Just how many chickens is a fighter jet worth?
Thai economists are currently trying to work out the answer as the government is hoping to barter chickens and rice to pay for everything from military aircraft to subway trains. When Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra opened the bidding on Thursday for Thailand's 1.7-trillion-baht (US$44 billion) public works program, he said thst his government was interested in alternative "financing mechanisms" -- namely, bartering.
The highlight of the new projects is an expansion of Bangkok's public transport system, expected to cost some 550 billion baht. The defense ministry also wants to barter for the purchase of fighter jets it is considering to buy from Russia, Sweden or the US.
Thaksin's government believes that bartering for such big-ticket items would help keep the country's foreign debt ratio below 50 percent of GDP.
The scheme envisions trading farm goods already in government stocks, such as surplus rice, instead of using cash for at least part of the payment to foreign companies.
To that end, a special barter trade committee has been created in the Commerce Ministry to assess the bids for the public works projects and negotiate how much chicken, rice or tapioca could be used to finance the deal.
"When they say they've settled on ... the barter trade, the committee will make the decision which commodity they will use for barter," Tikhunporn Natvar of the ministry's department of foreign trade said.
Nazir Rizk, who heads the Thai subsidiary of French engineering conglomerate Alstom, said he doubted that barter was the most attractive payment option for foreign companies.
"It is one solution, but ... how you put it in place remains unclear ... A company like us, we don't do barter, we sell trains. We cannot sell chickens," he said.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
RSS