■ Executives
Ghosn gets another hat
Carlos Ghosn, the turnaround artist who reinvented the Japanese automaker Nissan, will have yet another hat to wear when March rolls around. The president and CEO of Nissan Motor Co., will join the board of directors of the information technology giant IBM effective March 1, the company said Tuesday. "Carlos Ghosn's international business experience and perspective will make him a valuable addition to our board," said IBM chairman and chief executive officer Samuel Palmisano in a statement. "We are very pleased that he will be joining the IBM board." Ghosn, a French national born in Brazil to a Lebanese family, is credited with having rescued Nissan from near-bankruptcy after he was appointed chief operating officer by Nissan's parent company Renault in 1999.
■ Trade
Indonesia bans shrimp
Indonesian will soon ban imports of shrimp from six countries accused by the US of practising dumping, the minister of maritime affairs and fisheries said yesterday. The US administration this month launched an investigation into suspected dumping of shrimp by Brazil, China, Ecuador, India, Thailand and Vietnam. "We hope that the [Indonesian] ban will rejuvenate the shrimping business which has been in the doldrums," minister Rokhmin Dahuri was quoted by the state Antara news agency as saying. Dahuri said he was hopeful the ban would be issued by the trade ministry next week. With the investigation against the six nations, Indonesia could increase its shrimp exports to the US, he said. Dumping means selling goods overseas for less than the cost of production or less than the price in the home market.
■ Electronics
Mitsubishi to build plants
Mitsubishi Electric said yesterday it will invest ?10 billion (US$95 million dollars) to build five factories in Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and the US to boost capacity. The five plants will produce electric auto components including a car navigation system and car audio system, Japan's third-largest electronics maker said. "With the investment, we will increase our production capacity and hope we can supply auto parts to Japanese and foreign auto makers," an official for Mitsubishi Electric said, adding two plants would be built in Japan. The company also hopes to expand its annual sales from automotive parts to ?500 billion over the next four years from ?350 billion in the current financial year to March this year.
■ Statistics
Italy's confidence rises
Italian business confidence unexpectedly rose in January for a second month, a further indication that European executives expect accelerating global demand to help counter the euro's increase. An index based on a survey of 4,000 executives rose to 93.4 from a revised 91.3 last month, the Rome-based Isae institute said. Economists had expected a drop to 90.9. The increase in Italian confidence matches similar surveys from Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium in the past week. Gains in Italy have been less pronounced after strikes against government pension proposals and the collapse of Parmalat Finanziaria SpA, Italy's biggest foodmaker. German business confidence rose to a three-year high in January, the Ifo economic institute said yesterday.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS