The central bank issued a terse press release on Thursday warning the public not to smelt coins. Soaring metal prices have fueled speculation of the possibility of mass illegal coin smelting.
The bank's release states that the metals comprising a NT$1 coin are worth less than the value of the coin itself, and that because coins are a blend of metals, this renders them unsuitable for industrial or commercial uses.
Those who illegally smelt coins are subject to stiff prison sentences of between one and seven years, the statement said.
According to a United Daily News report on Thursday, the release came in the wake of an emergency meeting convened by the central bank as metal prices surged.
If mass coin smelting were to transpire, it would not be the first time. In 1973, high global metal prices led to coin smelting nationwide, resulting in a severe lack of coins, the report said. At the time, businesses were forced to substitute NT$1 coins with NT$1 stamps and IOUs, it said.
According to local media reports, central bank officials are considering altering the content of the NT$1, NT$5 and NT$10 coins to reflect the increase in metal prices and because the coins have not been updated for 20 years. The move could also discourage the illegal smelting of coins, which could cause a repeat of the 1973 crisis.
The local business news Web site cnYes.com recently reported that 1 million NT$1 coins could fetch up to NT$1.26 million on metal markets if properly recycled. However, the bank's release said that the metal content in a NT$1 coin is worth only NT$0.36 -- less than half the value of the coin itself.
Experts regularly point to China's sizzingly economic growth as a major factor contributing to rising metal prices. Strong demand for metals has led to the disappearance of manhole covers on the streets of cities worldwide, in alarming numbers. In 2004, 24,000 manhole covers were stolen from Beijing's streets, according to a Xinhua News Agency report. Scrap metal thieves can sell the covers for up to 20 Chinese yuan (US$2.49) -- the equivalent of some migrant workers' daily wage, the report said.
Copper prices in particular, have skyrocketed this year and market analysts have speculated that a scandal involving Liu Qibing, a Chinese futures trader who went missing last November, helped contribute to the rise.
Liu reportedly traded metals in London for China's secretive State Reserve Bureau (SRB), which amasses commodities for China. Liu allegedly placed a series of bets on copper futures last summer, incurring hundreds of millions of dollars in losses when the market failed to match his expectations.
He vanished shortly after his positions came up tremendously short. The SRB denied the existence of Liu, only later to recant and label him a rogue trader who had worked on his own.
Base metals prices -- including copper, which comprises 92 percent of the NT$1 coin, according to cnYes.com -- plummeted on Friday after reaching record highs the previous week, an AFP report said on Saturday.
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
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
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
RSS