To sharpen the competitiveness of state-owned enterprises, the government should make a greater effort to corporatize these institutions and review regulations to loosen set-in-stone restrictions, according to the representatives attending a panel meeting yesterday.
The panel was formed to discuss management of state enterprises as part of the preparations for the Conference on Sustainable Economic Development, scheduled for July 27 and 28.
State-owned institutions currently refer to the organizations in which the government holds, directly or indirectly, greater than a 50 percent stake. However, in some cases, the government is able to control businesses with shareholdings of only 20 percent.
Boost governance
Former vice minister of finance Yang Tze-kiang (
For others that can be privatized without damaging industrial development, he urged the government to speed up share sales using a fair and transparent mechanism, as with China Shipbuilding Corp (中船), Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp (台灣菸酒公司) and Taiwan Sugar Corp (台糖).
Zero share
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang To-far (
But he doubted whether it was feasible to introduce professional management to run state enterprises as the decision would require the consent of private shareholders.
Huang Tien-lin (黃天麟), a former national policy adviser to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), suggested that the government enact a law managing state-run enterprises or state-run financial institutions, which would be conducive to corporatizing these businesses.
According to statistics provided by the Council for Economic Planning and Development, the Cabinet has approved the privatization of 68 state-controlled enterprises since 1989.
Of those, 35 have been privatized, 17 are defunct, two have ceased privatization due to policy changes and the remaining 14 are undergoing privatization.
The panel yesterday, chaired by CEPD chairman Hu Sheng-cheng (胡勝正),
concluded that the privatization of those 14 businesses should be reviewed.
The government should reserve its shareholdings in key enterprises which
bear policy development tasks but they can be corporatized or run by
professional management teams, rather than the government, to boost their
competitive edge, they noted.
The consensus reached yesterday will be subject to further discussion at the
economic conference at the end of the month.
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