A group of Vietnamese delegates yesterday invited Taiwanese businesses to invest in the Southeast Asian country, saying it continued to offer promise despite the recent spate of macroeconomic problems.
Nguyen Bao, a member of the Vietnamese delegation, told the investment forum he was “confident of Vietnam’s ability to weather the economic storm brought on by the US subprime crisis, [surging] crude oil prices, inflation and dong currency instability.”
Nguyen, a member of the Committee for Taiwan Affairs under Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade, said his government was fully aware of the situation.
Statistics released by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in this month’s Asia Economic Monitor showed that Vietnam posted a 26 percent jump in inflation last month, a 50 percent expansion in credit last year and a widening of its trade deficit to US$16.9 billion in the first six months of the year.
ADB raised the question whether Vietnam was on the brink of a “financial disruption similar to the 1997 collapse in Thailand, which later ignited the Asian financial crisis.”
Theodore Huang (黃茂雄), chairman of the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (工商協進會), sought to allay investor concerns by saying the Vietnamese government has been working on containing some of the problems.
“Taiwanese companies such as Tatung Co [大同], Compal Electronics Inc [仁寶], Chi Mei Corp [奇美實業], Uni-President Enterprise Corp [統一企業] and Hon Hai Group [鴻海集團] are just some of the new companies investing in Vietnam despite recent bad press because they see long-term value in their investments,” he said.
Huang Shi-hui (黃世惠), founder of Sanyang Industry Co (三陽工業), shared his investment success in Vietnam. He was one of the few who saw economic growth in Vietnam back in 1992 when everyone else called him a “fool.”
He compared investing in Vietnam to investing in the stock market.
“Sometimes the best time to enter is when everyone else is doubtful,” he said.
Fueled by a sharp inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) since it joined the WTO, Vietnam has seen its annual GDP growth rise by an average of 7.5 percent since 2000. Its FDI in the first half of this year reached US$31 billion.
Despite these impressive figures, Vietnam now faces severe inflation and other economic woes. Its recent large-scale labor strikes have also spooked investors who question whether the authorities can contain external factors that are plaguing its economy.
Theodore Huang yesterday urged Vietnamese authorities to deal with the labor issue, with local media reports saying about 300 strikes had taken place in Vietnam to date this year in response to soaring inflation and low wages. Some reports said the frequent labor action has led to bankruptcies at some Taiwanese-invested companies.
The stakes are high for Taiwan, the third-largest investor in the country after South Korea and Singapore, the Bureau of Foreign Trade statistics showed.
Huang said that as of February this year, Taiwanese businesses had registered 1,817 investment projects in Vietnam totaling more than US$10 billion and is one of the country’s biggest trading partners.
To avoid the strikes that are plaguing some foreign-invested facilities, he advised companies to sign clear contracts with employees and set up a complaint channel to deal with problems before they explode.
If workers still go on strike, however, the local government must exercise its authority to deal with the problem, he contended.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS