Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi yesterday launched a major development project worth billions of dollars to fuel growth in resource-rich Sarawak on Borneo Island.
He said the government would spend an initial 5 billion ringgit (US$1.54 billion) to kickstart the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy, the last of five programs that form a long-term economic blueprint.
The announcement came just ahead of elections expected to be held next month and would focus on developing the state's energy sources, hydropower, coal, natural gas and petroleum.
"The development, distribution and consumption of energy is a core element leading to the success of the Sarawak Corridor," Abdullah said in a speech at the launch.
He said the project aims to bring economic growth and eradicate poverty in the predominantly rural state of Sarawak by 2030. It will provide about 800,000 jobs over 23 years with private investment targeted at 300 billion ringgit.
"It's not going to be less than 300 billion [ringgit]. It's a huge amount but it involves large developments in various fields ... in Sarawak, which is a very large [state]," he said.
The area earmarked for development is a 320km stretch along the coast facing the South China Sea from Tanjung Manis to Similajau and covers an area of 70,708km2 -- 57 percent of the entire state.
The government is gearing up for polls and has launched another four big-budget masterplans worth billions of dollars to attract foreign investment and develop rural states over the next two decades.
Officials say the main engine of growth for the project is the use of hydroelectricity supplied by the controversial Bakun Dam to power various large-scale heavy industries.
The US$2.5 billion dam project has been condemned as an environmental disaster after an area of rainforest the size of Singapore was inundated, forcing up to 10,000 tribal residents to relocate.
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
STILL UNCLEAR: Several aspects of the policy still need to be clarified, such as whether the exemptions would expand to related products, PwC Taiwan warned The TAIEX surged yesterday, led by gains in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping 100 percent tariff on imported semiconductors — while exempting companies operating or building plants in the US, which includes TSMC. The benchmark index jumped 556.41 points, or 2.37 percent, to close at 24,003.77, breaching the 24,000-point level and hitting its highest close this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed. TSMC rose NT$55, or 4.89 percent, to close at a record NT$1,180, as the company is already investing heavily in a multibillion-dollar plant in Arizona that led investors to assume
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,
On Ireland’s blustery western seaboard, researchers are gleefully flying giant kites — not for fun, but in the hope of generating renewable electricity and sparking a “revolution” in wind energy. “We use a kite to capture the wind and a generator at the bottom of it that captures the power,” said Padraic Doherty of Kitepower, the Dutch firm behind the venture. At its test site in operation since September 2023 near the small town of Bangor Erris, the team transports the vast 60-square-meter kite from a hangar across the lunar-like bogland to a generator. The kite is then attached by a
RSS