Turkey is likely to secure a US$3 billion loan payment from the International Monetary Fund amid concern the economy of the US's closest Muslim ally is suffering after the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes.
Economy Minister Kemal Dervis arrives in Washington tomorrow to begin negotiating the payment, as his country assumes a pivotal diplomatic position in the US campaign to rally a worldwide coalition to fight terrorism.
The talks, expected to continue next week, should result in a promise of the US$3 billion payment out of the country's US$19 billion IMF package, fund officials signaled on Friday. Turkey also wants to delay US$5.5 billion in payments owed to the fund next year.
"Things are on track," said IMF spokesman Thomas Dawson at a press briefing in Washington. "We are still shooting for a board date in the middle of October."
Turkey has promised the US -- the IMF's largest shareholder -- that fighter jets can use the nation's airspace in any strikes against Afghanistan, a Muslim nation that's harboring Osama bin Laden, the main suspect in the attacks on the World Trade Center Turkey is a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally of the US and was a US partner during the 1991 war against Iraq, its neighbor and trading partner.
The country also gives the US Air Force access to Incirlik Air Base, from which the US flies patrols over northern Iraq.
Yesterday US Secretary of State Colin Powell met with his Turkish counterpart, Ismail Cem, and both pledged to work together to fight terrorism.
"We do have a strong relationship with Turkey," Powell told reporters after the meeting. "As our campaign against terrorism unfolds, we will be able to count on the support and active assistance of our Turkish friends."
Those diplomatic ties prompt-ed some analysts to speculate that Turkey will win greater IMF support. The US has three times the voting weight on the fund's board as the next two largest shareholders, Japan and Germany, and drives much of the lender's agenda.
The most important thing is "how much this crisis may help Turkey get additional foreign financing," said Altug Karamenderes, chief economist at Ata Securities.
The country has already gotten its IMF package expanded twice within the last year.
Turkey's economy, which faced soaring interest rates and a plummeting lira early in the year, has been hit by the economic fallout from the terror attacks. The lira fell to a record low on Monday, on fears of a drawn-out war.
Even before the attacks, the IMF saw the Turkish economy shrinking by 4.3 percent this year. The economy contracted by 11.8 percent in the last quarter.
In the days following the terrorism in New York and Washington, Dervis said the IMF and World Bank should be ready to help countries hurt by the attacks or a US retaliation.
"I expect the IMF will act" if Turkey has "to bear a disproportionate cost if events develop in a certain direction," he said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to