TAIPEI -- Foxconn and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said on Monday morning they have signed $350 million worth of contracts to buy coronavirus vaccines from a Chinese distributor to help the government ramp up its inoculation drive amid a surge in local cases.
The top two Taiwanese companies by market cap said they will spend up to $175 million each to buy 10 million BioNTech vaccines that they will then donate to the government, according to stock exchange filings. TSMC is the world's most valuable chip company, while Foxconn, which formally trades as Hon Hai Precision Industry, is the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer and a major iPhone assembler.
This marks the first deal by private companies to purchase vaccines since Taiwanese officials accused China of interfering in the government's procurement of jabs. Beijing, which views the island as part of its territory, denies the accusation.
Taiwan -- one of the world's most important sources of advanced semiconductor chips -- has been suffering from an outbreak since the middle of May and is struggling to ramp up the pace of its vaccination drive.
"Since we proposed the vaccine donation and started negotiating for the purchase, there had been no guidance or interference from Beijing over the acquisition. We appreciate that the negotiation was allowed to go through as a business matter," Terry Gou, founder and former chairman of Foxconn, posted on his Facebook account early Monday morning.
Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group, whose subsidiary has a contract with BioNTech of Germany to sell its COVID-19 vaccines in China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, said in a stock exchange filing late on Sunday evening that its subsidiary has signed a sales agreement with TSMC, Foxconn, Foxconn's charitable Yonglin Foundation and cold-chain logistics provider Zuellig Pharma, their partner in the vaccine procurement effort, to sell a total of 10 million doses to the companies, with the understanding that the shots will be donated to the Taiwanese government.
Fosun warned, however, that the supply of the vaccines is subject to various uncertainties, and said the speed of the supply depends on the speed of production and the capability of the supply chains. None of the parties specified a time frame for the 10 million jabs to arrive.
"We are happy to see the vaccine that was codeveloped by Fosun and BioNTech can provide assistance to Taiwan's Covid prevention. We will work with our partners to supply the jabs to Taiwan soon," Fosun Chairman and CEO Wu Yifang said in a WeChat post on Sunday. An earlier post by the company, since deleted, cited the CEO of BioNTech as expressing a similar sentiment.
Taiwan was hailed as an early success story in containing the coronavirus pandemic, but the number of confirmed cases has surged from around 1,200 in May to nearly 15,000 as of Sunday, with 740 deaths. The democratic-ruled island has struggled to quickly inoculate its population due to a lack of COVID vaccines and the entire country being under semi-lockdown since the middle of May.
As of July 9, about 3.3 million people, or 14% of the total population in Taiwan, had received a first dose of vaccine, according to the government's data.