The Ministry of Finance yesterday said it would ask state-run banks to offer loans totaling NT$1 trillion (US$33.67 billion) to help local firms upgrade and transform in the post-pandemic era.
The ministry would act as an integrator in facilitating the loans that might be available for a year after the COVID-19 outbreak has stabilized, Minister of Finance Su Jain-rong (蘇建榮) told a media briefing.
The government is mobilizing resources to help local firms recover from the virus shock and grow stronger on the world stage, Su said.
Photo: Wu Chi-lun, Taipei Times
State-run lenders would be asked to offer loans totaling NT$1 trillion at preferential interest rates, capped at 2 percent on top of benchmark policy rates, he said.
That means borrowing costs would stand at 2.81 percent, much lower than an average of 4 percent for loans to small and medium-sized enterprises, Su said.
The funds are intended to support companies that plan to innovate, transform, upgrade and deploy in overseas markets.
Furthermore, venture capital units of state-run financial institutions are encouraged to take the initiative and join forces with private partners in funding promising ventures, he said.
“State-run financial institutions are to take up the role of a locomotive and supply fuel for corporate investment in the post-pandemic era,” Su said.
The six state-run venture capital companies can together come up with NT$10 billion for such moves, he said.
The ministry would lend support to the campaign by providing tax credits, lower tax refund thresholds, friendly tariffs and other incentives, Su said.
The virus outbreak and US-China trade tensions make global supply chain realignment necessary and local firms are weighing upgrade and transformation options to stay in business, he said.
The ministry would continue to assist Taiwanese firms returning from overseas markets and provide incentives for capital repatriation, he added.
The pace of capital repatriation has so far lagged behind government expectations, with only NT$10.55 billion repatriated over the past 10 months, compared with an estimate of NT$133.3 billion annually under a conservative scenario, Su said.
“The figures suggest much room for improvement,” he said.
Su said that the National Stabilization Fund’s steering committee would meet on July 15 to discuss whether to exit the local bourse now that the TAIEX has recovered almost all of the losses it suffered due to the pandemic.
Su declined to speculate on the fund’s movements, saying that the committee would have the final say following a consensus ruling.
Foreign institutional players have mostly rejoined the local market as evidenced by the rallies in the TAIEX and a stronger local currency, he said.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
RSS