With higher oil prices looming and the nation's export momentum weakening, Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Ltd maintained its forecast for Taiwan's economic growth for this year at 4 percent, the bank said yesterday.
Interest rates will rise steadily to curb inflation and prevent a South Korean-style, boom-and-bust consumption cycle, said Tai Hui (
Low interest rates in 2002 and 2003 prompted South Koreans to boost their consumption. The resulting huge debts dragged down the nation's economy last year, a slump Seoul is still working to remedy, he said.
Hui predicted that Taiwan's central bank will raise benchmark interest rates by a total of less than 1 percentage point this year to bring the current "negative" real interest rates -- interest rates minus the rate of inflation -- back to a normal level.
On March 24, the central bank announced it would hike the rediscount rate to 1.875 percent, while boosting the secured accommodations rate and the unsecured loan rate to 2.25 percent and 4.125 percent, respectively.
Standard Chartered predicted that the NT dollar will remain stable against the greenback, fluctuating between NT$31.3 and NT$31.8 to the US dollar.
The NT dollar finished at NT$31.513 on the Taipei foreign exchange market yesterday.
Steady domestic demand and strong government spending will provide growth impetus, Hui said but the soft patch in the semiconductor industry and volatile oil prices are negative factors.
Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (
The price of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips fell 25 percent in the first quarter to below US$3 per unit, the company said.
"Taiwan will need strong consumption and investment to prop up growth momentum," Hui said. "Political factors or cross-strait policies would not cause any impact as the public has become accustomed to such variations."
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is accelerating capacity expansion fivefold this year, but it is still unable to keep up with the booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI), TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Cliff Hou (侯永清) said yesterday. This year alone, the company is building 25 chip manufacturing fabs and advanced packaging facilities worldwide, including 13 plants in Taiwan, which is unprecedented, Hou said at a CEO Summit fireside chat at Semicon Taiwan in Taipei. In the past, the company was able to build five or six factories a year, said Hou, who is also chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry
EXPANSION: The 3-hectare site would include small clean rooms and laboratories as well as a world-class training base for advanced packaging talent, the company said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is to establish a presence in the Baipu Industrial Park (白埔產業園區) in Kaohsiung to accelerate the testing and validation of semiconductor materials and equipment, a company executive said on Tuesday. The company is working with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Kaohsiung City Government on the plan, which is expected to improve validation efficiency by 25 to 50 percent, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC global summit held ahead of the Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opened in Taipei yesterday. TSMC would also conduct
Visitors look at a 64-qubit superconducting quantum computer on display at the Fujitsu booth at the Semicon Taiwan trade show in Taipei yesterday.
Silicon photonics would play a dominant role next year and make chip-level co-packaged optics (CPO) packaging possible, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. “For years, critics questioned the reliability of CPO. The doubts are being thoroughly dismantled by real-world data and market validation,” TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology development K.C. Hsu (徐國晉) said at a SEMI forum in Taipei. The company is on track to enter production of CPO later this year, Hsu said in another forum arranged by Imec in Taipei yesterday, about four months after TSMC announced its progress in CPO development in May.
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