China Motor launches minivans
China Motor Corp (中華汽車) yesterday launched the new Savrin minivans with an aim to sell 80,000 new vehicles this year in Taiwan, a top executive said yesterday.
China Motor, the local auto assembler and distributor for Mitsubishi Motors Corp, sold 100,013 vehicles last year.
"We hope to sell around 20,000 Savrins this year," Su Ching-yang (蘇慶陽), president of China Motor, said yesterday. The revamped 2.0-liter vehicles, equipped with the latest bluetooth wireless technology, will retail for between NT$899,000 and NT$929,000.
Vice president and spokesman Hsu Li-min (許利民) said the war in Iraq has so far created no problem for the company's auto production at home. But he said the war, if prolonged longer than expected, may hurt its exports this year. China Motor said early this year that it aims to export 11,800 cars this year, compared with 7,695 cars last year.
Last week China Motor started making Lancer sedans in China at Southeast Motor Co (東南汽車), a venture with the Fujian provincial government. The venture hopes to sell 100,000 vehicles this year, Hsu said.
Chine steel sees supply shortfall
China Steel Corp (中鋼) said Wednesday it expects a global supply shortfall in the next year with prices unlikely to decline during the period.
"The current situation suggests demand will be higher than supply worldwide in the next year," company chairman Lin Wen-yuan (林文淵) said.
"I do not know whether prices will go up or not but I do not expect any softening over the next 12 months," he said. "My priority is to supply to domestic manufacturers, then to those that export after assembly and finally to other countries."
China Steel will increase supply to domestic clients by 13 percent in the second quarter, he said.
Military, schools get excess rice
After meeting the nation's WTO quota obligations, Taiwan is currently in excess of 700,000 tonnes of imported rice, which will go to military and school tables, an official at the Council of Agriculture said yesterday.
"After a taste test last month, we found that the military is very satisfied with imported rice from the US," council vice chairman Lee Jen-chyuan (李健全) said at a press conference.
According to Lee, Taiwan is obliged to import annually 140,000 tonnes of top-tier rice from the US and Australia. After auctioning part of the imported rice to the private sector, the council still found an oversupply of imported rice in the government's coffer and, therefore, asked the military and schools to help consume the excessive rice.
Lee said that it'll be up to both sectors to decide whether they would stick to locally-produced rice or use imported rice on their meal tables from April on.
MOI announces amendments
The Ministry of the Interior announced law amendments yesterday that allow qualified potential customers from China to enter the country to study real estate at the invitation of Taiwanese sellers.
The amendments are in conjunction with a revision made Aug. 8 last year to the Statute Governing the Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), which allows people from China to purchase real estate in in an effort to give a boost to the domestic sector.
NT dollar drops
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday traded lower against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.041 to close at NT$34.794 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$311 million.
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