Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Hwang Jung-chiou (黃重球) said a priority for Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is to renegotiate the terms of contracts with independent power providers after he formally became the state-run utility’s chairman yesterday.
During a handover ceremony, he vowed to reverse the public’s negative sentiment toward the company, but declined to comment on a probe by the Agency Against Corruption on the company’s construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市).
The agency yesterday raided the power plant’s construction division and questioned five Taipower officials over the project’s procurements.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Hwang replaced Edward Chen (陳貴明), who resigned on May 5 after six years on the job following widespread complaints of inefficiency and waste at the company.
The complaints were sparked by the company’s planned increased to electricity rates — which will be gradually introduced in three phases beginning on June 10 — as Taipower aims to cut its heavy losses.
“Taking the post of Taipower chairman is not an easy job at this time, but I will face the challenge and turn the crisis into an advantage,” Hwang said.
Taipower, the nation’s largest electricity supplier and monopoly grid operator, incurred net losses of NT$36 billion (US$1.2 billion) in 2010, a 167 percent increase from NT$13 billion in 2009, according to statistics posted on the company’s Web site. The company has accumulated NT$150 billion in net losses as of the end of last month.
Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥), who presided over the ceremony, said Taipower began losing money in 2006 because of rising international oil prices. While the company increased rates in 2006 and 2007, the increases were not enough, he added.
Hwang said Taipower had been under fire because of public misunderstanding of the utility’s operations, but acknowledged that there is room for improvement.
To improve the public’s perception of the company, Hwang said he would ensure full disclosure of information, effective communication with the public and flawless management.
In addition, the company would strictly follow measures proposed by a Ministry of Economic Affairs-organized task force to improve its to overall efficiency, he said. The task force is expected to deliver a report next month.
Hwang said he would also focus on transparency of electricity rates, procurement and fuel costs, and boost the company’s communication with the public, despite the complexities involving power generation and supply.
“I will make the company watch everything it spends, like a household does,” Hwang said, adding that he would enhance employees’ participation in the operations of the utility.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
RSS