China has pledged to buy 27 million flat panels from Taiwan this year, up 15 percent from last year, with the purchasing amount kept at US$4.5 billion due to a price slump, Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) chairman Wang Chih-kang (王志剛) said on Saturday.
China has also promised that Taiwanese flat-panel-makers will receive tax treatment that will be “by no means inferior to that of South Korea” as Beijing mulls whether to raise import tariffs on flat panels from 5 percent to more than 8 percent, Wang said.
He said that China’s purchases this year would mainly be 4K2K flat panels, accounting for at least 20 percent of the total.
Wang made remarks after he visited China’s Ministry of Commerce, the Council for the Promotion of International Trade and China Video Industry Association (中國電子視像行業協會) between Wednesday and Friday last week.
Association deputy director Bai Weimin (白為民), who may visit Taiwan in June, has had an invitation from the TAITRA to visit every year since 2009.
Global sales of flat panels rose 18 percent to US$6.7 billion last month from a month earlier, according to a survey released on Wednesday last week by DisplaySearch, dropping 17 percent from a year earlier.
LG Display Co of South Korea topped last month’s sales of screen suppliers at US$1.84 billion, ahead of compatriot Samsung Electronics Co, which had US$1.25 billion in sales, the survey showed.
The nation’s two largest LCD panel makers, Innolux Corp (群創光電) and AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電), came in third and fourth after posting US$1.17 billion and US$1.12 billion respectively in sales during the month.
Japan-based Sharp Corp came in fifth with shipments of US$390 million, followed by China’s BOE Technology Group Co (京東方) and China Star Optoelectronics Technology Corp (華星光電), which had US$260 million and US$257 million in shipments respectively.
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