The Ministry of Finance has decided to deregulate the production and sale of alcoholic beverages ahead of schedule, Chinese-language media reported over the weekend.
"The reason that the ministry decided to deregulate the spirits market two years ahead of our previous plan is to put competitive pressure on the Taiwan Monopoly Tobacco and Wine Board, which will be pressured to improve its service quality," Minister of Finance Yen Ching-chang (
Vice Minister of Finance Wang Der-shan (王得山) said the deregulation scheme has been changed from a three-stage to a two-stage plan.
The first stage will allow the private sector to produce and sell liquor after Jan. 1. In 2004, the government will allow the private sector to produce tobacco products.
The ministry's original three-stage plan would have deregulated various types of alcohol at painfully slow intervals.
The KMT-controlled government has forbid the private sector to produce wine and cigarettes since 1949. Only the state-run Taiwan Monopoly Tobacco and Wine Board (菸酒公賣局) was permitted to produce tobacco and liquor products.
Since Taiwan is going to become a WTO member in January, the finance ministry has finally decided to start making some adjustments. By making the delayed changes, the government has done great harm to the private sector's ability to quickly compete in the post-WTO market place.
Meanwhile, the government may be continuing to hamstring entrepreneurs by imposing severe limitations. The limit for small beer producers is a mere 60,000 liters and for rice wine producers it is only 20,000 liters.
The minimum capital requirement for companies that to produce alcoholic beverage products is NT$1 million, the ministry said. Annual licenses will be NT$20,000.
COMPETITION: AMD, Intel and Qualcomm are unveiling new laptop and desktop parts in Las Vegas, arguing their technologies provide the best performance for AI workloads Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-biggest maker of computer processors, said its chips are to be used by Dell Technologies Inc for the first time in PCs sold to businesses. The chipmaker unveiled new processors it says would make AMD-based PCs the best at running artificial intelligence (AI) software. Dell has decided to use the chips in some of its computers aimed at business customers, AMD executives said at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Dell’s embrace of AMD for corporate PCs — it already uses the chipmaker for consumer devices — is another blow for Intel Corp as the company
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it is teaming up with Nvidia Corp to develop a new chip for artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers that uses architecture licensed from Arm Holdings PLC. The new product is targeting AI researchers, data scientists and students rather than the mass PC market, the company said. The announcement comes as MediaTek makes efforts to add AI capabilities to its Dimensity chips for smartphones and tablets, Genio family for the Internet of Things devices, Pentonic series of smart TVs, Kompanio line of Arm-based Chromebooks, along with the Dimensity auto platform for vehicles. MeidaTek, the world’s largest chip designer for smartphones
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
RSS