■ECONOMY
Cabinet to provide loans
Taiwan’s Cabinet plans to provide NT$900 billion (US$27.4 billion) in loans to help businesses through the economic slowdown, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday, citing Minister without Portfolio Chu Yun-peng (朱雲鵬). Under the plan, the Cabinet will first provide small and medium enterprises with NT$300 billion in loans and then start coordinating with seven state-run banks next month to offer NT$600 billion in loans to large corporations over the next two years, the report said. The Cabinet’s loan plan is part of the government’s effort to help companies obtain credit lines from banks and stave off layoffs. On Oct. 31, the Cabinet approved a short-term job-creation plan that aims to offer up to 56,000 jobs by June.
■ECONOMY
Export forecast lowered
Taiwan’s Bureau of Foreign Trade has reduced its export growth forecast for this year from 10 percent to 8 percent after exports declined in September and last month. Bureau Director-General Huang Chih-peng (黃志鵬) also said on Friday that growth next year was forecast at 8 percent, with a trade surplus of US$10 billion. Citing customs statistics, Huang said that Taiwan’s exports last month totaled US$20.81 billion, down US$1.88 billion, or 8.3 percent, from the same month last year.
■AVIATION
EVA to lead across Strait
EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), the nation’s second-largest air carrier, will be able to fly a total of 23 charter passenger flights to China each week, along with its affiliate UNI Airways Corp (立榮航空), the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday, citing the Civil Aeronautics Administration. China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), the nation’s largest carrier, and its subsidiary, Mandarin Airlines Ltd (華信航空), will run a total of 22 charter passenger flights to China weekly. Their smaller rival, TransAsia Airways Corp (復興航空), will operate nine weekly flights, the report said. The new flights arrangement came after Taiwan and China signed an agreement on Tuesday in Taipei that allows the number of charter passenger flights to triple from 36 to 108 per week.
■ENERGY
Chavez hails Russia venture
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez inaugurated his country’s first Venezuelan-Russian offshore natural gas project on Friday, hailing his country’s increasingly close energy cooperation with Russia as a counterweight to US imperialism. Donning hard hats, Chavez and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin mingled with workers from Venezuela’s government-controlled oil company and Russia’s state-run gas giant, Gazprom, as exploration began at a Gulf of Venezuela drilling platform. Gazprom won the contract to help develop two natural gas blocks in the gulf in 2005.
■AVIATION
Carrier, pilots ink pay pact
Singapore Airlines Ltd, the world’s largest carrier by market value, yesterday reached an agreement with pilots on pay and other benefits after a year of negotiations. The accord “forms the basis of a Points of Agreement that has been signed,” Singapore Airlines spokesman Stephen Forshaw said in an e-mailed statement that called the wage negotiations “challenging.” Singapore Airlines on Thursday reported that quarterly profit fell 36 percent, the biggest decline in more than three years to S$323.8 million (US$219 million), after it paid more for jet fuel and filled fewer seats.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
GREAT SUCCESS: Republican Senator Todd Young expressed surprise at Trump’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running US lawmakers who helped secure billions of dollars in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing rejected US President Donald Trump’s call to revoke the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, signaling that any repeal effort in the US Congress would fall short. US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who negotiated the law, on Wednesday said that Trump’s demand would fail, while a top Republican proponent, US Senator Todd Young, expressed surprise at the president’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running. The CHIPS Act is “essential for America leading the world in tech, leading the world in AI [artificial
REACTIONS: While most analysts were positive about TSMC’s investment, one said the US expansion could disrupt the company’s supply-demand balance Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) new US$100 billion investment in the US would exert a positive effect on the chipmaker’s revenue in the medium term on the back of booming artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from US chip designers, an International Data Corp (IDC) analyst said yesterday. “This is good for TSMC in terms of business expansion, as its major clients for advanced chips are US chip designers,” IDC senior semiconductor research manager Galen Zeng (曾冠瑋) said by telephone yesterday. “Besides, those US companies all consider supply chain resilience a business imperative,” Zeng said. That meant local supply would
BIG INVESTMENT: Hon Hai is building the world’s largest assembly plant for servers based on Nvidia Corp’s state-of-the-art AI chips, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus said The construction of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co’s (鴻海精密) massive artificial intelligence (AI) server plant near Guadalajara, Mexico, would be completed in a year despite the threat of new tariffs from US President Donald Trump, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus said. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), is investing about US$900 million in what would become the world’s largest assembly plant for servers based on Nvidia Corp’s state-of-the-art GB200 AI chips, Lemus said. The project consists of two phases: the expansion of an existing Hon Hai facility in the municipality of El Salto, and the construction of a
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