State-owned loss-making wafer foundry 1st Silicon (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd has been exempted from filing its 2005 annual statement of accounts to the Companies Commission of Malaysia (CCM).

This means anyone making a search on details of the company which has suffered accumulated losses of RM2.6 billion since it started operations in 1999 will see a blank on its profit and loss accounts.

Malaysiakini made a search at the CCM office located in the Sarawak Timber Association (STA) Building in Kuching yesterday and was informed by the staff attending to the public that the company had been given a certificate of exemption in respect of the filing of its accounts for the financial year 2005.

The Sarawak government's 97%-owned wafer fab, one of the two established in the country, has been reporting big losses since its started operations for financial years from 2000 through to 2004.

The government announced earlier this year that 1st Silicon was to merge with Germany's X-FAB Semi-conductor Foundaries AG, but did not disclose whether the state's new stake will be a minor or major one.

The move is largely seen as a way out for the government to cut back on its losses and hope for the energy to generate some returns on the long term for the state which has invested about RM4 billion in the project that now employs more than a thousand people in its factory in Sama Jaya Free Industrial Zone on the outskirts of Kuching.

DAP to raise issue

In an address before a business conference participants in Kuching earlier this week, Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud sounded sanguine on the benefits of the merger, saying that the German company was one of the largest in its field in the world supplying IT components for the automotive industry.

Meanwhile, DAP has announced that it will raise a question in next week's sitting of the state legislative assembly on details of the reported joint venture.merger.

DAP state chairperson and assemblyperson for Bukit Assek Wong Ho Leng wants to know the proposed equities of the partners and the proposed capital investment and how the merger can help salvage the state government's huge losses in 1st Silicon.

He also wants to know the prospects of the joint venture making money, especially in the light of growing regional and global competition in the fab industry.