TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said on Monday (Jan. 17) that the supply chain problem during the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the important role Taiwan’s semiconductor industry plays in the global industrial chain and the government will move forward with policies to achieve domestic manufacture and supply of all semiconductor equipment the country’s semiconductor industry will need in the future, CNA reported.
Tsai said it’s 100% certain that Taiwan has the ability to make all semiconductor equipment the industry needs.
She mentioned that the production value of Taiwan’s semiconductor equipment industry in 2021 was NT$116.7 billion (US$4.20 billion), an increase of 28.7% compared to NT$90.7 billion in 2020, the report said.
When looked at from the overall investment of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, the industry invested a total of about NT$1 trillion last year, of which investment in equipment accounted for 70%, which figured out to about NT$700 billion, CNA quoted the president as saying. Of that amount, NT$600 billion, or about 86%, was spent on purchasing equipment from abroad, which shows the domestic equipment industry still has plenty of room to grow, she added.
Many Taiwanese equipment manufacturers are small and medium-sized businesses, and when they are pushing to get research and development moving, they often encounter resource limits, Tsai said, adding that the government will back these businesses and encourage others to get into the semiconductor equipment business through the adoption of beneficial policies, per CNA.
