Taiwan’s two major fuel suppliers yesterday announced a drop in fuel prices for this week, citing a slowdown in China’s economic growth in the second quarter. This is to be the second week in a row that fuel prices have fallen.
State-run oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said it would cut gasoline and diesel prices by NT$0.1 per liter, effective today.
After the adjustment, prices at CPC gas stations would be NT$27.2 per liter for 92-octane unleaded, NT$28.7 for 95-octane unleaded, NT$30.7 for 98-octane unleaded and NT$25.1 for super diesel.
CPC said that although international crude oil prices have rebounded following six straight weeks of falling US crude inventory levels and ongoing tensions in the Middle East, the slowdown in China’s second-quarter GDP growth offset the increase.
China’s growth slowed to its slowest in almost three decades in the second quarter, at 6.2 percent, compared with a 6.4 percent expansion in the first quarter, official data showed on July 15.
CPC said the price of its crude oil, calculated using a weighted oil price formula composed of 70 percent Dubai crude and 30 percent Brent crude, dropped US$0.64 last week to US$62.83 per barrel.
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced identical price adjustments, with prices at its gas stations from today to be NT$27.2 per liter for 92-octane unleaded, NT$28.6 for 95-octane unleaded, NT$30.7 for 98-octane unleaded and NT$24.9 for diesel.
Additional reporting by AFP
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts