■ELECTRONICS
Hon Hai to relocate staff
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) plans to relocate 160,000 China-based workers from coastal Shenzhen to inner cities so as to benefit from preferential taxes offered by provincial governments, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday. Hon Hai, the world’s largest contract maker of electronics, may spend NT$10 billion (US$302.8 million) to facilitate the business relocation, the report said. The company’s 260,000 employees at the Shenzhen plant would also be cut to 100,000 while the remaining employees would be relocated to new plants in Wuhan, Huaibei Province, and Jincheng, Shanxi Province. Company spokesman Edmund Ding (丁祈安) was quoted as saying that these inner cities have offered Hon Hai not only preferential business income taxes, lower than the 25 percent rate in other coastal cities, but also preferential access to public utilities, the report said.
■CHINA
Foreign debt increases
China’s foreign debt increased by more than 18 percent in the first nine months of the year, with short-term debt rising especially fast, state media reported yesterday. At the end of September, overseas borrowing stood at US$442 billion, a rise of 18.3 percent from the end of last year, Xinhua news agency said, quoting the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. It did not offer an explanation for the rise. Short-term debt — defined as loans with maturities of less than one year — had risen particularly fast, increasing by 27.2 percent over the nine-month period to US$280 billion, Xinhua reported. Medium to long-term debt was up by a more moderate 5.5 percent to US$162 billion, Xinhua reported.
■AUTOMAKERS
Beijing to stimulate sales
China plans to offer incentives for car owners to scrap their old models in favor of new ones in a bid to lift the auto industry as it enters a period of crisis, state media said yesterday. The measure is part of a new package being prepared in Beijing aimed at avoiding a US-style collapse of the local auto sector, Xinhua news agency reported. “Details of the plan will be announced very soon,” an unnamed official with the commerce ministry said shortly after dismal figures were released showing that Chinese auto sales fell 14.6 percent last month from a year earlier. Other measures that China may adopt to bolster auto sales include cuts in the 10 percent vehicle purchase tax and easier access to car loans, Xinhua said.
■AIRPORTS
Hong Kong staff strike
Baggage handlers at Hong Kong’s international airport launched a three-hour strike yesterday to protest the cancelation of their merit bonus, a labor organizer said. The workers, along with freight handlers, tarmac workers and airport bus drivers, started the strike at 1pm after talks with Hong Kong Airport Services Ltd broke down, organizer Ip Wai-ming (葉偉明) told reporters. Local television news showed approximately 100 workers on strike gathered near cargo carts at the airport. Ip said the workers make between HK$6,000 to HK$8,000 (US$770 to US$1,030) a month and that the bonus, which usually amounts to a month’s pay, is crucial to their livelihoods. He said management at Hong Kong Airport Services refused to resume the full bonus pay, but offered a one-time additional payment of HK$750 to each employee. “This is quite far from what we demanded,” Ip said.
SMART MANUFACTURING: The company aims to have its production close to the market end, but attracting investment is still a challenge, the firm’s president said Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said its long-term global production plan would stay unchanged amid geopolitical and tariff policy uncertainties, citing its diversified global deployment. With operations in Taiwan, Thailand, China, India, Europe and the US, Delta follows a “produce at the market end” strategy and bases its production on customer demand, with major site plans unchanged, Delta president Simon Chang (張訓海) said on the sidelines of a company event yesterday. Thailand would remain Delta’s second headquarters, as stated in its first-quarter earnings conference, with its plant there adopting a full smart manufacturing system, Chang said. Thailand is the firm’s second-largest overseas
‘REMARKABLE SHOWING’: The economy likely grew 5 percent in the first half of the year, although it would likely taper off significantly, TIER economist Gordon Sun said The Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) yesterday raised Taiwan’s GDP growth forecast for this year to 3.02 percent, citing robust export-driven expansion in the first half that is likely to give way to a notable slowdown later in the year as the front-loading of global shipments fades. The revised projection marks an upward adjustment of 0.11 percentage points from April’s estimate, driven by a surge in exports and corporate inventory buildup ahead of possible US tariff hikes, TIER economist Gordon Sun (孫明德) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy likely grew more than 5 percent in the first six months
SUPPLY RESILIENCE: The extra expense would be worth it, as the US firm is diversifying chip sourcing to avert disruptions similar to the one during the pandemic, the CEO said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) on Wednesday said that the chips her company gets from supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would cost more when they are produced in TSMC’s Arizona facilities. Compared with similar parts from factories in Taiwan, the US chips would be “more than 5 percent, but less than 20 percent” in terms of higher costs, she said at an artificial intelligence (AI) event in Washington. AMD expects its first chips from TSMC’s Arizona facilities by the end of the year, Su said. The extra expense is worth it, because the company is
The seizure of one of the largest known mercury shipments in history, moving from mines in Mexico to illegal Amazon gold mining zones, exposes the wide use of the toxic metal in the rainforest, according to authorities. Peru’s customs agency, SUNAT, found 4 tonnes of illegal mercury in Lima’s port district of Callao, according to a report by the non-profit Environmental Investigations Agency (EIA). “This SUNAT intervention has prevented this chemical from having a serious impact on people’s health and the environment, as can be seen in several areas of the country devastated by the illegal use of mercury and illicit activities,”
RSS