Vice Premier Lin Hsin-yi (
"To achieve the goal, [the government] needs to create at least 100,000 jobs this year," Lin told reporters yesterday.
Based on estimates from the Council for Economic Planning and Development, the government plans to achieve that goal by stimulating export growth along with increased spending on infrastructure projects. Lin said that exports for the year should increase by US$6 billion, generating jobs for 50,000 workers. In addition, NT$40 billion in government spending will create another 20,000 jobs.
Exports in February fell 20.5 percent from a year earlier to US$8.05 billion, marking the 12th straight month of decline. The total was also lower than January's US$9.69 billion, according to Ministry of Finance statistics.
The Cabinet's three-year employment stimulus measures and future demand for caretakers [for the elderly and disabled] will also create tens of thousands of jobs, Lin said, adding "a total of 110,000 jobs should be created without any difficulties."
Commenting on Lin's appraisal, People First Party legislator Christine Liu (
Liu, also a finance professor at National Taiwan University, said that Lin has failed to look at indicators of private investment to effectively improve unemployment. "Consumption and private-sector investment are two important pillars bolstering the country's GDP growth," she said.
"The country's private investment had declined by 27 percent last year to negatively impact the unemployment rate."
Liu said that whether Taiwan's export will rebound, as the CEPD expected, is closely linked to the international economic recovery.
Though failing to address investment stimulus, Lin, however, yesterday further acknowledged that last year's unemployment was also a result of "factory closures," saying "some local industries lost their competitiveness overnight."
The veteran entrepreneur-turned-politician said that he was optimistic that the economy will recover at the end of the second quarter or at the beginning of the third quarter. "We are looking at a mild U-shaped recovery, instead of a V-shaped one," he said.
Lin expects GDP growth to bounce back to between 3 percent and 4 percent this year.
"We've benchmarked 4.5 percent as our goal," he said, adding that countries with a gross national product of US$13,000 usually maintain a GDP growth rate of between 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent.
Lin said that local industries should upgrade their R&D, marketing and logistics capabilities.
"We should abandon low-end deals and focus on developing high value-added, capital-intensive and technology-intensive industries to internationalize our economic status," Lin said.
He said the county also needs to further develop emerging industries such as biochemistry and nanotechnology.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
RSS