The Ministry of Finance (MOF) yesterday flatly rejected a legislative report which ruled that the government's taking over of 36 credit units from grassroots financial institutions was "unconstitutional."
"Standing on the existing legal footing, the ministry has followed all due process to bail out debt-ridden community-level financial institutions," Huang Tien-mu (黃天牧), deputy director-general of the ministry's Bureau of Monetary Affairs, told a press conference yesterday.
Huang called the legislature's report "groundless and biased."
In August, 2001, the ministry instructed the Central Deposit Insurance Corp (
While the takeover of these grassroots financial institutions was part of the government's move to clean up the nation's financial sector, opposition parties has since then asked the government to return 36 grassroots credit units to farmers and fishermen's associations. They also considered petitioning the Council of Grand Justices to rule on the legality of the resolutions.
On Monday, the 21-member legislative committee, chaired by KMT Legislator Liu Cheng-hung (
"The government's coercive move had seriously infringed people's property rights," the report said, citing the 10th article of the Constitution.
The report also said that the government had auctioned off the cooperatives' assets at a very low price.
In response, Huang yesterday said that the auction was based on a professional appraisal conducted by five local accounting firms, insisting that the legislature's appraisal was only based on partial assets with good quality.
Huang also said that, before the takeover, the government had given a grace period for cooperative officials to improve their deteriorating financial conditions, but most of the management teams said they were incapable of turning performance around.
Huang said that the legislature had wrongly cited the constitutional article, which has been considered outdated after revisions to the Merger Law and the Bank Law were made.
When asked if cooperatives would be allowed to buy back their auctioned assets, Huang said that the decision rests with the Council of Agriculture, which is now the financial regulator for credit units of fishermen's and farmers' associations.
After the ministry's denial yesterday, the legislature will be entitled to seek a final ruling from the Council of Grand Justices to resolve the dispute.
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