Flextronics to step up hiring
Flextronics International Ltd, a contract maker of electronics for other companies, will triple the number of engineers it employs this year after opening a center to develop notebook computers in Taipei.
The company, which already has operations at two other sites, plans to employ more than 1,500 engineers by the end of the year, up from about 500, Valerie Kurniawan, a spokeswoman for the Singapore-based manufacturer, said yesterday by phone.
Flextronics completed the US$192 million acquisition of the notebook and server units of Taipei-based Arima Computer Corp (華宇電腦) in October, adding to its US$3 billion purchase of Solectron Corp a year earlier and marking its entry into the laptop market.
The company will also expand its notebook and PC making capacity in China to enable it to produce 1 million units a month within two years, Sean Burke, president of the firm’s computing products unit, said at a briefing in Taipei yesterday.
Stimulus package planned
The government has earmarked NT$313 billion (US$9.4 billion) for an economic stimulus package next year, the Council for Economic Planning and Development said yesterday.
The extra spending would help create 167,000 jobs and boost the nation’s GDP growth next year by 1.88 percentage points, the council said in an e-mailed statement. Projects include roads, railways and flood prevention, the council said.
The economy shrank an unprecedented 10.24 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier as exports fell and businesses cut spending, the statistics bureau said on May 21. GDP may contract 4.25 percent this year, it said.
To revive economic growth, the government plans NT$858.5 billion of spending over four years, equal to about 6 percent of GDP, on infrastructure, consumer grants and tax cuts.
It handed out NT$82.9 billion of shopping vouchers in January.
Loan growth to pressure banks
A rapid rise in China’s loan growth in the first half of this year is likely to intensify pressure on its banking system and worsen its asset quality, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said in a report yesterday.
“Asset quality is likely to further slip in 2009, but should remain highly manageable. The severity of pressure depends on macroeconomic conditions at home and abroad. Asset quality would deteriorate sharply in the next two to three years if the economic slowdown were protracted in China,” said the rating agency’s credit analyst Liao Qiang (廖強).
“The banking system should, however, have the strength to deal with the deterioration in asset quality, based on our current economic outlook, but the credit profiles of banks are likely to diverge,” he said.
Loan growth among Chinese banks hit a record high of 7.5 trillion yuan (US$1.1 trillion) in the first half of this year. The agency warned that corporate governance remained an issue for Chinese banks at a time when their risk management capability was still developing.
Policymakers in China are likely to stay committed to market-oriented banking reforms, despite some setbacks and the current economic conditions, it added.
NT dollar weaker
The New Taiwan dollar weakened 0.4 percent yesterday, falling by NT$0.143 to close at NT$33.193 — its lowest level since May 6.
Turnover was US$1.243 billion.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last