Greece and its international creditors were “very close” to a loan deal for the cash-strapped country, a Greek junior foreign minister said yesterday, a day ahead of a key meeting in Brussels.
“After weeks of painful negotiation, if the other side is willing, it will become apparent that ... the deal is very close and will be sealed in the coming period,” said Euclid Tsakalotos, one of Greece’s main negotiators.
Tsakalotos said Athens and its creditors were “politically apart” on labor and pension issues and that some areas “will remain open until the last minute.”
At a meeting of eurozone finance ministers today, Greece is hoping for a “positive statement” on negotiations that will allow for a section of 7.2 billion euros (US$8.1 billion) in remaining bailout loans to be released, officials have said.
However, European officials have played down the likelihood of a deal actually emerging today.
“We have made progress, but we are not very close to an agreement,” Eurogroup chair Jeroen Dijsselbloem told Italy’s Corriere della Sera daily. “It will surely not be reached at the Eurogroup meeting on Monday.”
Greece has been squeezing funds from the central and local governments to be able to meet its international loan payments, with concerns that within a matter of weeks it could default and face a messy exit from the euro. However, a loan repayment of 750 million euros due tomorrow to the IMF will be honored, according to sources in Athens.
A poll in Real News daily yesterday showed 71.9 percent of Greeks favored a compromise to keep the country in the eurozone.
And if the question was put to a referendum, as the government has indicated it may do, 49.2 percent said they would accept further salary and pension cuts if it meant keeping the euro.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
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