IMPORTS
Consumer goods up 13.2%
Consumer goods imports for the first four months totaled US$11.49 billion, up 13.2 percent from a year earlier, the Ministry of Finance said on Friday last week. Food products accounted for nearly a quarter of the total during the period with US$2.85 billion, up 13.5 percent from a year earlier, the ministry said. Home appliances and IT products represented 19.6 percent of the total imports with US$2.25 billion, followed by health and beauty products at US$2.01 billion, representing 17.5 percent, and vehicle imports of US$1.78 billion, making up 15.5 percent, it said.
AGGREGATE SALES
Up yearly, down monthly
Listed companies last month saw their combined sales increase 12.44 percent year-on-year, but decline 5.07 percent month-on-month, the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) said on Friday last week. The 933 companies listed on the exchange and 757 firms on the Taipei Exchange posted a combined NT$2.62 trillion (US$88 billion) in revenue last month, driven mainly by firms in the oil and gas, cement, and electric wire and fiber industries, the TWSE said. In the first four months, the 1,690 companies’ aggregate revenue grew 8.6 percent year-on-year to NT$10.46 trillion, it added.
FOREX
Reserves down US$56m
Foreign-exchange reserves last month decreased US$56 million from a month earlier to US$457.13 billion, ending 12 consecutive months of increases due to the depreciation of currencies not denominated in US dollars, the central bank said. The holdings of Taiwanese stocks, bonds and New Taiwan dollar-denominated deposits by foreign investors decreased by US$23.9 billion to US$391.5 billion at the end of last month, the bank said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
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FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six