The Ministry of Finance is to suggest that the Cabinet create a platform to marshal the operations of four state funds to boost their efficiency and profitability so they can better help strengthen the nation’s financial health, Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) said yesterday.
“The idea is to integrate the four funds into a quasi-sovereign wealth fund [SWF] without needing to revise the law,” Chang said by telephone.
The funds are the Labor Insurance Fund, Labor Pension Fund, Public Service Pension Fund and postal savings deposits with an aggregate value of more than NT$7 trillion (US$223.34 billion).
Government agencies are due to recommend measures to revive the economy during the Cabinet’s regular weekly meeting tomorrow.
The four funds cannot now function as an SWF, maximizing returns through investment in global stocks, commodities, real estate, hedge funds and private equities because they are designed to operate separately, with a focus on Taiwanese shares and helping support the local bourse if requested, Chang said.
Due to a lack of integration and coordination, one fund might be selling certain shares while another is buying them, which is inefficient, the minister said.
Existing rules also limit the use of profits generated by the funds, tying government’s hands in times of need, he said.
“A joint management platform can prevent such scenarios and make the funds more profitable and flexible,” Chang said.
For the medium and long term, the ministry plans to push for legal revisions to establish a sovereign wealth fund, allowing the four state funds to have a more diversified portfolio and higher returns, Chang said.
There should be no big obstacle to a joint management platform even though the four have separate contracts with different portfolio managers.
Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (中華經濟研究院) vice president Wang Jiann-chyuan (王健全) voiced support for an SWF whose return may be used to finance social welfare spending linked to the nation’s aging population.
The nation also needs to diversify its exports as overconcentration on a few electronic industries has made the economy vulnerable to global cyclical movements, Wang said.
The Cabinet is likely to set up a NT$10 billion mergers and acquisitions (M&A) fund using the National Development Fund and money from the private sector, local media reported.
The M&A fund would be designed to help Taiwanese companies expand their scale so they can better compete internationally, the media reports said.
The government would help firms to seek acquisition targets at home and abroad, and help them obtain raw materials, technology, brands and talents, the reports said.
RUN IT BACK: A succesful first project working with hyperscalers to design chips encouraged MediaTek to start a second project, aiming to hit stride in 2028 MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it is engaging a second hyperscaler to help design artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators used in data centers following a similar project expected to generate revenue streams soon. The first AI accelerator project is to bring in US$1 billion revenue next year and several billion US dollars more in 2027, MediaTek chief executive officer Rick Tsai (蔡力行) told a virtual investor conference yesterday. The second AI accelerator project is expected to contribute to revenue beginning in 2028, Tsai said. MediaTek yesterday raised its revenue forecast for the global AI accelerator used
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
Artificial intelligence (AI) giant Nvidia Corp’s most advanced chips would be reserved for US companies and kept out of China and other countries, US President Donald Trump said. During an interview that aired on Sunday on CBS’ 60 Minutes program and in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said only US customers should have access to the top-end Blackwell chips offered by Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization. “The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” he told CBS, echoing remarks made earlier to reporters as he returned to Washington
RSS