Print

Mail

wiki links

Business quick take

Seoul approves charter flights
Far East Air Transport Corp (遠航) and Trans Asia Airways (復興) will be allowed to operate chartered flights between Taipei and Pusan during the 2002 Asian Games, the South Korean government announced yesterday. To facilitate transportation of athletes and sports fans between Taipei and Pusan during the games, scheduled for Sept. 29 to Oct. 14, the South Korean communications ministry said the two carriers will be permitted to operate chartered Taipei-Pusan flights from Sept. 27 through Oct. 18. During the period, each carrier can operate seven chartered flights using medium-sized commercial aircraft, such as Boeing B757s and Airbus A321s, the ministry said. Direct air links between Tai-wan and South Korea by their national carriers were cut shortly after Seoul switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in August 1992.

Nanya plans share sale
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) will apply to sell 350 million new shares in Taiwan, giving it an alternative plan in case it scraps a planned share sale to overseas investors. Nanya wants to sell the shares for a minimum of NT$30 each, said company spokesman Charles Kau (高啟全). That's 15 percent above Wed-nesday's closing price of NT$26.20. Based on a price of NT$30 a share, the sale would raise NT$10.5 billion (US$303 million.) "We need to raise money by the end of the year," Kau said."We're doing this as a back-up plan." Nanya would sell the new shares to the Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), parent of the company, should a sale to local investors fail, Kau said.

Quanta get Matsushita order
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦) will start shipping mobile phones to Matsushita Electric Industrial Co this month, a Chinese-language newspaper said on Wednesday, citing Yen Wei-cheng, Matsushita's operations manager for Taiwan. Taiwan's biggest notebook-computer maker will become Matsushita's first outside supplier of mobile phones and probably make 900,000 Panasonic-brand handsets this year for the world's biggest consumer-electronics maker for sale in Taiwan and China, the report said. Quanta, which also makes mobile phones for Siemens AG, should be able to reach its target of making 1.5 million handsets this year, the report said.

Plant closures fall in August
Factory closures fell by about an eighth and the number of new factories opened rose by about a third in August, suggesting an export-driven rebound from Tai-wan's worst recession is stemming job losses. Factory shutdowns fell 12.8 percent from a year earlier to 340, a government report showed. New plant registrations rose 34 percent to 434 in August. The unemployment rate fell to 5 percent, an 11-month low, in July. Rising exports of mobile phones, computer chips and other goods helped reduce the jobless rate from January's record 5.4 percent. Exports in August rose 15.5 percent from a year earlier, the fastest pace in almost two years. In the first eight months of 2002, plant closures dropped 41 percent to 2,205. The number of new factories opened during the eight-month period rose 6.6 percent to 2,825.

NT dollar gains
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday rose slightly against its US counterpart, up NT$0.065 to close at NT$34.620 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. The turnover was US$440 million, down from the previous day's US$597 million. The local currency opened at yesterday's high of NT$34.750 and hit a low of NT$34.582.

This story has been viewed 1713 times.