Focus Taiwan
Date:\ 04/27/2020
By: Pan Tzi-yu, Tsai Fan-min and Ko Lin

Taipei, April 27 (CNA) Taiwan's economic indicators signaled economic sluggishness in March for the first time in four months due to the adverse effects of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the National Development Council (NDC) said Monday.

The composite index of monitoring indicators flashed a yellow-blue light at 20 points, down from 24 and a green light in February, according to data compiled by the NDC, Taiwan's top economic planning agency.

The NDC uses a five-color system to gauge the country's economic performance, with blue indicating economic recession, yellow-blue representing sluggishness, green signifying stable growth, yellow-red referring to a warming economy and red pointing to overheating.

Out of the nine factors in the composite index for March, the sub-indexes for monetary aggregates (M1B) and manufacturing shipments remained green lights, while the sub-index for exports flashed a blue light, compared with a green light a month earlier, the NDC said.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 28, 2020
By: Kao Shih-ching / Staff reporter

Local banks had approved 5,056 loan applications totaling NT$81.6 billion (US$2.72 billion) for businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as of Wednesday last week, surging from 510 applications totaling NT$7.39 billion two weeks earlier, Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) data showed yesterday.

Eighty-seven percent of the loans, or 4,177 applications for NT$71.7 billion, were provided by state-run banks, for an average of NT$17 million per application, the data showed.

Private banks lent NT$9.9 billion to 879 firms, for an average of NT$11 million per application, data showed.

“It seems that the government did not have a strong incentive to encourage private banks to help affected businesses,” Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator William Tseng (曾銘宗) told a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee in Taipei.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date:\ 04/26/2020
By: Su Ssu-yun, Tsai Peng-min and Chiang Yi-ching

Taipei, April 26 (CNA) Taiwan's two major fuel suppliers announced cuts Sunday to their diesel and gasoline prices this week, dropping domestic fuel prices to their lowest level in 20 years.

Effective from midnight Sunday, the state-run petroleum refiner CPC Corp., Taiwan will cut its retail gasoline prices per liter by NT$0.9 (US$0.03) and NT$1.0 per liter for diesel, it said.

After the adjustments, prices at CPC pumps will drop to their lowest levels since February 2000, with NT$16.1 per liter for 92 octane unleaded, NT$17.6 per liter for 95 octane unleaded and NT$19.6 per liter for 98 octane unleaded, according to CPC data.

For super diesel, retail prices will be lowered to NT$13 per liter, the lowest since November 1999, CPC said.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 04/25/2020
By: Chang Jung-hsiang, Wang Jsin-yu, Wu Chehau and Frances Huang

Taipei, April 25 (CNA) With the movie theater industry falling victim to the COVID-19 coronavirus that has kept many consumers at home amid fear of infection, two more cinemas in Taiwan have announced that they will close temporarily from next week.

Changhua Cinemas and Taiwan Cinemas in Changhua City, two of the only three movie theaters in Changhua County, announced that they will suspend operations starting from April 27 until the pandemic eases.

The announcements from the two theaters came after Taipei's Dynasty Theater, which said Thursday that it will close for three months from May 4 due to the virus, and Tainan's Madou Cinema, which announced Friday that it will close for two months from April 27.

Neither Changhua Cinemas nor Taiwan Cinemas, which also blamed the COVID-19 spread for the closures, gave a fixed timeframe for reopening.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 24 April, 2020
By: John Van Trieste

Many in Taiwan’s food service industry are hurting as the COVID-19 pandemic drives business away. But at least one cook here has actually seen business boom. The reason? Location, location, location.

Ms. Chen of Chiayi is no stranger to the local jail. She is the owner of one of the few food establishments nearby, serving simple, classic Taiwanese fare. She is used to getting food delivery requests from the families of inmates, who want to give those on the inside a bit of variety in their meals.

But whereas once these requests would only come in every once in a while, they have now exploded, becoming a big part of her revenue. She estimates that business is up around 20% thanks to these calls.

It all started when people in Taiwan stopped going out so much due to fears about COVID-19. Family of inmates, too, have largely decided to stay home. Instead of visiting incarcerated loved ones and picking up some food for them on the way, they now mostly stay home and have Ms. Chen make the food and deliver it for them.    [FULL  STORY]

Tom's Hardware
Date: April 24, 2020
By: Niels Broekhuijsen 2 hours ago

At the start of this year we heard that TSMC was investing heavily in 5nm fabrication, and it's no secret that the next step after that is TSMC's 3nm process.The Taiwanese silicon manufacturer is looking beyond that process too, as it just announced to shareholders that it is starting development of its 2nm lithographic process, as spotted by DigiTimes.

Painstakingly few details are available about the 2nm process. All we know is that TSMC is starting development — though it's safe to assume the end product will be very fast and more efficient than anything on the market today.

Currently, TSMC's 7nm process is in its peak, receiving huge numbers of orders from AMD for its Ryzen 3000-series CPUs and Navi graphics cards. Other customers include Apple, and although Huawei was to be included, that doesn't appear to be working out so well.

On the 5nm front, TSMC is working with EUV lithography, similar to what Samsung is accomplishing. The two chipmakers are neck-in-neck in the silicon race. According to DigiTimes, TSMC is expecting 10% of this year's revenue to come from its 5nm EUV lines.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 04/24/2020
By: Wu Hsin-yun and Ko Lin

Taipei, April 24 (CNA) The number of furloughed employees in Taiwan continued to rise over the past week because of the growing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the country's economy.

As of April 24, a total of 18,265 workers had agreed with their employers to go on unpaid leave, up 3,444 from seven days earlier, while 804 companies had unpaid leave programs, up 216 from a week earlier, the statistics showed.

The number was the highest since the global financial crisis, when the number of people on unpaid leave peaked at just over 238,000 in February 2009.

Taipei and New Taipei registered the highest number of furloughed workers at 8,480, consisting of 2,763 employees at 182 companies in Taipei and 5,717 workers at 253 firms in New Taipei.
[FULL  STORY]