Local companies have secured US$260 million in procurement contracts since Taiwan became the 41st member of the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) under the WTO in July, a government official said yesterday.
WTO statistics showed that the government procurement market in several GPA signatory countries with close trade relations with Taiwan, including the US, Canada, Europe and South Korea, totaled about US$960 billion per year, or about 150 times the size of Taiwan’s market, a Ministry of Economic Affairs official said.
To help local firms tap into the overseas business-to-government (B2G) market, the government has commissioned the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) and the country’s overseas representative offices to carry out promotional work.
As a result, local companies received about US$50 million in orders last year. For the first three months of this year, the orders received totaled US$210 million, reaching 70 percent of the year’s goal set by the ministry, the official said.
The ministry has therefore revised up this year’s target to US$500 million, the official said.
Taiwan’s individual companies rarely have the chance to undertake government procurement projects because of their small size. Instead they usually collaborate with big foreign contractors in sectors they have considerable advantages in, including the production and supply of information technology products, LED lighting devices, construction materials and medical equipment, the official said.
For example, TAITRA recently helped several local LED makers win a US$50 million contract, one of the biggest overseas orders. Under the contract, they will supply 1,000 lamps to Denver International Airport.
The official attributed the boom in government contract spending to various stimulus plans launched last year by many countries to combat the global financial crisis.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
STILL UNCLEAR: Several aspects of the policy still need to be clarified, such as whether the exemptions would expand to related products, PwC Taiwan warned The TAIEX surged yesterday, led by gains in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping 100 percent tariff on imported semiconductors — while exempting companies operating or building plants in the US, which includes TSMC. The benchmark index jumped 556.41 points, or 2.37 percent, to close at 24,003.77, breaching the 24,000-point level and hitting its highest close this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed. TSMC rose NT$55, or 4.89 percent, to close at a record NT$1,180, as the company is already investing heavily in a multibillion-dollar plant in Arizona that led investors to assume
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,
RSS