The government has allocated NT$608 billion (US$21.35 billion) to spend on public infrastructure this year, in a bid to stimulate the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Development Council (NDC) said on Monday.
While Taiwan’s response to COVID-19 has been largely successful, some industries have been hit hard by the pandemic, which has prompted the government to invest heavily in infrastructure as a way of increasing employment, NDC Minister Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said.
The annual public infrastructure allocation, which has exceeded NT$600 billion for the first time, would fund projects such as the Taoyuan Aerotropolis (桃園航空城), the acquisition of new trains by the Taiwan Railways Administration, the installation of air-conditioners in public schools, and the improvement of water collection and supply systems, the council said.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
Regarding the Taoyuan Aerotropolis project, more than NT$60 billion would be allocated in September for the acquisition of land, the council said.
The 4,500 hectare project, near Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, is to be a modern industrial logistics center, development zone and urban residential area.
In the first two months of this year, government public works spending was NT$54.6 billion, an increase of NT$3.5 billion from last year, but it accounted for only 8.98 percent of the total allocation for the year, Kung said.
Government agencies are being urged to expedite work on infrastructure projects, he added.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
The US Department of Commerce last week ordered multiple chip equipment companies to halt shipments of certain tools to China’s second-largest chipmaker, Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd (華虹半導體), its latest action to slow the country’s development of advanced chips, two people familiar with the matter said. The department sent letters to at least a handful of companies informing them of restrictions on tools and other materials destined for two Hua Hong facilities US officials believe make China’s most sophisticated chips, the people said. Top US chip equipment companies Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp, each of which has significant
RSS