The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) is working on a plan to establish a new industrial park in the southern city of Kaohsiung by the middle of next year to encourage the relocation of high-tech industries and create around 2,700 jobs, economics officials said yesterday.
The officials at the Export Processing Zone Administration confirmed that the ministry would submit the plan to the Cabinet in March for approval.
The 8.48-hectare tract of land for the proposed park is a former Veterans Plastics Work factory site, which is opposite the Nantze Export Processing Zone in Kaohsiung’s Nantze district.
The project would cost about NT$1.8 billion (US$32.58 million), and when it is completed in the middle of next year, high-tech and other industrial companies interested in setting up shop in the park would be able to choose plots to set up their own plants, the officials said.
The officials estimate that the industrial park will have the capacity to attract NT$10 billion in total investment, with an annual business turnover of NT$15 billion.
Meanwhile, Taiwan plans to cut the number of foreign laborers it allows local construction and manufacturing firms to hire in a bid to create jobs for locals amid the economic downturn, a newspaper reported yesterday.
The MOEA has proposed barring major public projects from employing foreign workers, the United Daily News reported yesterday.
It also proposed offering subsidies to manufacturers that employ Taiwanese workers.
The paper quoted Minister without Portfolio Tsai Tsun-hsiung (蔡勳雄) as saying 33,000 jobs could be released for Taiwanese under the plan.
Taiwan currently employs about 370,000 foreign laborers.
Tsai said the proposal would be submitted to the Cabinet for approval later this month.
Taiwan’s unemployment rate soared to a four-year high of 4.64 percent in November.
But critics question if Taiwanese are willing to take up blue-collar jobs, noting that many employers provide harsh working conditions and assign heavy workloads to foreign laborers.
Tsai said there were no plans to replace the 170,000 foreigners who work as caretakers at homes and hospitals.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day