Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) said yesterday that he will prioritize rescue and rebuilding efforts in areas devastated by Typhoon Morakot.
Other priorities would be efforts to enhance disaster prevention and continue the nation’s economic development, Shih told the press on the first day of his new job.
Also, “signing an economic cooperation framework agreement [ECFA] with China is of utmost importance to Taiwan’s future. Hence ECFA promotion will proceed at full speed,” Shih said.
Shih said he had not had much time to think about the labor-intensive industries that would be adversely affected by the ECFA since being appointed to his new job on Wednesday but that he would take the time to evaluate the situation and minimize any negative impact.
The new minister also said he was a bit behind on the progress of consolidation for the nation’s dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip industry because he mainly focused on the state oil refinery’s business operations during his last six months as chairman of CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油).
“However, the government’s direction on the DRAM initiative remains unchanged and it is crucial for local companies to root their future technologies in Taiwan, as opposed to continuing to purchase expensive, foreign intellectual property rights,” Shih said.
He did not elaborate on the future role of Taiwan Memory Co (TMC, 台灣創新記憶體公司) in the industry’s consolidation.
On Premier Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) call for an adoption of a “grassroots economics (庶民經濟)” approach to measure the economy rather than traditional methods like GDP and the consumer price index, Shih wholeheartedly agreed.
“Often economists get too carried away with jargon,” Shih said, adding that current economic data failed to reflect the true picture of the average citizen’s well-being.
In an interview with the Chinese-language United Evening News on Thursday, Wu cited the stock market index, restaurant profits, air cargo transport and the number of cargo trucks on freeways as possible alternative indices that could help policymakers get a real picture of economic activity.
“The citizen index or street corner index as some call it, is an alternative and unscientific way of gauging the economic health of middle and low income sections of society,” Hwang Jen-te (黃仁德) professor and head of the department of economics at National Chengchi University, told the Taipei Times yesterday.
Examples can include observing activities at local traditional markets, spending patterns at street diners, or consumption values at wholesale warehouses, he said.
“To truly understand and assist the nation’s poor, the new minister must align the interests of the underprivileged with his economic policies, instead of using a citizen index as just another political slogan,” Hwang said.
Shih should re-think the ECFA and other ministry policies that have always favored big corporations, while creating unemployment for local unskilled, blue-collar workers, he added.
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).