Trade delegation now in US
An economic and investment promotional mission, led by Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu (林義夫), arrived in Los Angeles yesterday on the first leg of a weeklong visit to San Diego, Chicago, Delaware, Philadelphia and New York.
While in those cities, the mission will hold seminars on investment in Taiwan and meet with US business leaders.
The mission is composed of officials from industrial, economic, and trade promotional organizations, including the Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the China External Trade Development Council and the Industrial Development and ministry's Investment Center.
Bid for China Pacific
Ruentex Group (潤泰集團) chairman Yin Yen-liang (尹衍樑) plans to invest more than US$100 million of his own money in a venture with Carlyle Group Inc and other investors that will buy a stake in China Pacific Insurance Co's life insurance unit, a Chinese-language newspaper reported yesterday, citing Yin.
Yin, whose businesses include textiles, construction and engineering, is seeking a 24.9 percent interest in the life insurance arm of Shanghai-based China Pacific, China's No. 3 insurer, the newspaper said.
Yin is now aiming to expand his businesses across the Taiwan Strait.
In China, the businessman is expanding into grocery wholesaling, convenience stores, distribution centers, construction and garments, the paper said.
Taipower seeks oil contract
Taiwan Power Co (台電) plans to sign a contract to buy 73,000 tonnes of fuel oil between next month and October next year, a company official said.
Taiwan Power will tomorrow ask suppliers to offer 0.5 percent sulfur fuel oil for delivery under a one-year agreement, said Raymond Jen, an official from the company's fuel procurement department.
A notice will be posted on the Public Construction Commission's Web site today, he said. The deadline for bids is Aug. 19.
Bidders will for the first time be able to deliver fuel oil to Taiwan Power by truck, allowing Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) to compete with Chinese Petroleum Corp (中油).
Chinese Petroleum has traditionally supplied the company through a pipeline to its 1,085-megawatt Linkou power plant.
"We want to have more suppliers," Jen said.
Last year Chinese Petroleum supplied about 3 million kiloliters of fuel oil and will deliver between 2.5 million and 3 million kiloliters of fuel oil this year, he said.
NPL ratio falls to 8%
The bad-loan ratio at lenders fell to 8 percent as of June 30, from 8.6 percent at the end of March, after the nation's banks accelerated write-offs of troubled loans.
About NT$1.13 trillion (US$33 billion) of loans were classed as non-performing loans (NPL) or loans under surveillance, the central bank said in a statement. That compares with NT$1.2 trillion at the end of March.
Excluding loans at risk of default and under surveillance, the NPL-ratio fell to 5.7 percent from 6.1 percent at the end of March, the central bank said.
NT dollar rises
The New Taiwan dollar was at NT$34.396 yesterday from Friday's NT$34.415, according to Taipei Forex Inc. A total of US$215 million changed hands. The currency has risen 0.3 percent in the past five days against the greenback, compared with 1.1 percent for the yen.
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
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
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)