■ Telecoms
DoCoMo raises forecast
NTT DoCoMo Inc, the world's second-largest mobile-phone operator, raised its full-year profit forecast 7.2 percent because the company will book gains from selling shares of Hutchison 3G UK Holdings Ltd. DoCoMo expects profit of ¥533 billion (US$5.02 billion) for the year ending March 31, 2006, compared with the ¥497 billion it forecast two days ago when it reported full-year earnings, the Tokyo-based company said yesterday in a statement. DoCoMo posted ¥747.6 billion profit the previous business year. The sales forecast of ¥4.81 trillion was kept unchanged, as was the operating profit forecast of ¥810 billion. Operating profit is sales minus the cost of goods sold and administrative expenses.
PHOTO: REUTERS
■ Investment
Japan's firms avoid China
One out of three Japanese firms with plans to start businesses in China said they have decided to postpone their plans following recent anti-Japanese sentiment resulting in renewed protests in China, a Japanese research firm said yesterday. According to Teikoku Databank, 275 among the 848 firms which had planned to start their businesses in China, said they have decided to put off their plans for the time being. Seven others said they have decided to call off their plans completely. China has been a popular place to invest for Japanese businesses in recent years, thanks to cheaper labour costs and the growing economy there. But antagonistic emotions have been evoked among many Japanese after television footage showed Chinese protesters throwing stones and bottles at Japanese businesses.
■ China's economy
Foreign investment slows
Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China rose just 2.2 percent in the first four months of the year, the ministry of commerce said yesterday. Total actual investment by foreign enterprises in the period from January to April reached US$17.5 billion, the ministry said in a statement posted on its Web site. Contracted investment, which gives an indication of future inflows, grew 8 percent to US$50.2 billion in the first four months, according to the ministry. The top two sources of investment during the four-month period were Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands, legal home to many companies and offshore investment houses, the ministry said. Economists have speculated that investment from these two sources in particular could be Chinese money re-entering the mainland to take advantage of preferential treatment for foreign investors.
■ Retail
KarstadtQuelle woes worsen
KarstadtQuelle, the troubled German department store chain, yesterday said it slipped deeper into the red in the first quarter, pulled down by persistently sluggish consumer demand and the cost of a huge restructuring program. KarstadtQuelle said in a statement that it booked a net loss of 111.3 million euros (US$142 million) in the period from January to March, compared with a loss of 110.3 million euros a year earlier. Underlying profits, as measured by earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, also declined to 56.6 million euros in the January-to-March period from 90 million euros in the first quarter of last year. Sales were down 8.4 percent at 2.97 billion euros as a result of "the consistently difficult retail environment in Germany," KarstadtQuelle said.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has