A Taiwanese businessman’s US$160 million investment in a cement factory in Vietnam may go down the drain because of a policy flip-flop by a local government.
Huang Chih-peng (黃志鵬), Taiwan’s representative to Vietnam, has written letters to Vietnamese officials, from Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Thi Doan on down, urging them to solve the dispute or face the prospect of Taiwanese businesses losing interest in investing in the country.
Chen Liang-chuan (陳兩傳), the founder of Taipei-based Lucky Cement Corp (幸福水泥), poured US$160 million into He Duong Cement Company in Ninh Binh in 2008 after being awarded the right by the local government to mine a 72-hectare limestone field for 49 years. The project was approved by Nguyen and related ministries.
However, just as the plant’s two new production lines with a total capacity of 4 million tonnes a year were set to begin trial runs, the local Ninh Binh government rejected He Duong’s request to begin exploiting the field, because it had designated the field part of the Trang An Scenic Landscape Complex before applying to UNESCO in September to have the complex recognized as a world heritage site.
Sources at Lucky Cement said Vietnamese authorities are trying to find another limestone mine to replace He Duong’s original field, but they worried that a new mine location would entail additional transportation costs.
SPEED OF LIGHT: US lawmakers urged the commerce department to examine the national security threats from China’s development of silicon photonics technology US President Joe Biden’s administration on Monday said it is finalizing rules that would limit US investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology sectors in China that could threaten US national security. The rules, which were proposed in June by the US Department of the Treasury, were directed by an executive order signed by Biden in August last year covering three key sectors: semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies and certain AI systems. The rules are to take effect on Jan. 2 next year and would be overseen by the Treasury’s newly created Office of Global Transactions. The Treasury said the “narrow
SPECULATION: The central bank cut the loan-to-value ratio for mortgages on second homes by 10 percent and denied grace periods to prevent a real-estate bubble The central bank’s board members in September agreed to tighten lending terms to induce a soft landing in the housing market, although some raised doubts that they would achieve the intended effect, the meeting’s minutes released yesterday showed. The central bank on Sept. 18 introduced harsher loan restrictions for mortgages across Taiwan in the hope of curbing housing speculation and hoarding that could create a bubble and threaten the financial system’s stability. Toward the aim, it cut the loan-to-value ratio by 10 percent for second and subsequent home mortgages and denied grace periods for first mortgages if applicants already owned other residential
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip assembly and testing manufacturing (ATM) service provider, expects to double its leading-edge advanced technology services revenue next year to more than US$1 billion, benefiting from strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, a company executive said on Thursday. That would be the second year that ASE has doubled its advanced chip packaging and testing technology revenue, following an estimate of more than US$500 million for this year. ASE is one of the major beneficiaries from the AI boom as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is outsourcing production of advanced chip
RSS