ECONOMY
National net worth rises
Average net worth per household was NT$11.23 million (US$372,397) at the end of 2015, the highest in five years, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) reported yesterday. The figure represented an increase of NT$310,000 from 2014 and was mainly due to increases in property value and financial assets, the DGBAS said. In 2015, gross national wealth rose 4.99 percent annually to NT$244.11 trillion, with increases of NT$6.83 trillion in property values and NT$4.5 trillion in financial assets, the DGBAS said. Meanwhile, the average financial liability per household was NT$1.7 million, an increase of NT$20,000, or 1.32 percent, from the previous year, the DGBAS said.
UTILITIES
Water restrictions to ease
Phase one water rationing measures in areas supplied by the Shihmen Reservoir (石門水庫) are likely to be lifted at an emergency response meeting on nationwide water supply today after rainfall in the nation’s north, Minister of Economic Affairs Lee Chih-kung (李世光) said yesterday. With the Central Weather Bureau predicting more rain in the next few days, Lee said southern Taiwan might maintain phase one rationing instead of implementing stricter phase two rationing.
BANKING
Pre-tax earnings fall
Pre-tax earnings by domestic banks fell 10 percent annually to NT$79.29 billion in the first quarter due to lagging growth in lending, the Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday. In particular, earnings by China-based branches in the period fell 34.4 percent to NT$770 million due to foreign-exchange losses, as well as increased allowances for doubtful accounts, the commission said. Non-performing loans among the nation’s 38 banks last month rose by NT$1 billion to NT$77.6 billion, translating to a non-performing loan ratio of 0.3 percent, up 0.01 percentage points from the previous month, it said. Total outstanding loans last month rose by NT$74.9 billion to NT$26.2 trillion, it said.
CHIPMAKERS
Faraday income increases
Faraday Technology Corp (智原), a fabless chip designing service and silicon patent provider, yesterday said net income last quarter increased sharply to NT$521 million, or NT$2.12 per share, from the previous quarter’s NT$31 million, or NT$0.12 per share, as the company booked a divestment gain of NT$575 million by selling its surveillance business to Novatek Microelectronics Corp (聯詠), the nation’s biggest supplier of driver ICs for LCD panels. In the first quarter, Faraday reported an operating loss of NT$16 million, compared with an operating profit of NT$14 million the prior quarter, while sales were down 6.4 percent to NT$1.43 billion and gross margin increased 1.1 percentage points to 45.3 percent.
ELECTRONICS
Parade reports income rise
Parade Technologies Ltd (譜瑞), a leading video display and interface IC supplier, on Wednesday reported net income increased 10.75 percent annually to US$11.95 million in the first quarter, with earnings per share of US$0.16. Gross margin was within the company’s guidance at 40 percent in the first quarter, the company said. Parade said sales for this quarter would likely reach between US$79 million and US$86 million, compared with the previous quarter’s US$75.64 million, with contributions from standard-plus timing controllers, high-speed interfaces and source ICs.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of