The Ministry of Economic Affairs is planning to allocate NT$200 million (US$6.7 million) to help local food producers expand their overseas footprint, including in Asia and North America, to help them mitigate the impact of China’s import bans.
The subsidy program, dubbed “Taiwan Food Go to the World,” would provide guidance to food producers on marketing and finance to help them overcome difficulties due to import bans China imposed on Taiwanese food brands on Monday last week, the ministry said yesterday.
China is the third-largest export destination for local processed food companies, accounting for 20 percent of Taiwan’s overall processed food exports, the ministry said.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
The ministry is in talks with Redmart, Singapore’s biggest online grocery store, and Japanese online retailier Rakuten to sell Taiwanese food products, it said, adding that it hopes the initiative would give producers a boost as early as October.
The Council of Agriculture on Tuesday last week said the blacklisted companies include producers of tea leaves, dried fruits, honey, cocoa beans and vegetables, as well as the catches from about 700 Taiwanese fishing vessels.
China said the suspension was related to the companies’ compliance with a new customs registration system that it introduced in April last year.
However, several Taiwanese companies whose registrations on the system are up to date were also affected by the ban.
The government is promoting the sale of processed Taiwanese food products and agricultural products to other markets to help producers overcome the China trade challenges, Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) told reporters.
The government would help manufacturers market their products mainly in 13 countries, including Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, the US and Vietnam, she said.
Companies that market their products on foreign Web sites would receive a subsidy of NT$100,000 and those that hold promotion activities can apply for a subsidy of NT$200,000 for up to five events each, she added.
The ministry would organize sales promotion events in countries such as Singapore and Malaysia, and participate in food-related activities and exhibitions, she said.
The program would benefit about 2,000 manufacturers, adding an expected US$60 million to their combined revenue, she said.
The ministry hopes the program can help companies diversify their target markets and bring Taiwanese delicacies to more countries, she said.
Additional reporting by Lisa Wang
TRADE WAR: Tariffs should also apply to any goods that pass through the new Beijing-funded port in Chancay, Peru, an adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump said A veteran adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump is proposing that the 60 percent tariffs that Trump vowed to impose on Chinese goods also apply to goods from any country that pass through a new port that Beijing has built in Peru. The duties should apply to goods from China or countries in South America that pass through the new deep-water port Chancay, a town 60km north of Lima, said Mauricio Claver-Carone, an adviser to the Trump transition team who served as senior director for the western hemisphere on the White House National Security Council in his first administration. “Any product going
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
STRUGGLING BUSINESS: South Korea’s biggest company and semiconductor manufacturer’s buyback fuels concerns that it could be missing out on the AI boom Samsung Electronics Co plans to buy back about 10 trillion won (US$7.2 billion) of its own stock over the next year, putting in motion one of the larger shareholder return programs in its history. South Korea’s biggest company would repurchase the stock in stages over the coming 12 months, it said in a regulatory filing on Friday. As a first step, it would buy back about 3 trillion won of paper starting today up until February next year, all of which it would cancel. The board would deliberate on how best to effect the remaining 7 trillion won of buybacks. The move
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
RSS