Taiwan may seek more private funds for TIMC

TAIPEI, TAIWAN: Taiwan's economic minister said on Tuesday the ministry may consider seeking more private funds for a new state-backed memory chip company if parliament blocks injections of state capital.

If the cabinet's National Development Fund is not allowed to invest in TIMC, the ministry will consider seeking more investment from the private sector, Economics Minister Shih Yen-shiang told reporters at a year-end news conference.

As part of efforts to restructure the island's chip industry, the economics ministry gave in-principle approval in November to Taiwan Innovation Memory Co's (TIMC) request for about T$5 billion ($155 million) from the government.

However, a parliamentary economic committee has called on the national development fund not to inject capital into TIMC, pushing for the project to be scrapped on concerns it will waste state funds.

Shih reiterated that the ministry would continue to negotiate with lawmakers before parliament finalized a decision.

Critics say the new DRAM firm has moved at a snail's pace since its formation in March, and that the timing for restructuring of Taiwan's DRAM sector has passed as chipmakers are seeing narrower losses as a result of recovering chip prices.

Earlier this year, Taiwan's government said it had allocated state funds to help the island's dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chipmakers as they had been struggling in the worst-ever industry downturn.