The Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) has approved the Ministry of National Defense’s plan to raise funds to rebuild military residential compounds by auctioning superficies rights to two plots of land in Taipei’s prime real-estate areas by the end of this year.
In the past, the defense ministry raised funds for rebuilding old military residential compounds by selling the land it owned.
“But the ministry has to come up with new ideas to activate assets, after the legislature passed the law to prohibit the sale of large-area, state-owned land parcels last year,” Lin Yao-tsung (林耀宗), a director of the ministry’s General Political Warfare Bureau, told a media briefing held last week at the council.
Under the ministry’s plan, auctions for two large plots of land in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山) and Zhongshan District (中山) are to be held by the end of the year. The ministry will grant the winning bidders superficies rights for 50 years, which allow the bidders to build in the designated areas.
The plan is expected to help the ministry repay a NT$74.7 billion (US$2.48 billion) loan for the purpose of rebuilding military residential compounds by 2019, as well as adding NT$72 billion to the national coffers over a period of 60 years.
Earlier this year, the Ministry of Finance also twice tried to auction the right of superficies of a development project in Taipei, but failed to attract any bidders.
Market watchers said potential bidders were less interested in the deal because the winning bidders would be required to construct two buildings for the finance ministry’s use as part of the deal.
In contrast, the defense ministry’s plan does not have such requirements and Lin said the plots of land would be open to commercial use.
In related news, the finance ministry will continue the auction for 12 land development projects tomorrow, with the base prices for the right to build set between 30 percent and 50 percent of their market price to attract more bidders, compared with between 50 percent and 70 percent recorded in the past two years.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to