Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學園區) yesterday said its revenues suffered a 55 percent decrease in the first two months from the same period last year, but park officials added that things appeared to be improving.
In January, companies in the park generated a total revenue of NT$21.2 billion (US$626 million) and the figure increased by about 10 percent to NT$23.4 billion last month, the park administration’s director-general, Chen Chun-wei (陳俊偉), said in Tainan yesterday.
“We spoke to some business representatives last December, but their faces looked very grim; they looked slightly better in January and last month they were beginning to look a bit more optimistic,” Chen said.
“Currently, some firms are looking at orders for May,” the director-general said.
Two industries — solar panels and biotechnology — however, have weathered the economic downturn well, Chen said.
“We are currently operating at 80 percent of our production capacity and have not implemented unpaid leave so far,” said Huang Yu-chou (黃裕洲), an associate manager at Motech Industries Inc (茂迪), the largest solar panel manufacturer in the Tainan park.
As the economic downturn has mainly been caused by a drop in market demand and not supply, which is unprecedented when considering previous economic crises, National Science Council Deputy Minister Chen Li-chun (陳力俊) said there was no way of predicting what would happen in the future.
However, even in firms that do have unpaid leave, the situation seemed to be changing for the better, Chen Li-chun said.
In the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區), where about 78,000 people are currently taking unpaid leave, an estimated 20,000 workers will return to their posts on April 1 because United Microelectronics Corp (聯電) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) have promised to end the practice, he said.
In the Southern Taiwan Science Park, the number of employees on unpaid leave will be reduced to 6,000 next month, down from 16,000 this month, he said.
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