INVESTMENT
FDI hits record first quarter
The total value of approved investment projects by Taiwanese expatriates and foreign investors grew 105.43 percent year-on-year to US$2.25 billion in the first quarter, the highest January-to-March figures in 10 years, the Investment Commission said on Friday last week. Commission spokesperson Yang Shu-ling (楊淑玲) said the approved foreign direct investments (FDI) include Itochu Corp buying shares in Taipei Financial Center Corp (台北金融大樓) for US$665 million, German-based Allianz SE increasing its investment in Allianz Taiwan Life Insurance Co (安聯人壽) to US$600 million and wind farm investments.
TRADE
Firms to save with tariff deal
Nicaragua’s removal of tariffs on three types of industrial products from Taiwan — paper or paperboard labels of all kinds, rubber or plastic footwear, and metal furniture — went into effect yesterday, which could save Taiwanese businesses a grand total of US$57,218 per year, an estimate by the Customs Administration found. The expansion of benefits under a decade-old bilateral free-trade agreement was implemented in Taiwan and Nicaragua earlier this year, the Bureau of Foreign Trade said on Friday last week.
ELECTRONICS
P20 Pro lands in Taiwan
Huawei Technologies Co (華為) on Thursday last week launched the P20 Pro in Taiwan. It is the world’s first smartphone to have three cameras and is touted as a game changer in mobile photography. Xunwei Technologies Co (訊崴), Huawei’s exclusive distributor in Taiwan, said that the P20 Pro accumulated preorders totaling about 100 million yuan (US$15.88 million) just 10 seconds after its Web site went live in China.
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