Small businesses in the nation’s machine industry need help as the pace of orders slows and the amount of unpaid leave increases. the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械工業同業公會) and Taiwan Machine Tool & Accessory Builders’ Association (TMBA, 台灣區工具機暨零組件工業同業公會) said yesterday, urging the government to allocate funds from the Employment Stability Fund.
“As the US-China trade dispute intensifies, clients have remained conservative and orders have significantly declined, which has led to increases of annual or unpaid leave for domestic machinery and machine tool companies,” a TMBA official quoted secretary-general Carl Huang (黃建中) as saying in a meeting in Taipei.
“The Ministry of Labor should be more flexible in using the fund to assist small to medium-sized companies who are suffering from the trade dispute, because they cannot not secure transfered orders like their larger peers,” Huang was quoted as sying.
Huang was quoted as thanking the Ministry of Economic Affairs for requesting that state-owned companies to purchase machinery from local firms, but adding that the purchases are just a drop in the ocean as the business environment remains particularly harsh.
The Employment Stability Fund, which receives more than NT$10 billion (US$318.15 million) a year, is funded by local companies, who are required to pay NT$2,000 a month per migrant worker, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) reported yesterday, quoting TAMI secretary-general Wang Cheng-ching (王正青).
“The government should use the fund to maintain social stability,” Wang told the newspaper. “With a subsidy, workers can at least receive an allowance and join training programs.”
In a bid to help local companies, the Industrial Development Bureau on Monday said in a statement that it had asked the Ministry of Finance to provide preferential mortgages and loan extensions.
The bureau expects the return of overseas Taiwanese companies and continued purchases by state-owned companies to help local machine tool and machinery businesses, it said.
The bureau has been assisting local companies obtain domestic orders, such as replacing old equipment at public schools, it said, adding that about NT$21.72 billion of business opportunities have been created for local machinery and machine tool companies.
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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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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