The National Development Council yesterday set its economic growth target for this year at between 2 percent and 2.5 percent, driven mainly by faster private investment.
The target is mildly higher than the 1.87 percent growth the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics predicted in November last year.
“The target is both reasonable and achievable, if the government can help raise capital formation by 6 to 7 percent this year from last year,” council Minister Chen Tain-jy (陳添枝) told a news conference.
Believing the key lies in boosting private investment, the government has unveiled measures to spur innovation and digitalization for the “five plus two” industries, which refer to the development of an Asian Silicon Valley, “intelligent” machinery, “green” energy technology, biomedicine and national defense — plus the building of a new agricultural paradigm and a circular economy.
The Asian Silicon Valley project aims to lay a friendly ecosystem for companies to secure the necessary funding, skilled professionals and technology to grow and gain value, council Deputy Minister Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said.
Kung is heading the project with assistance from prominent technology companies and academics.
In addition, the government is to strengthen physical and virtual infrastructures to facilitate the development of “green” energy and “smart” living, Chen said.
Government agencies are drawing up incentive measures that the Cabinet and legislature are to prioritize this year, he said.
The Ministry of Finance plans to lower the ceiling on personal income tax rates from 45 percent to 40 percent to help attract foreign skilled professionals.
Meanwhile, the council plans to raise net exports by 0.11 percentage points this year by helping local manufacturers sell products in ASEAN markets to reduce their dependence on China, Chen said.
“Apart from sales promotions, there is little the government can do to exert an influence over external demand,” Chen said.
The council plans to boost the employment rate by between 0.54 and 0.75 percent this year to achieve its unemployment rate target of between 3.9 and 3.93 percent, Chen said.
In the coming three years, the council aims to boost the economy by between 2.5 and 3 percent, Chen said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts