The prevalence of counterfeit cash in Taiwan's financial system topped the Consumers' Foundation's (
"It's so rampant that Taiwan has been labeled Asia's No. 1 kingdom for fake money," the foundation's chairman Yu Ming-kuo (游明國) said yesterday at a press conference, adding that its prevalence makes the public vulnerable.
While revealing the foundation's top ten stories of the year, Yu urged the government to address the counterfeit issue by giving stiffer penalties to those convicted of the crime.
Rounding out the next three slots in the report were Taiwan's WTO accession, rice-wine hoarding and credit card fraud.
The foundation said yesterday that the nation's upcoming WTO entry would negatively impact the agricultural sector and initiate new consumption patterns.
Yu said that he expects to see more agricultural products being imported from China after March and that some 20,000 farmers will likely be forced to quit their profession.
As the price of rice wine is slated to increase from NT$21 to NT$120 after Taiwan's accession to the world trade body, illegal hoarding of the popular cooking ingredient was a major issue this year.
Credit card fraud was listed as the No. 4 story on yesterday's list. In May, Taiwan was ranked as the country with the second highest rate of credit card fraud in the world.
In that same month, the Criminal Investigation Bureau busted the world's largest fake credit card ring ever, seizing 160,000 fake credit cards, according to the National Credit Card Center and MasterCard.
The foundation said yesterday that the fraudulent credit cards were what consumers complained about the most this year.
"Taiwan has broken the record among all Asia-Pacific countries by having reached a total of NT$3 billion in credit card fraud in 2000," said foundation board member Hanson Chiang (
Chiang said that over the past year, most disputes the foundation handled involved credit card users who were levied unfair interest rates or charged for products they did not buy.
Chiang also used yesterday's press conference to warn fixed-telephone line consumers to be careful when examining rate discounts.
He said that the four major fixed-line operators' commercials have confused consumers.
"Most users do not know that the discounted rate is only good for off-peak hours," Chiang said.
Chiang added that many consumers this year also frequently complained about unclear telecommunications charges on their mobile phone bills.
KEEPING UP: The acquisition of a cleanroom in Taiwan would enable Micron to increase production in a market where demand continues to outpace supply, a Micron official said Micron Technology Inc has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion to expand its production of memory chips. Micron would take control of the P5 site in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) and plans to ramp up DRAM production in phases after the transaction closes in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on Saturday. The acquisition includes an existing 12 inch fab cleanroom of 27,871m2 and would further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions, the company said. Micron expects the transaction to
Nvidia Corp’s GB300 platform is expected to account for 70 to 80 percent of global artificial intelligence (AI) server rack shipments this year, while adoption of its next-generation Vera Rubin 200 platform is to gradually gain momentum after the third quarter of the year, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said. Servers based on Nvidia’s GB300 chips entered mass production last quarter and they are expected to become the mainstay models for Taiwanese server manufacturers this year, Trendforce analyst Frank Kung (龔明德) said in an interview. This year is expected to be a breakout year for AI servers based on a variety of chips, as
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
HSBC Bank Taiwan Ltd (匯豐台灣商銀) and the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to enhance cooperation on the suspicious transaction analysis mechanism. This landmark agreement makes HSBC the first foreign bank in Taiwan to establish such a partnership with the High Prosecutors Office, underscoring its commitment to active anti-fraud initiatives, financial inclusion, and the “Treating Customers Fairly” principle. Through this deep public-private collaboration, both parties aim to co-create a secure financial ecosystem via early warning detection and precise fraud prevention technologies. At the signing ceremony, HSBC Taiwan CEO and head of banking Adam Chen (陳志堅)
RSS