■ Government spending in control
The government has succeeded in controlling its annual expenditure at a level of around NT$1.6 trillion (US$50.3 billion) in recent years, saving an average of NT$70 billion in government spending annually, a senior budgetary official said yesterday. Speaking at a weekly Cabinet meeting, Hsu Jan-yau (許璋瑤), head of the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), said the achievement has been reflected in Taiwan's ranking in the World Economic Forum (WEF) global rating on government expenditure control. Taiwan ranked 13th in last year's WEF global rating in terms of government expenditure control, moving up seven notches from the previous WEF rating. According to Hsu, the government began to adopt a package of measures in 2001 to improve budgetary efficiency by controlling government expenditure and cutting wasteful spending. Through concerted efforts of all government agencies, Hsu said the ratio of government expenditure to the nation's GDP declined from 17.3 percent in 2001 to 15.2 percent last year.
■ SDK to up hard disk production
A Japanese technology giant plans to increase production of hard disk media across its three plants in Singapore, Taiwan and Chiba, Japan, a Showa Denko KK (SDK) spokesman said in a published report yesterday. SDK, one of the world's largest manufacturers of disks for hard drives, is injecting S$183 million (US$111 million) to expand capacity, Yoshiyuki Kusanagi told the Straits Times. He declined to disclose how much of the investment will be allocated at each facility but said the expansion of capacity in Singapore will be completed by March next year. SDK intends to increase production of hard disk media by a total of 3.05 million disks a month across the three plants, Kusanagi said.
■ Lenovo, Elitegroup may ally
Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), China's largest personal computer maker, may forge an alliance with Taiwanese motherboard maker Elitegroup Computer Systems Co (精英電腦) to explore the server motherboard market, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, without saying where it obtained the information. The report said Lenovo may transfer its design technology to Elitegroup and help the latter establish motherboard production lines for servers. Elitegroup would also help market the server boards through its distribution channels, the paper added.
■ Siemens workers protest
Siemens AG workers in China are protesting against the German engineering company's plans to cut staff at the local mobile-phone unit, WirtschaftsWoche reported, without saying where it obtained the information. The workers are protesting against the Munich-based engineering company's plan to cut more than 100 of the 2,000 Chinese jobs in marketing and sales operations of the handset business, the magazine said. Workers staged protests outside Siemens's Chinese headquarters in Beijing, the magazine said. BenQ Corp (明基) plans to take over Siemens's unprofitable handset business later this year.
■ NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar dropped for the first day in three as the Japanese yen's 0.6 percent slide today raised concerns that the nation's central bank will sell its currency to maintain the competitiveness of its exporters. The NT dollar dropped NT$0.086 to close at NT$31.979 against the US dollar on the Taipei foreign exchange market, on turnover of US$735 million.
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