Chunghwa Post is considering canceling its low-temperature delivery service because of its continuing financial losses.
The postal service’s financial situation was under scrutiny at the legislature’s Transportation Committee yesterday as lawmakers prepared to review the postal company’s budget for the next fiscal year.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) said Chunghwa Post has been offering low-temperature delivery service since 2004. While the service generated NT$3.2 million (US$110,120) in revenue last year, its operational costs topped NT$61 million.
Saying that last year was not the only time that the company suffered financial losses, Tsai added the revenue during the first year of the service was around NT$5 million.
While revenue hit NT$11 million at one point, it plummeted to around NT$6 million in 2009.
Tsai asked Chunghwa Post chairman Oliver Yu (游芳來) why the company continued to do poorly with the low-temperature service, given the logistics and distribution service market has business opportunities worth NT$50 billion. Tsai also asked Yu if the company should continue offering the service.
“This [the service] has become our burden,” Yu said, adding that the company would decide within three months whether to continue the service.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said he had not been aware of the low-temperature service and would have to evaluate its viability.
Several lawmakers also raised questions about the company’s life insurance losses.
According to Yu, many life insurance firms have found it difficult to maintain operations because the widening loss from interest rate differences.
Chunghwa Post’s life insurance business had also invested overseas, which caused losses as well because of exchange rate fluctuations, he said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods