The record low trade surplus for the first seven months of this year is a result of added imports of capital goods, an investment that will help yield higher growth and larger revenues for the country in the coming years, a government spokesman said yesterday.
Taiwan registered a trade surplus of US$750 million in the first seven months of this year, a plunge from the previous year's US$4.77 billion, according to statistics compiled by the Ministry of Finance. Vice Premier Wu Rong-i (
Executive Yuan spokesman Cho Jung-tai (
Cho said this spending represents "healthy" investments conducive to future development for those major corporations and added that their investments will help create higher economic growth for the country in the long run.
Cho's remark came one day after an economist's warning that the nation's slowing exports and called on the government to craft adequate policies and make effective adjustments to improve what he described as eroding competitiveness in the face of China's fierce challenges.
Chen Po-chih (
Chen -- the former chairman of the Cabinet-level Council for Economic Planning and Development -- therefore urged the government to tackle the problem of Chinese products increasingly replacing Taiwan-made goods in the world market and the many possible side effects.
Ministry statistics show that the nation's outbound shipments increased by only 6.6 percent in the same seven-month period year to year, lagging behind an annual 11.2 percent expansion rate in inbound shipments.
Noting that an export increase rate of 7 percent or above can be viewed as an indication that a country's competitive edge remains benign, Chen ascribed Taiwan's slowing export growth to the fact that locally made products are increasingly being edged out by Chinese merchandise in the world market.
But a government economist said Tuesday the sharp surge of imports in the first seven months is healthy, despite public concerns over the rapid shrinkage of the the country's trade surplus during this period.
Thomas Yeh (
In a breakdown of the outlays for imports, Yeh said the rise in international oil prices has inflated the country's payments for fuel by US$2.57 billion over the same period of last year.
However, all of the them are spendings for capital assets and agricultural and industrial raw materials which will in turn help the country's exports in the long term and are healthy for economic development, Yeh said.
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