Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said Thursday it envisions building a new plant in Japan in 2022 and starting operations there in 2024.

The announcement came days after a news report that the Japanese government is considering financial support for the world's largest contract chipmaker to build a chip-making factory, potentially with Sony Group Corp., in the southwestern Japan prefecture of Kumamoto.

The Japanese government has long wanted to build a semiconductor manufacturing base in the country amid the global computer chip crunch.

Sony Group already has a plant in the town of Kikuyo in Kumamoto that makes the image sensors used in smartphones.

According to sources with knowledge of the matter, the government aid for TSMC could be as much as several billion U.S. dollars and could be included in a supplementary budget that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida aims to compile by the end of December.

==Kyodo

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