■ Home appliances
Samsung, Guo Mei sign deal
South Korea's Samsung Electronics has signed a deal to supply home-appliance goods to leading Chinese electronics chain Guo Mei, a news report said yesterday. Samsung would provide products ranging from mobile handsets to refrigerators worth 455 billion won (US$448 million) to the Shanghai-based chain for one year under the deal, Yonhap news agency said. It was the largest single contract by a South Korean firm to supply a Chinese home-appliances chain, Yonhap said citing industry sources.
■ Telecoms
HP goes to China
Hewlett-Packard Co has won China's approval to make and sell mobile-phone handsets in the world's largest wireless market by users, state-run China Daily reported, citing a company official. The company is seeking partnerships with mobile operators, the newspaper said, citing Isaiah Cheung, director of mobile-business division at HP's China operations. HP plans to sell a "smart" phone model that has a built-in global positioning system and allows users to receive e-mails, the report said, without identifying the model.
■ Energy
Honda to enter solar market
Honda Motor Co plans to invest ¥10 billion (US$8.64 million) to enter the Japanese market for residential solar batteries, the Nihon Keizai newspaper reported, without saying where it got the information. Honda is ready to build a factory in the Japanese prefecture of Kumamoto to start mass production of solar batteries in 2007, Nikkei said. The batteries will likely sell for about ¥1.5 million each, the newspaper said. Tokyo-based Honda expects the market for solar batteries to triple in size in the next five years, Nikkei said, and grow even more in the next five-year period.
■ Trade
Regional FTA discussed
Officials from seven South and Southeast Asian nations met yesterday in the Bangladeshi capital to discuss the formation of a regional free-trade agreement, the foreign ministry said. Yesterday, foreign secretaries of India, Nepal, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Bangladesh were to iron out the final details of the pact for the trade group, known as the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, or BIMSTEC. The agreement on diversified and multilateral trade in goods, services and investment is expected to come into effect at the beginning of next July.
■ Taxes
Japan's sales tax set to rise
An increase in Japan's sales tax is inevitable because the government's share of contributions to the basic state pension is set to rise, said Hakuo Yanagisawa, head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's tax commission. The government needs to make drastic changes to the tax system by the year starting April 1, 2007, because its already generous contribution to the national pension will jump to half from one-third two years after that, Yanagisawa said yesterday on Fuji TV's Hodo 2001 program. His comments may indicate that the government plans to raise the consumption tax in the year from April 2007.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
RETHINK? The defense ministry and Navy Command Headquarters could take over the indigenous submarine project and change its production timeline, a source said Admiral Huang Shu-kuang’s (黃曙光) resignation as head of the Indigenous Submarine Program and as a member of the National Security Council could affect the production of submarines, a source said yesterday. Huang in a statement last night said he had decided to resign due to national security concerns while expressing the hope that it would put a stop to political wrangling that only undermines the advancement of the nation’s defense capabilities. Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) yesterday said that the admiral, her older brother, felt it was time for him to step down and that he had completed what he
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft