The number of owners of locally made vehicles applying for license plates -- an indicator of new vehicle sales -- hit a record high last month, rising 29.6 percent to 75,663 vehicles from the same period a year ago, according to Ministry of Transportation and Communications' statistics.
New car registrations by Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), which distributes both Toyota and Lexus cars here, also hit a new record last month of more than 20,000 cars.
Hotai Motor, which sold 133,726 vehicles last year, sold 20,889 last month. It had a 27.6 percent share of the domestic passenger car market, according to the ministry's statistics.
Hotai Motor reported NT$4.06 billion in pre-tax revenues last year, with a NT$7.5 in earnings per share, another record high.
Hotai Motor was followed by China Motor Corp (中華汽車) which sold 13,548 units for a 17.91 percent market share and Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車) with 11,276 units, or 14.91 percent. Ford Lio Ho Motor Co's (福特六和) sale of 10,420 units placed it in fourth place with a 13.78 percent market share.
Yulon makes cars for Nissan Motor Co here, while China Motor assembles Mitsubishi vehicles.
While companies still plan to launch new models in the first half of the year, the total number of new car registrations is only expected to reach around 485,000 vehicles this year, because of concerns over the rising price of steel and crude oil as well as a possible slowdown in the local economy, said Hotai Motor spokesman Steven Yang (楊湘泉).
Last year, new car registrations totaled 484,200 units, a 17.03 percent increase from the 413,741 units sold in 2003, according to the ministry's statistics.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS