Twelve local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and six overseas Taiwanese businesses yesterday received National Awards for their outstanding performance from the Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday.
Among the 12 winning SMEs were Sheh Fung Screws Co (世豐螺絲廠公司), Hightech Electronic Products Tech Co (東林科技) and Tung Yu Hydraulic Machinery Co (東繁油壓機械).
During his opening remarks, Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) vowed that the government would provide SME credit guarantees of up to NT$6 billion (US$184.2 million) next year while boosting loans to SMEs to NT$300 billion a year, which is equivalent to one-tenth of the nation’s total NT$3 trillion loan balance.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday lauded the resilience of domestic SMEs, which he called a pillar to social stability.
Ma said, that there were 1.24 million SMEs in Taiwan, which account for 98 percent of all businesses here and take up 77 percent of the nation’s labor force.
He also reiterated confidence in the economy, saying the nation’s fundamentals were sound despite the global financial turbulence.
Taiwan has US$250 billion in foreign reserves and more than US$12,000 in GDP per capita, which lags only behind Hong Kong and Singapore in Asia.
The six overseas award-winning companies are Dental Implant Institute (美國拉斯維加植牙醫學中心), Asian Legend Inc (味香村連鎖飲食企業集團), Lightel Technologies Inc (萊特爾科技), Dallas/Fort Worth Technology Inc (美國達福科技), Chiu-Nichi Agro Resources Phil, Inc (綠源農業資源) and Telamon Corp (德利盟).
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.