Total trade value at the nation’s free-trade zones is expected to top NT$1 trillion (US$36 billion) this year thanks to rising prices of components associated with chips, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said last week.
The nation has seven free-trade zones in the ports of Keelung, Suao, Taipei, Taichung, Anping and Kaohsiung, and at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
Since the ministry began administering the free-trade zones in 2009, trade value at the zones has been growing at an average rate of 18 percent annually, Department of Aviation and Navigation Deputy Director-General Han Chen-hua (韓振華) told a news conference.
Trade volume has also been growing at about 16 percent annually, he said.
Trade value at the zones from January to July totaled NT$679.8 billion, up 38.5 percent from the same period last year.
“Trade value last year and in 2019 was about NT$900 billion. Should trade value continue to grow at the current rate, it could potentially surpass NT$1 trillion, which would be a historic high,” Han said, adding that the performance is remarkable given that the COVID-19 pandemic has severely disrupted global supply chains, and led to labor and container shortages.
Trade value was mainly generated by the free-trade zone at the airport which houses electronic component manufacturers, the department said.
The airport free-trade zone generated trade value of NT$484.1 billion from January to July, as robust demand for computer chips led to overall price increases in electronic components, it said.
The re-exportation of components used in the auto industry and petrochemical products also rose in the free-trade zones near the seaports, with trade value totaling NT$195.8 billion between January and July, department data showed.
New infrastructure would be built at the free-trade zones in view of new business opportunities created by changes to global supply chains, the department said.
Farglory FTZ, the contractor in charge of developing the airport free-trade zone, is investing NT$5.6 billion to develop added-value logistics, cold chain and express delivery services at the zone, it said.
A 60-hectare plot near the south pier of the Port of Taipei would be used to develop applications involving the use of artificial intelligence and 5G technology, while a 4-hectare plot in the north of the port would be used to develop warehousing and airbridge services, it added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater