President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), following advice from the four-member economic advisory panel headed by former premier Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), yesterday vowed to adopt deregulatory measures to revive the economy.
"Acknowledging that Taiwan's economic advantages lie in its development in information technology industries and global logistic capabilities, the government should put in more effort to reinforce the nation's infrastructure by taking on a deregulatory move," Chen said in a written statement after his second meeting with the panel yesterday morning.
Chen, however, did not elaborate, but said that land-use and capital inflow-and-outflow barriers should be removed to allow the market mechanism to prevail.
Chen also vowed to beef up the agricultural sector's competitiveness after hearing a report prepared by the group on the sector's modernization.
"The goal is to develop an export-oriented agricultural sector by singling out a few highly competitive products such as orchids, bell fruit and mangoes to enter overseas markets," Chen said.
According to Siew, the local agricultural sector has been highly disadvantaged by the nation's entry into the WTO.
"An oversupply of agricultural products has resulted in huge price-cuts that have seriously hurt farmers," Siew told a press conference yesterday.
To bolster and add value to the nation's agricultural development, the government should make the facilitation of an international marketing channel to export local products to either overseas markets a priority, Siew said.
A semi-official agricultural export association should also be established to formulate strategies in promoting the nation's agricultural products and conducting international trade negotiations, he added.
The president's economic advisors -- including Chen Po-chih (
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts