Brazil eyes Taiwan’s semiconductor capital to grow advanced chip industry in Latin America’s biggest economy
- Taiwanese authorities and businesses want to unlock the ‘potential’ in Brazil’s semiconductor market, and South America expansion brings them closer to the US
- Brazil’s tech sector, dominated by contract manufacturing, also requires computer chips that have been in short supply during the pandemic
Taiwanese officials and entrepreneurs from the global tech hub are talking with their counterparts from Brazil about working together to help Latin America’s biggest economy develop its nascent semiconductor industry.
Taiwan has the capital and know-how to help Brazil realise its plans for building up a domestic semiconductor industry, according to reports following a business council meeting held in Taipei on Tuesday and backed by Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs.
More cooperation with Taiwan would help Brazil grow its US$50 billion tech sector, which is now dominated by contract manufacturing that’s often in need of chips, analysts say.
Taiwanese designers, makers and packagers of chips for the global market could, in turn, find new business in Brazil.
“It’s a business opportunity, and not only that, it’s also a diplomatic concern,” said Liang Kuo-yuan, the retired founder of the Yuanta-Polaris Research Institute, a Taipei-based think tank. “Brazil is, of course, a major Latin American country, so its economic scale isn’t bad.”
Taiwan supplies about 60 per cent of the world’s semiconductor chips. Because of chip shortages during the pandemic and declining Sino-US relations, Taiwanese chip firms face pressure from Western-allied countries to manufacture the tiny components closer to their markets and to decouple from mainland China.