Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday asked the Pingtung County Government and developers to speed up the construction of pleasure boat piers and yachting clubs at the Tapeng Bay National Resort Area (大鵬灣國家風景區).
During an inspection of the area, Su said that car racing, golf and ocean playground facilities now under construction would not be sufficient to attract large numbers of tourists when an international tourist hotel is completed in 2012.
He ordered builders to move up the 2010 target for completing piers for pleasure boats but did not give a new timeframe, apart from expressing hope that tourists would start swarming to the area next year.
Kaohsiung Games
Minister of Transportation and Communications Kuo Yao-chi (
Su also decided on which blueprint to adopt for a major bridge in the bay area, opting for a medium-priced design that would cost NT$920 million (US$28.8 million) rather than a more extravagant NT$1.2 billion plan, or a much less costly but also less attractive plan that would cost only NT$420 million.
Rail infrastructure
After listening to a briefing by Pingtung County Magistrate Tsao Chi-hung (
Overpass tracks would cost an additional NT$5 billion, but would ease ground traffic congestion, change Pingtung's landscape and increase land values, he said.
The premier vetoed Tsao's suggestion of building a 40km bike route under the No. 3 National Expressway from Chiuju (
He also instructed the Council of Agriculture to set aside a budget for eight Hakka communities in the county to build roads linking to major highways.
AI SPLURGE: The four major US tech companies have lost more than US$950 billion in value since releasing earnings and outlooks, while equipment makers were gaining Four of the biggest US technology companies together have forecast capital expenditures that would reach about US$650 billion this year — a flood of cash earmarked for new data centers and all the gear within them. The spending planned by Alphabet Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Meta Platforms Inc and Microsoft Corp, all in pursuit of dominance in the still-nascent market for artificial intelligence (AI) tools, is a boom without a parallel this century. Each of the companies’ estimates for this year is expected either near or surpass their budgets for the past three years combined. They would set a high-watermark for capital spending
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Bank of America Corp nearly doubled its forecast for the nation’s economic growth this year, adding to a slew of upgrades even after a rip-roaring last year propelled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI). The firm lifted its projection to 8 percent from 4.5 percent on “relentless global demand” for the hardware that Taiwanese companies make, according to a note dated yesterday by analysts including Xiaoqing Pi (皮曉青). Taiwan’s GDP expanded 8.63 percent last year, the fastest pace since 2010. The increase “reflects our sustained optimism over Taiwan’s technology driven expansion and is reinforced by several recent developments,” including a more stable currency,
COLLABORATION: Taiwan and the US could jointly find solutions to weaknesses in supply chain resilience for critical materials, focusing on mining and initial refinement Taiwan is likely to purchase rare earths from the US in the future, and is also in talks with Australia and Canada to strengthen global rare earth supply chain security, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. Taiwan and the US last month concluded the sixth Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue, during which both sides signed a joint statement endorsing the principles of the Pax Silica Declaration, pledging to deepen cooperation in areas including critical minerals. At the time, Kung said the two sides would establish working groups to advance cooperation in areas including artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, critical materials and
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