Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) Chairwoman Christina Liu (劉憶如) said yesterday that escalating tensions between the two Koreas could have a negative effect on Taiwan and that the government would be hard pressed to fulfill its “6-3-3” pledge by 2012.
“In my opinion, [the tensions between] South Korea and North Korea will have the most impact on Taiwan’s economy in the short term given our geographical proximity and robust trade interaction,” Liu said in her first appearance as council chief at a question-and-and-answer session in the legislature.
Liu was responding to questions by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) on which international risks posed the greatest threat to Taiwan: tensions in the Korean Peninsula, the eurozone debt crisis, an Asian asset bubble or Western countries’ fragile economic recovery.
Liu said that if tensions between the two Koreas continued to escalate, it would have a negative impact on Taiwan’s economic development as international investors might withdraw from Asian markets, sending local stock and currency markets tumbling.
“There is no denying that when Asia encounters a problem — it doesn’t matter which country it is — international funds normally pull out [of the regional market],” Liu said.
She said the local stock market was very sensitive to global disturbances and Taiwan was an “unwitting victim” of the Korean crisis, referring to local stocks nose-diving on Monday.
However, Liu said that as Taiwan and South Korea are in neck-and-neck competition in the DRAM, LED and flat-panel industries, a silver lining in the Korean crisis was that a share of the foreign direct investment that was intended for South Korea could be diverted to Taiwan.
Liu also told lawmakers that except for economic growth likely expanding by 6 percent this year, it would be difficult to lower unemployment to below 3 percent and to raise annual per capita income to US$30,000 by 2012.
She was referring to President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) “6-3-3” campaign pledge to achieve annual GDP growth of 6 percent, annual per capita income of US$30,000 and to lower unemployment rate to below 3 percent during his term in office.
“Based on the current situation, I think it would be hard to achieve the ‘6-3-3’ goal by 2012,” Liu said, blaming the global financial crunch in 2008 that took its toll on the nation’s economy.
“No one had expected an outbreak of the financial crisis when the economic policy was made,” she said.
Calling on the government to remain prudent in dealing with structural unemployment, Liu said the council would strive to lower the jobless rate, which hit 5.39 percent last month, to below 5 percent by the end of this year.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday obtained the government’s approval to inject an additional US$10.26 billion to finance the construction of its second fab in Kumamoto, Japan, and a second fab in Arizona, using advanced process technologies. The Department of Investment Review approved TSMC’s investment applications on the basis that Taiwan remains a major technology and manufacturing hub for the chipmaker, which makes its most advanced chips at home, the company operates its research-and-development center here and the majority of its capacity remains in Taiwan. The latest capital injections — US$5.26 billion for its Japanese venture Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing
Packed into a small room, a drone, bipedal robot, supermarket checkout and other devices showcase a vision of China’s software future — one where an operating system developed by national champion Huawei (華為) has replaced Windows and Android. The collection is at the Harmony Ecosystem Innovation Center in the southern city of Shenzhen, a local government-owned entity that encourages authorities, companies and hardware makers to develop software using OpenHarmony (鴻蒙), an open-source version of the operating system Huawei launched five years ago after US sanctions cut off support for Google’s Android. While Huawei’s recent strong-selling smartphone launches have been closely watched for
The waves of the Aegean Sea lap gently at the tables and chairs of two beach restaurants on Greece’s Halkidiki peninsula. It is an idyllic scene, but one that is totally illegal. Like many others in Greece, the two establishments on Pefkochori Beach do not have a license to set up shop so close to the water. After a wave of protests last summer by locals about bars and restaurants illegally covering beaches with sunbeds and tables, the Greek state is taking action. It is cracking down on rogue tourist practices with surveillance drones, satellite imagery and a special app
AI BOOM: With many stocks trading at historically high levels, the TAIEX is expected to drop about 600 points in the third quarter as investors seek to pocket their profits Taiwan’s main board could experience a technical pullback after the TAIEX soared more than 28 percent in the first half of this year following a strong showing by artificial intelligence (AI)-related stocks, analysts said on Saturday, predicting that the index would make a comeback in the fourth quarter. On Friday, the last trading session of this month, the TAIEX rose 126.27 points, or 0.55 percent, to 23,032.25, pushing up the main board by 5,101.44 points, or 28.4 percent, in the first six months of the year. Of the major indices in the world, the TAIEX only trailed the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index