BANKING
Southbound debt grows
Taiwanese banks at the end of September had combined exposure of NT$1.5 trillion (US$48.81 billion) to nations covered by the Cabinet’s New Southbound Policy, Financial Supervisory Commission tallies showed. That represented an increase from loan and investment exposure of NT$1.25 trillion at the end of last year and NT$1.11 trillion in 2016, the data showed. Meanwhile, local banks had 215 outlets in New Southbound Policy nations by Nov. 30, 25 more than in May 2016, when President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office, data showed.
BANKING
Domestic trade up 4.01%
Domestic trade totaled NT$13.84 trillion in the first 11 months, up 4.01 percent from NT$13.31 trillion in the same period last year, with restaurants showing the highest annual increase of 4.34 percent to NT$429.9 billion, Ministry of Economic Affairs data released on Monday last week showed. The wholesale sector saw revenue rise 4.3 percent to NT$9.53 trillion, while the retail sector reported a year-on-year sales increase of 3.27 percent to NT$3.89 trillion, the data showed.
TRADE
Phone exports decrease
Cellphone exports fell 71.9 percent year-on-year to US$400 million in the first 11 months of the year amid rising competition in the global market, the Ministry of Finance said on Dec. 20. The decline was the steepest ever seen by the domestic cellphone industry, which produces smartphones and feature phones, the ministry said. Meanwhile, exports of Internet and communications devices fell 15 percent annually to US$11.7 billion and accounted for 3.8 percent of total exports, the ministry said in a statement.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained