H7N9 avian influenza could affect the retail and restaurant sectors — as well as the economy as a whole — if the virus becomes transmissible among humans, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
If the bird flu became more serious and continued for three months, the nation’s GDP is forecast to drop by 0.004 percentage points, Minister of Economic Affairs Chang Chia-juch (張家祝) said, citing research conducted by the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院).
“If more cases [of H7N9 infection] are found, the nation’s economy might be hurt to some degree,” Chang told the legislature’s Economics Committee. “The flu would also hit the nation’s consumption, production and export-related sectors if the flu outbreak gets worse.”
“The ministry has set up a special task force to monitor the situation. We aim to be well-prepared to prevent the disease from spreading,” Chang said.
In addition, local facial mask manufacturers have agreed to increase production to 800,000 masks a day from 500,000, he said, in an attempt to ease concerns over a shortage.
However, lawmakers cast doubts on the ministry’s estimates of economic damage due to H7N9 bird flu.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) said that the estimate of “0.004 percentage points is quite small, but there are people saying we should not underestimate the bird flu?”
Taiwan suffered an economic loss of NT$64.3 billion (US$2.18 billion) 10 years ago because of the SARS outbreak, Ting added.
He said the government’s efforts to counter an avian influenza epidemic might be more challenging this time, because the number of people traveling across the Taiwan Strait is now 10 times higher than it was a decade ago.
Citing the institute’s research, Chang said that in the early stages of the outbreak of SARS, H5N1 or H1N1 in the past, the economic impact from the epidemic was “very minimal.”
The government last week decided to advance a ban on the slaughter of live poultry in traditional markets to May 17, from its original date of June 17, as a preventive measure after the nation reported its first confirmed H7N9 infection on Wednesday last week.
Neither Chang nor Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Bao-ji (陳保基) offered any estimate about the ban’s impact on vendors of live poultry.
Vendors offering live poultry slaughtering at traditional markets are encouraged to sign contracts with legal slaughterhouses and to change their selling practices, Chen told the committee.
In addition, consumers are advised to purchase meat products processed by legal slaughterhouses, he added.
Chen said the government would refund poultry sellers for birds culled for carrying avian influenza, especially H7N9.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday obtained the government’s approval to inject an additional US$10.26 billion to finance the construction of its second fab in Kumamoto, Japan, and a second fab in Arizona, using advanced process technologies. The Department of Investment Review approved TSMC’s investment applications on the basis that Taiwan remains a major technology and manufacturing hub for the chipmaker, which makes its most advanced chips at home, the company operates its research-and-development center here and the majority of its capacity remains in Taiwan. The latest capital injections — US$5.26 billion for its Japanese venture Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing
Packed into a small room, a drone, bipedal robot, supermarket checkout and other devices showcase a vision of China’s software future — one where an operating system developed by national champion Huawei (華為) has replaced Windows and Android. The collection is at the Harmony Ecosystem Innovation Center in the southern city of Shenzhen, a local government-owned entity that encourages authorities, companies and hardware makers to develop software using OpenHarmony (鴻蒙), an open-source version of the operating system Huawei launched five years ago after US sanctions cut off support for Google’s Android. While Huawei’s recent strong-selling smartphone launches have been closely watched for
The waves of the Aegean Sea lap gently at the tables and chairs of two beach restaurants on Greece’s Halkidiki peninsula. It is an idyllic scene, but one that is totally illegal. Like many others in Greece, the two establishments on Pefkochori Beach do not have a license to set up shop so close to the water. After a wave of protests last summer by locals about bars and restaurants illegally covering beaches with sunbeds and tables, the Greek state is taking action. It is cracking down on rogue tourist practices with surveillance drones, satellite imagery and a special app
AI BOOM: With many stocks trading at historically high levels, the TAIEX is expected to drop about 600 points in the third quarter as investors seek to pocket their profits Taiwan’s main board could experience a technical pullback after the TAIEX soared more than 28 percent in the first half of this year following a strong showing by artificial intelligence (AI)-related stocks, analysts said on Saturday, predicting that the index would make a comeback in the fourth quarter. On Friday, the last trading session of this month, the TAIEX rose 126.27 points, or 0.55 percent, to 23,032.25, pushing up the main board by 5,101.44 points, or 28.4 percent, in the first six months of the year. Of the major indices in the world, the TAIEX only trailed the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index