Affected by the global financial crisis, Taiwan’s approved inward foreign direct investment (FDI) plunged 46.4 percent in the first 10 months of the year to US$3.74 billion, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Friday.
Last month alone, approved FDI dipped 85.3 percent year-on-year to US$251.69 million, statistics from the Investment Commission showed.
Ministry officials said the decline was expected to ease as there were several large investment projects awaiting approval that could help push up the total FDI to US$6 billion by the end of the year.
However, it would still not be enough to pull Taiwan’s FDI out of a slump for a second consecutive year. Last year, total approved inward FDI reached US$8.24 billion, down 46.4 percent from 2007.
Following the deregulation of the market on June 30 to allow Chinese investment, 15 Chinese investment projects valued at US$5.81 million were approved between July and last month, Investment Commission statistics showed.
Meanwhile, registered outward FDI in the first 10 months of the year declined 33.9 percent to US$2.34 billion.
China-bound investment fell 49.2 percent year-on-year to US$4.24 billion in the first 10 months of the year and dropped 48.6 percent to US$757 million last month alone, the ministry said.
The commission approved 173 China-bound investment projects during the 10-month period, compared with 435 projects approved over the same period last year.
For last month alone, the number of approved projects fell 28.9 percent year-on-year to 32, it said.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts