipei Times.
“The e-commerce platform should lend firm support to small and medium-sized Taiwanese companies that hope to expand their business in Vietnam, which has a population of more than 90 million people,” TAITRA chairman James Huang (黃志芳) said, citing high market acceptance of Taiwanese-made products in that country.
TAITRA also plans to outline a roadmap for Taiwanese businesspeople to tap into Vietnam’s market, helping them to deal with logistics and cash flow problems when conducting cross-border transactions, Huang said.
The Vietnamese e-commerce operator on Thursday opened a Taiwan Pavilion on its platform, which displays various types of products, ranging from Taiwan’s high mountain tea to garments and home appliances.
This marks another move by the government-backed council to build connections with Southeast Asian e-commerce operators after it teamed up with Blibli.com, the largest online shopping platform in Indonesia.
A Taiwan-themed pavilion on Blibli.com, established in September last year, now offers more than 1,900 items, TAITRA said.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
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