■ Huang to fill APEC post
Theodore Huang (黃茂雄), president of the National Association of Industry and Commerce (工商協進會), has consented to serve as a representative of the APEC Business Advisory Council, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
Huang, also chairman of the TECO group (東元), will fill the vacancy left by Sayling Wen (溫世仁), late vice chairman of Inventec Co (英業達) who died last December, the ministry said.
The other two council representatives are Jeffrey Koo (辜濂松), chairman of Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控) and Henry Kao (高志尚), vice chairman of I-Mei Foods Co (義美食品).
The council is an advisory agency under APEC which serves to solicit the views of the business sector among APEC members for reference. Each APEC member can recommend three representatives to the council.
■ Foreign reserves rise
Foreign-currency reserves, the third-highest in the world, rose for the 37th month to a record US$230.4 billion last month, the central bank said.
The reserves -- rising 0.1 percent from US$230.09 billion in June and an increase of US$23.77 billion from the end of 2003 -- mainly reflect returns from foreign exchange reserve management, the central bank said in a statement.
Taiwan accounted for about 7 percent of global reserves. Japan, with US$798.6 billion, had a quarter of the worldwide total at the end of June. China had US$470.6 billion, or 14 percent of the total.
■ Handset output up five-fold
Taiwanese mobile handset makers churned out approximately 12.6 million units in the second quarter of the year, a five-fold increase compared with the SARS-affected second quarter of 2003, the government-funded research house Market Intelligence Center (市場情報中心) said in a statement yesterday.
Boosted by the volume growth, handset output in terms of sales reached US$830 million in the second quarter, up 50 percent from a year ago while down 16.5 percent from the previous quarter, the center said.
But the shipment volume of Taiwanese mobile phones is expected to edge down one percent to approximately 12.5 million units in the third quarter, as both Western Europe and North America enter a slow season while markets in China and India are expected to see a weak demand for new handsets, according to the statement.
Taiwanese makers' share of global mobile phone shipments stood at 8.4 percent in the second quarter of the year.
■ Singapore firm wins contract
Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd's electronics unit said it won a S$61.4 million (US$36 million) contract to build a radio communications system for Taiwan's railway.
Singapore Technologies Electronics, a unit of Southeast Asia's largest defense company, will build and install a digital communications system in the rail network of Taipei, to be finished by 2012.
The contract allows Singapore Technologies Electronics to "strengthen our position" in Asia's rail system upgrades, said company President Seah Moon Ming, in a statement to the stock exchange.
Singapore Technologies Electronics has worked on Taiwan's rail projects since 1993
■ Taiwan dollar advances
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday traded higher against its US counterpart, advancing NT$0.018 to close at NT$34.155 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$492 million.
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