The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it is working on a subsidy program to help struggling restaurants reduce the costs charged by third-party food delivery providers during the COVID-19 outbreak.
The ministry yesterday met with representatives of restaurants, night markets and travel agencies, the third meeting it has held in its attempts to assist the affected sectors during the outbreak.
To mitigate the impact of the outbreak, restaurants have been turning to food delivery platforms, such as Uber Eats, Foodpanda and Deliveroo, to boost sales, but the approach comes at a cost — the providers charge commission fees that are 30 to 40 percent the cost of the delivery.
“We are drafting measures to subsidize commission fees as restaurants are suffering,” Minister of Economic Affairs Shen Jong-chin (沈榮津) told reporters after the meeting. “They [restaurant owners] have been advised to negotiate with [food delivery platforms] to cut the commission fees. Together with government help, they could save money. The ministry can help with this.”
Restaurants are hoping to at least halve the fees, Shen said.
The owners of food stalls in Taipei’s Ningxia Night Market (寧夏夜市) have reached an agreement with food delivery platforms to cut the commission to 10 to 30 percent, he said.
The ministry has set up a special budget of NT$160 million (US$5.29 million) to subsidize food delivery fees for about 11,000 small restaurants, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) reported yesterday.
The subsidy would be capped at NT$15,000 for each restaurant, the report said.
At the meeting, the ministry was urged to issue “stimulus coupons” as soon as possible to boost consumption, Shen said.
Businesses also urged the government to cut electricity and water rates, as well as taxes, he said.
They also called on the government to temporarily relax the regulations on working hours to help businesses weather the impact of the outbreak, Shen added.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said that its research institute has launched its first advanced artificial intelligence (AI) large language model (LLM) using traditional Chinese, with technology assistance from Nvidia Corp. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), said the LLM, FoxBrain, is expected to improve its data analysis capabilities for smart manufacturing, and electric vehicle and smart city development. An LLM is a type of AI trained on vast amounts of text data and uses deep learning techniques, particularly neural networks, to process and generate language. They are essential for building and improving AI-powered servers. Nvidia provided assistance
GREAT SUCCESS: Republican Senator Todd Young expressed surprise at Trump’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running US lawmakers who helped secure billions of dollars in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing rejected US President Donald Trump’s call to revoke the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, signaling that any repeal effort in the US Congress would fall short. US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who negotiated the law, on Wednesday said that Trump’s demand would fail, while a top Republican proponent, US Senator Todd Young, expressed surprise at the president’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running. The CHIPS Act is “essential for America leading the world in tech, leading the world in AI [artificial
DOMESTIC SUPPLY: The probe comes as Donald Trump has called for the repeal of the US$52.7 billion CHIPS and Science Act, which the US Congress passed in 2022 The Office of the US Trade Representative is to hold a hearing tomorrow into older Chinese-made “legacy” semiconductors that could heap more US tariffs on chips from China that power everyday goods from cars to washing machines to telecoms equipment. The probe, which began during former US president Joe Biden’s tenure in December last year, aims to protect US and other semiconductor producers from China’s massive state-driven buildup of domestic chip supply. A 50 percent US tariff on Chinese semiconductors began on Jan. 1. Legacy chips use older manufacturing processes introduced more than a decade ago and are often far simpler than
Gasoline and diesel prices this week are to decrease NT$0.5 and NT$1 per liter respectively as international crude prices continued to fall last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to decrease to NT$29.2, NT$30.7 and NT$32.7 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, while premium diesel is to cost NT$27.9 per liter at CPC stations and NT$27.7 at Formosa pumps, the companies said in separate statements. Global crude oil prices dropped last week after the eight OPEC+ members said they would
RSS