Japanese discount store chain Daiso Industries Co has been banned from importing any goods to Taiwan for two years as a penalty for altering transaction dates to obtain an import permit, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
The ministry has revoked the company’s import permit and fined it NT$41.64 million (US$1.39 million) , Bureau of Foreign Trade Deputy Director-General Lee Guann-jyh (李冠志) told the Legislative Yuan in Taipei.
The ministry has also notified the Customs Administration of the ban, as some products imported by the company might have entered the market, he added.
Photo: CNA
Lee’s remarks came after New Power Party Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) last month accused the ministry of turning a blind eye to Daiso, which allegedly imported goods from Japan during a six-month import suspension period in 2015.
The government has tightened the regulations on imports of food and high-risk products from Japan after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster in March 2011.
Daiso was in 2015 prohibited from importing any products into Taiwan after it was found to have illegally import food products from the five Japanese prefectures from which food imports were banned.
The Foreign Trade Act (貿易法) stipulates that companies may import or export goods during a suspension period if the transactions had been established before the punishment was issued, according to.
However, most of Daiso’s goods imported to Taiwan during the suspension period were ordered after the punishment had been imposed, Huang said.
Daiso denied the accusations, but a statement on its Web site said that its management team had made a wrong decision to switch the dates in a bid to obtain approval from the government.
The Japanese budget store chain, which sells more than 20,000 items, operates about 60 stores in Taiwan, company data showed.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
The EU and US are nearing an agreement to coordinate on producing and securing critical minerals, part of a push to break reliance on Chinese supplies. The potential deal would create incentives, such as minimum prices, that could advantage non-Chinese suppliers, according to a draft of an “action plan” seen by Bloomberg. The EU and US would also cooperate on standards, investments and joint projects, as well as coordinate on any supply disruptions by countries like China. The two sides are additionally seeking other “like-minded partners” to join a multicountry accord to help create these new critical mineral supply chains, which feed into
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
RSS