Council for the Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) Minister Christina Liu (劉憶如) yesterday urged the government-owned National Development Fund to step up investment in the nation’s cultural and creative industries.
Last month, the National Development Fund said it had invested NT$90 million (US$3.04 billion) in the production of the Taiwanese movie Seediq Bale through the Council for Cultural Affairs’ (CCA) cultural and creative project. The NT$200 billion fund has a designated budget of NT$10 billion for investment in the CCA project.
Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale was the first Taiwanese movie to receive financial support from the National Development Fund through the CCA project, Liu said, adding that the application was sent under the name of the venture capital unit of Central Pictures Corp (中影).
“The investment in Seediq Bale [which cost nearly NT$700 million to produce] was quite conservative,” Liu told a media briefing.
The CCA has the right to expand the investment by up to three-fold from the original amount set by applicants, Liu said. That means if Seediq Bale’s producer had applied for NT$90 million, the council could have raised the total investment amount to NT$270 million.
“If the government supports the industry, it should invest in the sector in a more positive manner,” she said.
However, it is the National Development Fund that decides whether to invest in a case, as well as how much it should invest, in the CCA’s cultural and creative project.
Liu said she might meet with CCA officials to discuss if the fund’s management team could play a more active role in the terms of decision-making for the project’s funding.
Companies in the cultural and creative industries that need capital support can also directly send their application to the fund or to the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Small and Medium Enterprise Administration (SMEA), instead of applying through the CCA project, Liu said.
SMEA also has a budget of NT$10 billion from the fund, Liu added.
Other than investment through the CCA project, the fund had also invested in two other Taiwanese movies —NT$7.3 million in Black and White (痞子英雄) and NT$5 million in The Killer Who Never Kills (殺手歐陽盆栽).
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San