Major trade groups yesterday called on incoming economics and finance ministers to prioritize ensuring stable electricity supply and power rates to make Taiwan a business-friendly nation.
The Third Wednesday Club and the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (CNAIC, 工商協進會) made the remarks after premier-designate Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) on Tuesday revealed his choice of Topco Group (崇越集團) chairman J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) as minister of economic affairs.
Cho also appointed insurance professor Peng Jin-lung (彭金隆) to steer the Financial Supervisory Commission, former PricewaterhouseCoopers Business Consulting Services Taiwan chairman Paul Liu (劉鏡清) as minister of the National Development Council and academic Wu Cheng-wen (吳誠文) as minister of the National Science and Technology Council.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
“We’re glad to see entrepreneurs and academics in the new administration and look forward to their contributions to Taiwan’s economic development,” said Lin Por-fong (林伯豐), chairman of the Third Wednesday Club, whose membership is limited to the top 100 firms in individual sectors.
Lin said he hopes president-elect William Lai (賴清德) would halt electricity rate adjustments after he assumes office on May 20 so that businesses can breathe a sigh of relief following an 11 percent increase in rates on average this month.
The government should strive for GDP growth of more than 3.5 percent this year, better than the 3.2 percent uptick for the global economy projected by the IMF, Lin said.
The most urgent task for the government is to ensure that electricity supply is stable and affordable, Lin said.
Two unexpected blackouts on Tuesday afternoon hit about 10,000 households in Taoyuan and New Taipei City, following a power capacity strain on Monday.
The April 3 earthquake affected a power plant in Hualien County and the rise in temperatures put pressure on overall power supply, Taiwan Power Co (台電) said.
Lin said the government should revisit the nation’s energy mix by ditching the plan to phase out nuclear power plants and raising the share of nuclear power to 30 percent from about 10 percent.
Artificial intelligence services and applications require data centers, high-capacity servers and high-performance computing chips, all of which consume large amounts of electricity, he said.
The government could extend the services of Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in Wanli District (萬里), New Taipei City, and Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant, in Ma-anshan (馬鞍山), Pingtung County, and build new ones with top-class safety standards, he added.
Pegatron Corp (和碩) chairman Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢) told an economic forum that nations with computing power advantages and sufficient electricity capacity would emerge victorious in the AI era.
CNAIC chairman Thomas Wu (吳東亮) applauded the incoming Cabinet’s emphasis on technology and financial innovations among other things.
Ministers-designate should talk with trade groups to gain better understanding of their needs and views, Wu said.
Most sectors have called for relaxed labor rules and imports of foreign workers to solve human resources shortages, he said.
Only two of the 15 new appointments in Cho’s Cabinet are female and the CNAIC would like to see more female ministers for the sake of gender equality, he added.
More than 20 Cabinet posts are still to be named.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
RSS