The Ministry of Economic Affairs said it is to hand over seven local solar product makers for investigation by prosecutors, after the manufacturers allegedly threatened ministry officials when it was discovered they were mislabeling their products.
It is alleged that the solar makers had labeled goods manufactured in China as Taiwan-made prior to selling them on the European market.
“The seven manufacturers have violated the law,” Bureau of Foreign Trade Deputy Director-General David Hsu (徐大衛) told reporters during a telephone interview on Thursday night.
He declined to disclose the names of the manufacturers, as the cases are to be transferred to prosecutors soon.
Hsu said that in May the EU launched an anti-dumping investigation against Taiwanese and Malaysian solar cell and module manufacturers after Chinese exporters were accused of avoiding tariffs by shipping the solar products to the EU through Taiwan and Malaysia.
A number of solar manufacturers — including the seven firms — took advantage of Taiwan’s free-trade zones to help Chinese exporters evade tariff duties by selling solar products to EU nations, Hsu said.
“Not only do the accused have no regrets about what they have done, they have also allegedly lobbied, threatened and pressured ministry officials, trying to get away from this,” Hsu said.
He said the bureau in July fined the companies found to have been mislabeling solar products and in August announced a new export policy.
Under that policy, Taiwanese companies exporting solar products, bicycles or screws from the nation’s free-trade zones to the EU must acquire bureau approval, Hsu said.
As part of an anti-dumping investigation, Hsu said a delegation from the Directorate-General for Trade of the European Commission visited four Taiwanese solar product makers, the economics ministry and the Ministry of Finance from Oct. 1 to Thursday.
The government pledged its support to the delegation, saying it would inspect local solar manufacturers, he said.
The EU was the second-largest export destination for Taiwan’s solar cells and modules last year.
Taiwan’s solar cells and modules exports to Europe totaled NT$20.48 billion (US$623.44 million) last year, accounting for 11.13 percent of the annual production value of the nation’s solar industry, according to the Industrial Technology Research Institute’s (工研院) statistics.
Hsu said the EU is expected to complete the anti-dumping investigation on Feb. 29 and the economics ministry is to closely monitor any updates of the investigation to protect the nation’s interests.
Alphabet Inc’s Google on Tuesday announced plans to buy a New York office building for US$2.1 billion, confirming its push into the US’ largest city despite the COVID-19 teleworking trend. This is the largest real-estate purchase in the US for an office building since the beginning of the global spread of COVID-19, the Wall Street Journal quoted Real Capital Analytics as saying. Google already rents the premises in Manhattan, which are located on the site of a former railroad terminal in the Hudson Square neighborhood. The Silicon Valley giant envisions a campus with a total surface area of 160,000m2 by mid-2023
‘CORE VALUES’: The contract chipmaker did not specify why the employees were dismissed, but media reports said they had leaked information about customer orders Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has fired seven of its employees for violating the company’s “core values,” the world’s largest contract chipmaker said yesterday. While the company did not disclose exactly why it fired the seven employees, local media reports earlier in the day said that the employees had leaked confidential information about customer orders. In a statement, the company said that it fired the seven at once, adding that it released an internal notice last week to inform the entire company of the move ahead of the four-day Mid-Autumn Festival holilday, which ended on Tuesday. TSMC said it fired the seven
MILD ADJUSTMENT: Two previous efforts failed to curtail mortgage financing, although the new measures should not affect property prices, the central bank governor said The central bank yesterday tightened credit controls for second-home mortgages in specific areas and purchases of plots of land, especially in industrial parks. However, the nation’s top monetary policymaker kept its policy rate at a record-low 1.125 percent for the sixth consecutive quarter, despite revising up its GDP growth forecast for this year from 5.08 percent to 5.75 percent. “Board members factored in economic uncertainty at home and around the world,” central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) said, adding that growing inflationary pressure was a temporary phenomenon induced by bad weather and a low base effect for oil prices. International fuel price increases
DOWNCYCLE: Most buyers are wary about placing new orders, and although the decline could also be as little as 3%, it would be the first drop since the start of the year The average selling price of DRAM chips next quarter is expected to decline by up to 8 percent quarter-on-quarter, with memory chips used in notebook computers and consumer electronics seeing the steepest decline due to excess inventory and a shortage of components, market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. That means the DRAM industry is entering a new downcycle after experiencing a boom for three quarters, the longest uptrend in the history of the industry. The Taipei-based researcher said it expects the balance between supply and demand to begin tilting toward a surplus in the final quarter of this year. Most DRAM
RSS