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Winbond increases spending
Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子), Taiwan's second-largest computer-memory chipmaker by market value, increased this year's planned spending on new equipment by 56 percent to expand production of chips using a process that squeezes more semiconductors onto each wafer. Winbond raised its spending plans to NT$7.9 billion ($228 million) from NT$5.1 billion, the company said in a statement. Winbond will start making chips using 0.11-micron technology for Infineon Technologies AG starting in the first quarter to help Europe's second-largest semiconductor maker boost production.

MediaTek expects good quarter
MediaTek Inc (聯發科技), the world's largest designer of chips for DVD players, said higher sales and lower costs will counter falling prices in the current quarter. ``It should be no problem to maintain our third-quarter margins,'' Finance Director Yu Mingto (喻銘鐸) said. ``Will it be better than the third quarter? We'll have to see.'' Sales in October rose by more than half to NT$3 billion ($87 million) from a year ago and were up 3 percent from September. Third-quarter profit rose 37 percent from a year ago to NT$2.6 billion ($75 million) after the company began selling chips more powerful than those of rivals. ``Wafer costs have fallen a little, and our product mix is better, but average selling price erosion is still there,'' Yu said.

EU draft for trade approved
The Executive Yuan has approved a draft of guidelines for expanding economic and trade relations with European Union countries, a government official said Thursday. The official noted that the main targets of the guidelines, which will be implemented between 2002 and 2005, are that annual two-way trade between Taiwan and the European Union will reach US$43 billion by 2005 and that aggregated investment in Taiwan by European enterprises will increase to US$8 billion. It is hoped that the number of cases of strategic alliances, technical cooperation and technical transfers, will reach 100, he went on. Europe is the third-largest trading market for Taiwan products, behind North America and Asia.

Workers 18% of jobless
The number of Taiwan's long-term unemployed workers has reached 94,000 so far for 2002, accounting for 18.77 percent of the total jobless population, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) reported Thursday. The figure is a marked increase from the year-earlier level of 58,000, with "age restrictions" and "low pay" the two leading obstacles for the so-called long-term jobless workers who, according to a DGBAS definition, are those who remain jobless for more than one year. Elderly and middle-aged workers of between 45 and 64, as well as people with low educational backgrounds, are most affected, the DGBAS said, adding that 27.89 percent of the elderly and middle-aged workers are jobless, up by 5 percentage points from five years ago. While long-term jobless workers hope for an average monthly salary of NT$29,345, those who found work over the past year received only NT$26,988 on average, the DGBAS noted.

NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday fell against its US counterpart, losing NT$0.007 to close at NT$34.812 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$320 million, compared with the previous day's US$349 million.

Agencies
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