■ELECTRONICS
Hon Hai to relocate staff
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) plans to relocate 160,000 China-based workers from coastal Shenzhen to inner cities so as to benefit from preferential taxes offered by provincial governments, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday. Hon Hai, the world’s largest contract maker of electronics, may spend NT$10 billion (US$302.8 million) to facilitate the business relocation, the report said. The company’s 260,000 employees at the Shenzhen plant would also be cut to 100,000 while the remaining employees would be relocated to new plants in Wuhan, Huaibei Province, and Jincheng, Shanxi Province. Company spokesman Edmund Ding (丁祈安) was quoted as saying that these inner cities have offered Hon Hai not only preferential business income taxes, lower than the 25 percent rate in other coastal cities, but also preferential access to public utilities, the report said.
■CHINA
Foreign debt increases
China’s foreign debt increased by more than 18 percent in the first nine months of the year, with short-term debt rising especially fast, state media reported yesterday. At the end of September, overseas borrowing stood at US$442 billion, a rise of 18.3 percent from the end of last year, Xinhua news agency said, quoting the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. It did not offer an explanation for the rise. Short-term debt — defined as loans with maturities of less than one year — had risen particularly fast, increasing by 27.2 percent over the nine-month period to US$280 billion, Xinhua reported. Medium to long-term debt was up by a more moderate 5.5 percent to US$162 billion, Xinhua reported.
■AUTOMAKERS
Beijing to stimulate sales
China plans to offer incentives for car owners to scrap their old models in favor of new ones in a bid to lift the auto industry as it enters a period of crisis, state media said yesterday. The measure is part of a new package being prepared in Beijing aimed at avoiding a US-style collapse of the local auto sector, Xinhua news agency reported. “Details of the plan will be announced very soon,” an unnamed official with the commerce ministry said shortly after dismal figures were released showing that Chinese auto sales fell 14.6 percent last month from a year earlier. Other measures that China may adopt to bolster auto sales include cuts in the 10 percent vehicle purchase tax and easier access to car loans, Xinhua said.
■AIRPORTS
Hong Kong staff strike
Baggage handlers at Hong Kong’s international airport launched a three-hour strike yesterday to protest the cancelation of their merit bonus, a labor organizer said. The workers, along with freight handlers, tarmac workers and airport bus drivers, started the strike at 1pm after talks with Hong Kong Airport Services Ltd broke down, organizer Ip Wai-ming (葉偉明) told reporters. Local television news showed approximately 100 workers on strike gathered near cargo carts at the airport. Ip said the workers make between HK$6,000 to HK$8,000 (US$770 to US$1,030) a month and that the bonus, which usually amounts to a month’s pay, is crucial to their livelihoods. He said management at Hong Kong Airport Services refused to resume the full bonus pay, but offered a one-time additional payment of HK$750 to each employee. “This is quite far from what we demanded,” Ip said.
FOPLP PLANS? The chipmaker said the budget was for fab construction and manufacturing facilities, but did not comment on reports of talks with Innolux Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) board of directors yesterday approved capital appropriations of US$29.62 billion to install and upgrade the firm’s chip manufacturing process technologies, as well as its advanced and mature packaging technology capacity. The capital expenditure budget would also be for fab construction and installation of manufacturing facilities, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker said in a statement. TSMC did not comment on reports that it was in talks with flat-panel display maker Innolux Corp (群創) to acquire an idle plant as it prepares to convert manufacturing equipment into a new chip packaging production line that is to use fan-out
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), yesterday said it has signed an agreement with Innolux Corp (群創) to acquire the flat-panel display maker’s plant in Tainan for NT$17.14 billion (US$530.6 million) amid supply constraints of its advanced packaging capacity constraints. TSMC plans to use the plant, including buildings and manufacturing facilities, for future operations, the world’s biggest foundry service provider said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The chipmaker did not elaborate on whether it would convert the plant into a new panel-level packaging factory, or expand its advanced packaging chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) capacity. The chipmaker "is working whatever it
The world’s biggest steel producer sounded the alarm about a crisis in China that carries the potential to send global shock waves, warning of a deeper industry downturn than major events in 2008 and 2015. Conditions in China are like a “harsh winter” that would be “longer, colder and more difficult to endure than we expected,” China Baowu Steel Group Corp (寶武鋼鐵集團) chairman Hu Wangming (胡望明) told staff at the company’s half-year meeting. For commodities including steel, the warning from Baowu underscores risks to demand and prices, as well as what ArcelorMittal SA, the No. 2 firm in the industry, called an
As monsoon rains were about to break over Pakistan, 14-year-old Shamila and her 13-year-old sister Amina were married off in exchange for money, a decision their parents made to help the family survive the threat of floods. “I was happy to hear I was getting married... I thought my life would become easier,” Shamila said after her wedding to a man twice her age in hope of a more prosperous life. “But I have nothing more, and with the rain, I fear I will have even less, if that is possible.” Pakistan’s high rate of marriages for underage girls had been inching