■ Government spending in control
The government has succeeded in controlling its annual expenditure at a level of around NT$1.6 trillion (US$50.3 billion) in recent years, saving an average of NT$70 billion in government spending annually, a senior budgetary official said yesterday. Speaking at a weekly Cabinet meeting, Hsu Jan-yau (許璋瑤), head of the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), said the achievement has been reflected in Taiwan's ranking in the World Economic Forum (WEF) global rating on government expenditure control. Taiwan ranked 13th in last year's WEF global rating in terms of government expenditure control, moving up seven notches from the previous WEF rating. According to Hsu, the government began to adopt a package of measures in 2001 to improve budgetary efficiency by controlling government expenditure and cutting wasteful spending. Through concerted efforts of all government agencies, Hsu said the ratio of government expenditure to the nation's GDP declined from 17.3 percent in 2001 to 15.2 percent last year.
■ SDK to up hard disk production
A Japanese technology giant plans to increase production of hard disk media across its three plants in Singapore, Taiwan and Chiba, Japan, a Showa Denko KK (SDK) spokesman said in a published report yesterday. SDK, one of the world's largest manufacturers of disks for hard drives, is injecting S$183 million (US$111 million) to expand capacity, Yoshiyuki Kusanagi told the Straits Times. He declined to disclose how much of the investment will be allocated at each facility but said the expansion of capacity in Singapore will be completed by March next year. SDK intends to increase production of hard disk media by a total of 3.05 million disks a month across the three plants, Kusanagi said.
■ Lenovo, Elitegroup may ally
Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), China's largest personal computer maker, may forge an alliance with Taiwanese motherboard maker Elitegroup Computer Systems Co (精英電腦) to explore the server motherboard market, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, without saying where it obtained the information. The report said Lenovo may transfer its design technology to Elitegroup and help the latter establish motherboard production lines for servers. Elitegroup would also help market the server boards through its distribution channels, the paper added.
■ Siemens workers protest
Siemens AG workers in China are protesting against the German engineering company's plans to cut staff at the local mobile-phone unit, WirtschaftsWoche reported, without saying where it obtained the information. The workers are protesting against the Munich-based engineering company's plan to cut more than 100 of the 2,000 Chinese jobs in marketing and sales operations of the handset business, the magazine said. Workers staged protests outside Siemens's Chinese headquarters in Beijing, the magazine said. BenQ Corp (明基) plans to take over Siemens's unprofitable handset business later this year.
■ NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar dropped for the first day in three as the Japanese yen's 0.6 percent slide today raised concerns that the nation's central bank will sell its currency to maintain the competitiveness of its exporters. The NT dollar dropped NT$0.086 to close at NT$31.979 against the US dollar on the Taipei foreign exchange market, on turnover of US$735 million.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has talked up the benefits of a weaker yen in a campaign speech, adopting a tone at odds with her finance ministry, which has refused to rule out any options to counter excessive foreign exchange volatility. Takaichi later softened her stance, saying she did not have a preference for the yen’s direction. “People say the weak yen is bad right now, but for export industries, it’s a major opportunity,” Takaichi said on Saturday at a rally for Liberal Democratic Party candidate Daishiro Yamagiwa in Kanagawa Prefecture ahead of a snap election on Sunday. “Whether it’s selling food or
CONCERNS: Tech companies investing in AI businesses that purchase their products have raised questions among investors that they are artificially propping up demand Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Saturday said that the company would be participating in OpenAI’s latest funding round, describing it as potentially “the largest investment we’ve ever made.” “We will invest a great deal of money,” Huang told reporters while visiting Taipei. “I believe in OpenAI. The work that they do is incredible. They’re one of the most consequential companies of our time.” Huang did not say exactly how much Nvidia might contribute, but described the investment as “huge.” “Let Sam announce how much he’s going to raise — it’s for him to decide,” Huang said, referring to OpenAI
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
SIGNS OF STABILITY: With US tariff risks to GDP subsiding, reliable economic conditions are expected to reinforce the bank operating environment, Fitch said Fitch Ratings has upgraded the outlook for Taiwan’s banking sector to “neutral” from “deteriorating,” citing a tariff agreement with the US that has reduced uncertainty in Taiwan’s macroeconomic environment and stabilized financial performance. The US on Jan. 15 agreed to lower tariffs on Taiwanese goods from 20 percent to 15 percent, without stacking them on existing most-favored-nation rates, placing Taiwan on equal footing with major competitors such as Japan, South Korea and the EU. The deal also grants Taiwan-made semiconductors and related products most-favorable-nation treatment under Section 232 of the US Trade Expansion Act. Under the agreement, Taiwanese semiconductor, electronics manufacturing service, artificial
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