The European Chamber of Commerce Taiwan (ECCT) on Wednesday night called on the government to show greater resolve in building the nation into a regional hub for the development of offshore wind energy.
“Wind energy has the potential to increase energy security, reduce pollution and create a new high-value industry in Taiwan,” Taiwan ECCT chairman Giuseppe Izzo said during an annual dinner with top-ranking government officials and industry representatives.
However, the government must keep a stable, consistent and predictable regulatory framework to boost business confidence in the industry’s sustainability, he said.
Photo: CNA
Hurdles and bottlenecks that need to be overcome include grid connections, finance, insurance, vessels, infrastructure and talent recruitment, he said.
Localization requirements must be flexible enough to allow time to build facilities, training staff and ramping up production without raising costs, causing delays or compromising safety and quality standards, he said.
Developers should also be allowed to adjust their plans to take advantage of the latest technology when it becomes available, he said.
More could be done to remove discriminatory treatment toward foreign residents in Taiwan, Izzo said.
He cited various benefits, such as transportation discounts for pensioners and disabled people, as well as subsidies for electric vehicles, that have not been extended to foreign residents.
“Foreigners who live, work and pay taxes in Taiwan should be granted the same rights and privileges due Taiwanese,” he said.
On the subject of healthcare, Taiwan’s health insurance system is facing challenges from a low birthrate and rapidly aging society, Izzo said.
The resulting increase in chronic diseases is putting a strain on resources, he said.
He pressed for further investment in disease prevention and adoption of more flexible business models to increase private sector involvement in healthcare.
ECCT reiterated its support for the government’s efforts to turn Taiwan into a bilingual nation by 2030 and the goal to boost English proficiency to enhance the nation’s competitiveness on the world stage.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
RSS