A Taipei-based US business group said yesterday that the impact of Taiwan signing the WTO’s Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) on business was still unclear.
The American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Taipei said in the latest edition of its monthly publication Topics that following Taiwan’s July 15 entry as the 41st member of the GPA, “multinational companies appear to remain somewhat skeptical about how much Taiwan’s GPA membership will in fact improve their market access.”
Besides the limited degree of English-language information being provided, another major concern is the limited amount of time allotted to prepare a bid — particularly when translation of documents is needed, the AmCham article said.
In particular, companies are given no more than 24 days to prepare a proposal, which the article says is already tight even when days are not lost because of US holidays.
TIMING
International bidders have requested that more time be allowed, as they need to gather documents and certificates from other governments to attest to their previous project experience and have the documents notarized, it said.
An AmCham member company in the engineering field reported another obstacle that prevented it from bidding in a recent infrastructure tender — a requirement that vendors prove that they have professionally licensed engineers on their staff from 12 different engineering disciplines, even though some of those specialties are totally unrelated to the project, AmCham said.
TALENT
The same requirement applies to local companies, but large domestic engineering companies usually employ a broad spectrum of talent, it said.
As such, whether or not the intention was discriminatory, the result was to keep foreign companies from competing for contracts, AmCham said.
“Due to these kinds of disadvantages, many multinational companies have yet to be convinced that Taiwan is abiding by the spirit as well as the letter of the GPA in opening up its procurement market,” AmCham said.
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
FUTURE TECH: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang would give the keynote speech at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, which is also expected to highlight autonomous vehicles Gadgets, robots and vehicles imbued with artificial intelligence (AI) would once again vie for attention at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week, as vendors behind the scenes would seek ways to deal with tariffs threatened by US president-elect Donald Trump. The annual Consumer Electronics Show opens formally in Las Vegas tomorrow, but preceding days are packed with product announcements. AI would be a major theme of the show, along with autonomous vehicles ranging from tractors and boats to lawn mowers and golf club trollies. “Everybody is going to be talking about AI,” Creative Strategies Inc analyst Carolina Milanesi said. “From fridges to ovens
RSS