Taiwan’s technology industrial parks (TIP), formerly known as export processing zones, posted a record-breaking performance in the first half of this year, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
“Despite the COVID-19 outbreak, work went on at our TIPs,” Export Processing Zone Administration (EPZA) Deputy Director-General Liu Chi-chuan (劉繼傳) said.
For the first half of the year, revenue at the 10 parks hit a record NT$216.1 billion (US$7.74 billion), while aggregate foreign trade totaled a record US$12.7 billion, the ministry said.
“We saw increased investment, revenue, exports, imports and the number of employees in the first half of the year,” Liu said. “Even after the COVID-19 outbreak that started in May, we kept gaining ground.”
The 10 parks employ 84,822 workers.
As Taiwan moved to tame the outbreak, the pace in investment and production activities at the 10 parks across the nation “slowed, but never ceased,” he added.
“Unlike other countries that were hit by COVID-19, the situation was never serious enough for work to cease in Taiwan,” Liu said, adding that it was a vote of confidence by businesses that the government would keep COVID-19 under control.
The strong showing in the first half reflected the robust global demand for products and services provided by the TIPs, including semiconductor packaging and testing, display device manufacturing, optical and electronic manufacturing, and digital content creation, Liu said.
“Thanks to the EU and the US waking up economically after lockdown, we expect the parks to become even busier,” he said.
A TIP in Taichung focusing on software industry, Taichung Software Park (台中軟體園區), saw revenue expand 26 percent year-on-year in the first half of this year, while Tanzi Technology Industrial Park (潭子科技產業園區) in the same city, which focuses on optical lens production, grew 31 percent, Liu said.
The TIP that posted the steepest growth was Pingtung Technology Industrial Park (屏東科技產業園區) in Pingtung County, which saw investment rise 273 percent, revenue grow 38 percent and employee headcount increase 17 percent in the first half of the year, he added.
POTENTIAL SETBACK: Although Chinese chip designers and foundry firms already have US EDA software, they might be unable to update those programs under new US rules The US’ latest ban on advanced electronic design automation (EDA) software exports to China might hinder Chinese chip companies from accessing advanced semiconductor technology, as they attempt to upgrade to 3-nanometer processes in the next three to five years, market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. The US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security on Friday announced bans on EDA tools for gate-all-around field-effect transistors (GAAFET), a new-generation semiconductor technology that US chipmaker Intel Corp and Samsung Electronics Co from South Korea are adopting to make 4-nanometer and 3-nanometer chips. The bureau in a statement said that gate-all-around field-effect transistor
WIDENING THE FIELD: Human resources managers must drop prejudices regarding gender, appearance and age to find the best candidates, Micro Technology said The job market for Taiwan’s semiconductor industry remained tight this quarter, as hiring activity slowed from a record high last quarter, a survey released yesterday by online human resource firm 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) showed. Ongoing labor shortages have prompted local semiconductor firms to recruit more women and foreigners in Taiwan and in Southeast Asia, the job bank said. The talent gap in the first quarter reached 35,000 people per month, a surge of 39.8 percent from the same period last year, as the contactless economy and digital transformation shore up demand for semiconductors, 104 Job Bank said in its annual report
POSITIVE CULTURE: Pursuing 12-inch wafers earlier than peers helped TSMC lead the industry, said a former executive, whose main regret was working for SMIC in China Corporate culture at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is what made the chipmaker a leading player in the global industry, a former executive said in an interview with California’s Computer History Museum. “One of the really important reasons that TSMC succeeded” is the culture at the firm, where “if equipment went down at two o’clock in the morning, we just called an equipment engineer,” and the worker would not complain, said former TSMC joint chief operating officer Chiang Shan-yi (蔣尚義). “We didn’t really do anything special, anything great, but we didn’t make any major mistakes,” when compared with competitors, such
Cloud computing equipment company Wiwynn Corp (緯穎科技), which counts Meta Platforms Inc as one of its key customers, is boosting capacity expansion in Malaysia through a new investment of about NT$1.94 billion (US$64.7 million), it said yesterday in a statement filed with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The investment, which aims to help the company with business development and strategic arrangements, would be made through subsidiary Wiwynn Technology Services Malaysia Sdn Bhd to build a new factory, Wiwynn said in the filing. The announcement came about one-and-a-half months after the company started phase II of its new server printed circuit board assembly (PCBA)
RSS