Taiwan has increasingly shifted its investment focus away from China to the ASEAN and US markets, as major tech firms seek to improve supply chain resilience and diversify investment risks, DBS Group Holdings Ltd said in a report yesterday.
Taiwan’s tech sector would remain competitive globally over the next five years while increasing supply chain resilience ranks a top priority, Singapore-based DBS economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in the report.
ASEAN is set to become Taiwan’s largest foreign direct investment destination, after foreign direct investment in ASEAN member states totaled US$4 billion in the first 10 months of last year, Ma said.
Photo: CNA
It accounted for 32 percent of all outward foreign direct investment, a sharp increase from 14 percent before US-China trade tensions began in 2017, she said.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) globally, and Pegatron Corp (和碩) have expanded investment in Vietnam and India to assemble smartphones, PCs, tablets and other electronics for their clients, notably Apple Inc, Ma said.
Contract chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) has also spent US$5 billion building a new 22 and 28-nanometer wafer fab in Singapore, she added.
The US is emerging as a major investment destination for Taiwanese companies.
Taiwan’s direct investment in the US exceeded US$8 billion in the past four years, nearly a fourfold increase from US$2.2 billion between 2013 and 2017, driven largely by investment in the semiconductor sector, Ma said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (台積電) first foundry in Arizona, which is under construction, is expected to start to producing 4-nanometer chips next year.
The world’s largest advanced chipmaker has said that it also plans to produce 3-nanometer chips at the Arizona fab by 2026.
At the same time, inbound foreign direct investment in Taiwan’s electricity and gas sector rose more than 10 times to US$1.5 billion over the first 10 months of last year, the report said.
Foreign direct investment from European countries increased nearly fourfold from a year earlier, with Denmark’s Orsted A/S, for instance, augmenting its investment in the wind farm projects in Changhua County, it said.
Taiwan’s green energy transition has begun to gain momentum, creating greater opportunities for foreign investors, the report said.
Electricity from renewable energy sources surged 36 percent year-on-year in the first 10 months of last year, making up 8 percent of all electricity supply, up from 6 percent a year earlier, it said.
Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday introduced the company’s latest supercomputer platform, featuring six new chips made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), saying that it is now “in full production.” “If Vera Rubin is going to be in time for this year, it must be in production by now, and so, today I can tell you that Vera Rubin is in full production,” Huang said during his keynote speech at CES in Las Vegas. The rollout of six concurrent chips for Vera Rubin — the company’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform — marks a strategic
Enhanced tax credits that have helped reduce the cost of health insurance for the vast majority of US Affordable Care Act enrollees expired on Jan.1, cementing higher health costs for millions of Americans at the start of the new year. Democrats forced a 43-day US government shutdown over the issue. Moderate Republicans called for a solution to save their political aspirations this year. US President Donald Trump floated a way out, only to back off after conservative backlash. In the end, no one’s efforts were enough to save the subsidies before their expiration date. A US House of Representatives vote
REVENUE PERFORMANCE: Cloud and network products, and electronic components saw strong increases, while smart consumer electronics and computing products fell Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted 26.51 percent quarterly growth in revenue for last quarter to NT$2.6 trillion (US$82.44 billion), the strongest on record for the period and above expectations, but the company forecast a slight revenue dip this quarter due to seasonal factors. On an annual basis, revenue last quarter grew 22.07 percent, the company said. Analysts on average estimated about NT$2.4 trillion increase. Hon Hai, which assembles servers for Nvidia Corp and iPhones for Apple Inc, is expanding its capacity in the US, adding artificial intelligence (AI) server production in Wisconsin and Texas, where it operates established campuses. This
US President Donald Trump on Friday blocked US photonics firm HieFo Corp’s US$3 million acquisition of assets in New Jersey-based aerospace and defense specialist Emcore Corp, citing national security and China-related concerns. In an order released by the White House, Trump said HieFo was “controlled by a citizen of the People’s Republic of China” and that its 2024 acquisition of Emcore’s businesses led the US president to believe that it might “take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.” The order did not name the person or detail Trump’s concerns. “The Transaction is hereby prohibited,”
RSS