The Council of Agriculture yesterday said it will set up a fund to subsidize farmers for losses they could encounter after the government implements its free economic pilot zones.
The pilot zones are to allow food-processing companies to set up factories within the zones and to import agricultural raw materials that are currently banned from being shipped in, the council said.
For example, after the policy takes effect, local pineapple cake makers might start importing pineapples from abroad, and companies selling tea leaves are likely to use more of such products from China and Vietnam, Wu Ming-ming (吳明敏), a professor from Kainan University, said yesterday in Taipei during a public hearing regarding the establishment of the pilot zones.
The council said its preliminary estimation indicates that the output of farmers who supply their products to food-processing companies is between NT$23.5 billion and NT$35 billion (US$783 million and US$1.17 billion) a year.
The council did not specify an amount of potential damage local farmers might encounter.
Meanwhile, Su Wei-shuo (蘇偉碩), president of an association for farmers, said the government should not allow food-processing companies to label their products as “Made in Taiwan” if they used materials from abroad, because such a practice was likely to hurt the reputation for food made in the nation if cheaper ingredients from other countries was allowed under the “Made in Taiwan” label.
The policy is also to allow companies to transport pet fish from abroad to the zones for distribution to other countries.
In about 100 countries, companies can provide 5,400 kinds of fish to customers, while Taiwan currently only allows fish suppliers to bring 460 kinds into the country, Fan Tsu-hao (方祖豪), executive director of Taiwan Ornamental Fish Association, said at the hearing.
Meanwhile, participants at the hearing said that the draft was incomplete because it lacks clear regulations for supervising imports, which might present an opportunity for companies to import animals illegally.
In response, the National Development Council said that it would revise the draft to close loopholes that could give rise to animal trafficking.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
The founder of Chinese property giant Evergrande Group (恆大集團) has pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and bribery, a court said yesterday, the latest blow for what was once the country’s leading developer. Evergrande’s rise was propelled by decades of rapid urbanization and rising living standards, but in 2020, its access to credit dramatically narrowed when the government introduced curbs on excessive borrowing and speculation. The company defaulted in 2021 after struggling to repay creditors. Founder Xu Jiayin (許家印), 67, known as Hui Ka Yan in Cantonese, was reportedly held by police in 2023, with Evergrande saying he had been subjected to
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS