Taiwanese firms are keen about investing in Vietnam to avoid US-China trade tensions and other risks, although the COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting the pace, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said in a report on Monday.
Some firms have put on hold their investment plans in Vietnam amid the pandemic, resulting in a 20.9 percent decline in foreign direct investment to US$8.6 billion during the January-to-March period, PwC Taiwan said.
That is because firms in Vietnam have been hit by supply chain disruptions and order cancelations after major export markets shut down all nonessential businesses to combat the virus, it said.
Vietnam has instituted strict isolation measures, which have slowed down commercial property transactions and lengthened negotiation periods, PwC said.
However, buying interest remains strong while property prices hold stable, it said.
Buyers from Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Singapore have shored up demand for industrial properties in Vietnam, it said.
Land costs in northern Vietnam averaged US$99 per square meter last quarter, an increase of 6.5 percent from a year earlier, while rates for similar sizes of land in Ho Chi Minh City require up to US$200, PwC Taiwan said, citing official data from Vietnam.
Occupancy rates at Vietnamese industrial parks hover at about 75 percent, the consultancy said.
The pandemic underscores the importance and necessity of having diversified manufacturing sites, PwC said.
Some European and US companies have asked contract manufacturers to set up plants outside of China to rein in overconcentration risks, it said, adding that Vietnam is benefiting from the supply chain realignment.
Vietnamese authorities have voiced plans to offer tax credits and other measures to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on foreign firms, PwC said.
The country might recover its full manufacturing capacity next quarter if the outbreak comes to a quick end, it said.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
The founder of Chinese property giant Evergrande Group (恆大集團) has pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and bribery, a court said yesterday, the latest blow for what was once the country’s leading developer. Evergrande’s rise was propelled by decades of rapid urbanization and rising living standards, but in 2020, its access to credit dramatically narrowed when the government introduced curbs on excessive borrowing and speculation. The company defaulted in 2021 after struggling to repay creditors. Founder Xu Jiayin (許家印), 67, known as Hui Ka Yan in Cantonese, was reportedly held by police in 2023, with Evergrande saying he had been subjected to
RSS