Bad times won’t last long: Liu
Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) Minister Christina Liu (劉憶如) yesterday forecast that the current economic winter “will not last very long” and is likely to bottom out at the end of the first quarter.
If everything goes as expected, the economy will gradually recover after the first quarter, Liu said during an interview with UFO Radio.
Liu said the eurozone debt crisis remains the most crucial issue to be resolved in the coming three months, a peak period of debt repayments for many European nations.
Although a broader eurozone crisis has been averted over the past six months with the support of the IMF and the European Central Bank, there are no easy answers to the fundamental issues, she said.
Good time to invest: TWSE
Despite the recent slump on the TAIEX, Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (TWSE, 台灣證交所) chairman Schive Chi (薛琦) said yesterday that investors should look at the main bourse in a positive way.
“Now is a good time for long-term investment in the local bourse because of the healthy fundamentals of listed companies and their low price-to-earnings ratios,” Schive said at a media briefing. “Listed companies’ debt-to-asset ratio stood at 36 percent at the end of 2011.”
Schive said he is also expecting an increase in the number of initial public offerings this year.
“There were 46 new listings in 2011. We are targeting 50 new listings this year, including Japanese companies,” he said.
No price rises, Starbucks says
President Starbucks Coffee Corp (統一星巴克), a joint venture of Taiwan’s Uni-President Group (統一集團) and US coffee chain Starbucks Corp, said yesterday that it has no plans to raise prices for any of its beverages.
The remark came after Starbucks announced on Tuesday that it is raising its prices by an average of about 1 percent in some regions of the US, including cities such as Boston, New York, Washington, Atlanta, Dallas and Albuquerque, to offset rising ingredient costs.
After increasing its prices for coffee with milk by NT$10 per cup and by NT$5 for black coffee in October — a move that sparked outrage — the company has no plans to further adjust its prices, President Starbucks said.
Ministry to woo Japanese firms
The Ministry of Economic Affairs has set a goal to initiate 500 partnership projects between Taiwanese and Japanese enterprises within the next five years.
That would help double Japanese investment in the nation to NT$30 billion (US$991 million) and increase Taiwanese exports by an additional NT$50 billion over five years, according to a statement released yesterday.
The government would introduce a slew of measures to encourage Japanese investment, including the establishment of a venture capital fund, special financing packages and a bilateral industrial cooperation promotion office in Taipei, the ministry said.
A new Taiwan-Japan Park is also set to start operating in Tainan this month, it said.
The planned zone is designed for Japanese firms seeking to set up offshore backup production sites, for such industries as biotechnology, digital content, green energy, information technology and precision instruments.
NT dollar gains more ground
The New Taiwan dollar continued gaining ground against the greenback yesterday, adding NT$0.004 to close at NT$30.290.
Turnover totaled US$531 million during the trading session.
POWERING UP: PSUs for AI servers made up about 50% of Delta’s total server PSU revenue during the first three quarters of last year, the company said Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) reported record-high revenue of NT$161.61 billion (US$5.11 billion) for last quarter and said it remains positive about this quarter. Last quarter’s figure was up 7.6 percent from the previous quarter and 41.51 percent higher than a year earlier, and largely in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$160 billion. Delta’s annual revenue last year rose 31.76 percent year-on-year to NT$554.89 billion, also a record high for the company. Its strong performance reflected continued demand for high-performance power solutions and advanced liquid-cooling products used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers,
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
‘BASICALLY A BAN’: Sources said the wording governing H200 imports from officials was severe, but added that the regulations might change if the situation evolves Chinese customs authorities told customs agents this week that Nvidia Corp’s H200 artificial intelligence (AI) chips are not permitted to enter China, three people briefed on the matter said. Chinese government officials also summoned domestic technology companies to meetings on Tuesday, at which they were explicitly instructed not to purchase the chips unless necessary, two of the people and a third source said. “The wording from the officials is so severe that it is basically a ban for now, though this might change in the future should things evolve,” one of the people said. The H200, Nvidia’s second-most powerful AI chip, is one
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
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