Eight major industrial and business groups voiced their support yesterday for the government’s efforts to help create more than 150,000 new jobs this year in an effort to keep the country’s annual unemployment rate below 4.5 percent.
The groups, led by the National Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (中小企業協會), are scheduled to endorse on Friday a campaign to respond to the government’s job-creation drive by calling upon private companies to keep their redundancy rates below 1 percent.
Association chairman Roscher Lin (林秉彬) said that about 1,000 association members were expected to take part in the endorsement, adding, however, that he did not know how many companies would step forward to support the call for low-redundancy.
The industrial and business groups made the decision in response to an announcement by the Cabinet on Sunday that it would pool government resources to create jobs and alleviate rising unemployment.
Executive Yuan spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) said the government’s economic stimulus package for this year would be adjusted to increase public sector investment to NT$130 billion (US$3.88 billion) — up from the initial NT$100 billion — and that the budget increase and adjustment of priority investment targets would create more than 150,000 jobs this year, which in turn would help bring unemployment down to below 4.5 percent.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
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Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”