Business leaders yesterday voiced concerns over the nation’s flagging competitiveness and urged the government to improve its communication to resolve controversies on major policies.
Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (CNAIC, 工商協進會) chairman Kenneth Lo (駱錦明) made the remarks after a breakfast meeting with Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) and key Cabinet ministers.
“It is not enough to formulate public policies if they don’t have the chance to go into practice,” Lo said, referring to the stalled service trade pact with China and the free economic pilot zones project, among other issues.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Lo attributed the deadlock to the government’s lack of effective communication, which caused Taiwan’s global competitiveness ranking to fall two notches to 13th place this year in an annual survey by the International Institute for Management Development.
The ranking marked the nation’s worst performance among 60 economies since 2009, as it was dragged down by a decline in government efficiency and transparency, while risks of political instability and budget deficits climb, the Lausanne, Switzerland-based institute said last month.
“The trend is worrying, as it is the third consecutive year of decline,” with Malaysia now overtaking Taiwan, Lo said, while Singapore and Hong Kong maintain their first and second berth in the region.
Furthermore, the government and industry tend to look at things from different perspectives regarding the minimum wage, environmental protection and taxation issues, Lo said.
The trade group has pressed for excluding foreign labor from the minimum wage protection and easier and quicker environmental impact assessment procedures.
Lo, who also chairs the Industrial Bank of Taiwan (台灣工銀), expressed disappointment at the government’s failure to cut tax rates on corporate retained earnings, while raising business taxes on banks and insurance companies from 2 to 5 percent this year.
Taiwan Glass Corp (台玻) chairman Lin Por-fong (林伯豐), who is soon to succeed Lo as CNAIC head, painted the tax hike as acceptable only if the government would halve tax burdens on retained earnings.
The government cannot raise taxes whenever it feels like doing so, Lin told local media.
Companies keep earnings to meet future expansion needs and the tax will hamper this, Lin said.
The Ministry of Finance disagreed, saying the tax on retained earnings should remain intact because it is an important tool to encourage companies to share profits with small, individual shareholders.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure