■ Electronics
Sony to stop making CRTs
Sony Corp plans to discontinue producing television picture tubes in Japan as early as next year, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported, without saying where it obtained the information. Sony, the world's largest maker of television sets, will shift production of cathode ray tubes (CRTs) to the US and China, the report said. Sony will then import them, while increasing production of flat-panel televisions domestically, the paper said. The company currently produces CRTs in Gifu and Aichi prefectures, and doesn't plan to close factories or fire workers when it shifts production overseas, the paper said. Sony produced about 10 million television tubes and 160,000 flat-panel televisions in the fiscal year ended in March, the paper said.
■ Automobiles
China makes BMWs
The first Chinese-made BMW cars went on sale this weekend, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, in another sign of the country's growing manufacturing sophistication and surging demand for luxury goods. The BMW 325Is, manufactured at the company's joint-venture plant in the northeastern city of Shenyang, are priced at 473,850 yuan (US$57,786), about 200,000 yuan (US$24,390) less than the imported version, Xinhua said in a report late Saturday. While that's an astronomical sum for most Chinese, who earn about US$700 annually on average, it is within the reach of many in the growing ranks of state company managers, entrepreneurs, entertainers and others who have benefited from economic reforms enacted over the past two decades.
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
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