Abdullah Mohd Salleh, president of the Taipei-based Malaysian Friendship and Trade Center (MFTC) and Malaysia’s top envoy to Taiwan, urged Taiwanese companies yesterday to explore business opportunities in his country and use it as a springboard to the ASEAN market, starting by participating in Malaysia’s trade exhibition later this year.
“Given that Malaysia is considered the commerce center of the ASEAN bloc, INTRADE Malaysia 2009 can also be used as a springboard to penetrate the ASEAN market of 600 million consumers as well as the Middle East markets, especially for Halal products,” Abdullah said at a news conference to promote INTRADE Malaysia, which will take place from Nov. 10 through Nov. 12 in Kuala Lumpur for the third consecutive year.
Abdullah said the strong trade and investment relationship between Taiwan and Malaysia had become the foundation for developing cooperation in tourism, education, culture and friendship.
Abdullah said the two sides could also cooperate in other sectors, such as construction services, building materials, Islamic banking, Halal products, palm oil-based products, agro-biotechnology, as well as marine and pharmaceutical sectors and tropical medicine.
Muhd Shahrulmiza Zakaria, director of trade at MFTC, said that last year alone, the trade show had 368 exhibitors from 32 countries and attracted some 4,800 visitors, generating US$60 million in sales.
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
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