Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday promised that the Cabinet would upgrade the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Administration under the Ministry of Economic Affairs into a bureau to better serve the nation’s 1.23 million SMEs.
The proposed upgrading will give the SME organization the same status as the ministry’s Bureau of Foreign Trade or the Industrial Development Bureau, Wu told the National Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (中小企業協會).
This will be made possible when the Cabinet activates its reorganization plan as early as 2012, the premier told the business gathering.
“The nation’s 1.23 million SMEs have contributed greatly to the nation’s economic development and job creation,” Wu said.
Wu also instructed the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) to extend a scheme that would facilitate loan rollovers through negotiations between bank creditors and SME borrowers by another six months.
Although FSC Vice Chairwoman Lee Jih-chu (李紀珠) had earlier argued that extending the scheme would interfere with the banking sector’s credit policy, Wu insisted that the scheme be prolonged until the end of the year, saying SMEs would need more time to weather the recent economic slump.
Lee changed her tuned yesterday, however, saying that as FSC statistics showed that only 160,000 of the nation’s 1.23 million SMEs had secured loans from banks, banks should increase the size of their loans to SMEs, many of which have difficulty raising funds from the stock market.
She also urged SMEs to improve their financial transparency, saying this would encourage banks to loosen their credit lines.
The premier yesterday also instructed the ministry to hold briefings or discussions with the private sector before it finalizes budget plans of approximately NT$28 billion (US$880 million) for SMEs.
Meanwhile, Council for Economic Planning and Development Chairman Tsai Hsun-hsiung (蔡勳雄) yesterday told the association that his council would use part of the National Stabilization Fund to serve as guarantees for loans granted to SMEs or as a remedial budget for businesses that may be affected by the trade liberalization policies, including a proposed economic cooperation framework agreement with China.
Addressing the association’s concerns over rising labor cost, Council of Labor Affairs Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) said the council had allocated a budget of NT$600 million this year to subsidize on-the-job training and welcomed SMEs to submit applications.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained