INVESTMENT
Bond issuance beats target
International bonds issued in Taiwan have exceeded the government’s target of NT$600 billion (US$18.94 billion) for this year, the Financial Supervisory Commission said on Thursday. As of the end of last month, the total bond issuance of NT$1.29 trillion was 214.96 percent of the target amount, the commission said. Foreign-debt issuers this year launched nine yuan-denominated Formosa bonds totaling 7.73 billion yuan (US$1.15 billion), it said. The international bonds issued in Taiwan have reaped investment returns of NT$58.4 billion over the past two years, bringing in underwriting and consulting fees of about NT$3.5 billion as well as NT$10.5 billion in tax revenues, it added.
RETAIL
Convenience store sales rise
The nation’s two major convenience store operators both reported increased sales for last month, supported by robust demand for fresh food and iced products. President Chain Store Corp’s (統一超商) sales increased 2.99 percent annually to NT$18.1 billion last month, with aggregate sales in the first nine months rising 5.48 percent annually to NT$161.5 billion. Taiwan FamilyMart Co (全家便利商店) reported revenue last month increased 2.96 percent year-on-year to NT5.03 billion. FamilyMart’s sales in the first nine months of this year increased 4.3 percent year-on-year to NT$45.3 billion.
TECHNOLOGY
HTC boosts start-up funds
HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday said it will invest an additional US$100 million in its Vive X accelerator program, which aims to fund virtual reality (VR) start-ups around the world. The new investment represents the second stage of the Vive X program, which was launched in August in Taipei, San Francisco, Beijing and Shenzhen with HTC’s first US$100 million investment. The company backed more than 30 VR start-ups in the first phase of the program.
REAL ESTATE
Occupancy rates revealed
There were 862,600 unoccupied residential properties in Taiwan last year, accounting for 10.35 percent of the total, the Ministry of the Interior said on Thursday. Of the empty properties, 118,713 were in New Taipei City and 63,890 were in Taipei, meaning that more than 20 percent of properties in the region were unoccupied, according to statistics compiled by the ministry’s real-estate information platform. The highest non-occupancy rate — 15.98 percent — was in Yilan, where 28,000 properties were unoccupied. Among the six special municipalities, Taoyuan had the highest non-occupancy rate at 11.49 percent, followed by Kaohsiung (10.86 percent), Tainan (10.15 percent), Taichung (10.02 percent), New Taipei City (7.72 percent) and Taipei (7.22 percent).
TRADE
US seeks arbitration
The US on Thursday said it was calling for a WTO arbitration panel to resolve an escalating trade dispute on Chinese export barriers for raw materials, including lead, tin, graphite, antimony, chromium and copper. “We will aggressively pursue this challenge on behalf of US steelworkers, auto workers, aerospace workers and the many Americans whose businesses, jobs and livelihoods depend on the strength of these and other industries,” US Trade Representative Michael Froman said in a statement. Froman’s office in July took the initial step of calling for consultations with China to resolve the matter. Thursday’s announcement seeking arbitration indicated such consultations had not been successful.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
The EU and US are nearing an agreement to coordinate on producing and securing critical minerals, part of a push to break reliance on Chinese supplies. The potential deal would create incentives, such as minimum prices, that could advantage non-Chinese suppliers, according to a draft of an “action plan” seen by Bloomberg. The EU and US would also cooperate on standards, investments and joint projects, as well as coordinate on any supply disruptions by countries like China. The two sides are additionally seeking other “like-minded partners” to join a multicountry accord to help create these new critical mineral supply chains, which feed into
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
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