Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (
"With a solid foundation and vigorous private enterprises, I have confidence in Taiwan's economic development," Chen said at the inauguration ceremony.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), who supervised the handover, praised Chen's international trade experience, including his efforts toward Taiwan's accession to the WTO, and his leadership in inking free-trade agreements (FTAs).
Chen began his government service with a job at the Bureau of Foreign Trade in 1973 and built up a substantial record in international trade.
As a ministry veteran, Chen would not need an orientation period, Su said.
Steve Chen is the sixth economic minister in President Chen Shui-bian's (
With Steve Chen taking over the top job at the ministry, his former job as political vice minister will be filled by administrative Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (
No replacement has yet been named for Shih's old post, but the position may be filled by Department of Industrial Technology Director-General Huang Chung-chiou (黃重球), according to a report in the Chinese-language media yesterday.
Despite Steve Chen's optimism about the nation's economy, he faces a bumpy road, given Taiwan's current economic woes.
A report released by the Council for Economic Planning and Development last month said business indicators showed signs of a slowdown.
After 10 straight months of "green" light status, the monitoring indicators flashed a "yellow-blue" light in June, indicating a deceleration in major economic activities, the report said.
Increases in the consumer price index (CPI) will be another headache for the new minister, as the government tries to keep the CPI below 2 percent even though gasoline and utility prices need to be adjusted given the huge losses reported by state-run Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC,
Although Formosa Petrochemical Corp's (
Another thorny issue that Steve Chen faces is cross-strait trade policy, including the long-awaited lifting of the ban on investing in IC design, IC packaging and testing, and 12-inch wafer fabs in China.
The government agreed to allow local semiconductor companies to build a total of three 8-inch wafer factories producing chips using the less advanced 0.25-micron processing technology in China by the end of last year.
While Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) set up one factory in Shanghai in 2004, the applications of Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體) and ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技) for factories in China have yet to be approved.
Officials said in March that the ministry would resume reviewing applications, but the companies may have to cool their heels a while longer, given the expected fallout in cross-strait relations from Chad switching its diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing last weekend.
LIMITED IMPACT: Investor confidence was likely sustained by its relatively small exposure to the Chinese market, as only less advanced chips are made in Nanjing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) saw its stock price close steady yesterday in a sign that the loss of the validated end user (VEU) status for its Nanjing, China, fab should have a mild impact on the world’s biggest contract chipmaker financially and technologically. Media reports about the waiver loss sent TSMC down 1.29 percent during the early trading session yesterday, but the stock soon regained strength and ended at NT$1,160, unchanged from Tuesday. Investors’ confidence in TSMC was likely built on its relatively small exposure to the Chinese market, as Chinese customers contributed about 9 percent to TSMC’s revenue last
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
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Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), which assembles servers for Nvidia Corp, yesterday said that revenue last month rose 10.61 percent year-on-year, driven by strong growth in cloud and networking products amid continued front-loading orders for artificial intelligence (AI) server racks. Consolidated revenue expanded to NT$606.51 billion (US$19.81 billion) last month from NT$548.31 billion a year earlier, marking the highest ever in August, the company said in a statement. On a monthly basis, revenue was down 1.2 percent from NT$613.86 billion. Hon Hai, which is also a major iPhone assembler, added that its electronic components division saw significant revenue growth last month, boosted
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