The new government under President Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) leadership should "get down to business," expediting the nation's deregulation to help spur investment, the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (AmCham) said yesterday.
In its 2008 Taiwan White Paper released yesterday, AmCham reiterated its long-held position in favor of easing cross-strait trade barriers; in particular, to-be-expanded direct charter flights across the Strait, which it said would increase convenience and save time.
If the links are in place, “multinationals — and Taiwanese — companies will choose to locate more key personnel and business units in Taiwan for reasons of quality of life, intellectual property right (IPR) protection and other rule of law issues,” the chamber’s press statement said.
For example, “companies in the financial sector” would be highly interested in setting up shops or relocating their headquarters to Taiwan, AmCham chairwoman Tung Tai-chin (童台琴) said on the sidelines of its media briefing yesterday.
Tung is the country head of Fidelity International Ltd (FIL, 富達國際) Taiwan with nearly 25 years’ experience in the financial service sector.
The chamber’s 84-page white paper detailed 17 position papers by its industry committees, which itemized 94 specific recommendations for the government to improve the local business environment including 46 “suggested action items.”
The chamber yesterday urged Ma’s administration to immediately ease restrictions that are imposed by Taiwan unilaterally, such as the 40 percent capital cap on China-bound investments, the 0.4 percent ceiling on Chinese holdings in either offshore or onshore funds as well as restrictions on certain Chinese imports like potato chips.
Although the chamber expressed concerns over the nation’s future power supply, it also threw its support behind the government’s recently announced hike of fuel and electricity prices to reflect international crude oil costs and to cut down the nation’s oil consumption.
“Any distortion of the market is harmful to the competitiveness of a society,” said Gibson Engineers (吉興工程) president Chen Li-cheng (陳立誠), who co-chairs the chamber’s infrastructure committee, at yesterday’s media briefing.
Politically, the chamber also cautioned the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government to guard against a return to “black gold” and other forms of corruption amid a weakening opposition force and media that may be less of a watchdog than before.
During its annual “Doorknock” trip to Washington next week, the chamber also plans to propose its four suggestions to the US government, Tung said.
The chamber will urge the US government to remove Taiwan from its Special 301 Watch List and assist Taiwan in mitigating the consequences of international isolation, for example, by helping Taiwan enter the World Health Assembly as an observer, its press statement said.
The chamber will also ask the US government to pursue trade policies that promote economic liberalization between Taiwan and the US, such as restoring the president’s “fast-track” authority and exploring the negotiation of bilateral agreements with Taiwan.
COMPETITION: AMD, Intel and Qualcomm are unveiling new laptop and desktop parts in Las Vegas, arguing their technologies provide the best performance for AI workloads Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-biggest maker of computer processors, said its chips are to be used by Dell Technologies Inc for the first time in PCs sold to businesses. The chipmaker unveiled new processors it says would make AMD-based PCs the best at running artificial intelligence (AI) software. Dell has decided to use the chips in some of its computers aimed at business customers, AMD executives said at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Dell’s embrace of AMD for corporate PCs — it already uses the chipmaker for consumer devices — is another blow for Intel Corp as the company
STIMULUS PLANS: An official said that China would increase funding from special treasury bonds and expand another program focused on key strategic sectors China is to sharply increase funding from ultra-long treasury bonds this year to spur business investment and consumer-boosting initiatives, a state planner official told a news conference yesterday, as Beijing cranks up fiscal stimulus to revitalize its faltering economy. Special treasury bonds would be used to fund large-scale equipment upgrades and consumer goods trade-ins, said Yuan Da (袁達), deputy secretary-general of the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission. “The size of ultra-long special government bond funds will be sharply increased this year to intensify and expand the implementation of the two new initiatives,” Yuan said. Under the program launched last year, consumers can
TECH PULL: Electronics heavyweights also attracted strong buying ahead of the CES, analysts said. Meanwhile, Asian markets were mixed amid Trump’s incoming presidency Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) shares yesterday closed at a new high in the wake of a rally among tech stocks on Wall Street on Friday, moving the TAIEX sharply higher by more than 600 points. TSMC, the most heavily weighted stock in the TAIEX, rose 4.65 percent to close at a new high of NT$1,125, boosting its market value to NT$29.17 trillion (US$888 billion) and contributing about 400 points to the TAIEX’s rise. The TAIEX ended up 639.41 points, or 2.79 percent, at 23,547.71. Turnover totaled NT$406.478 billion, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. The surge in TSMC follows a positive performance
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it is teaming up with Nvidia Corp to develop a new chip for artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers that uses architecture licensed from Arm Holdings PLC. The new product is targeting AI researchers, data scientists and students rather than the mass PC market, the company said. The announcement comes as MediaTek makes efforts to add AI capabilities to its Dimensity chips for smartphones and tablets, Genio family for the Internet of Things devices, Pentonic series of smart TVs, Kompanio line of Arm-based Chromebooks, along with the Dimensity auto platform for vehicles. MeidaTek, the world’s largest chip designer for smartphones
RSS