Tourism officials continued to press the government to either cut the 5 percent value-added tax or delay collection of last year's corporate income tax this May in order to help the sector through the fallout from severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
"The tourism sector may not see any signs of recovery for the next six months," Tseng Sheng-hai (曾盛海), chairman of the Taipei Association of Travel Agents, said at a legislative hearing yesterday held by the KMT and PFP caucuses.
Citing a government report, Tseng said that the sector is losing NT$9 billion a month in sales abroad as the SARS outbreak has kept residents at home and tourists away from Taiwan.
"With a drop of more than 70 percent, the sales slump is sure to drive up unemployment," he said.
The government has recently promised NT$1 million in preferential loans to hard-hit companies. But Tseng expects the loans will do little to keep the industry afloat.
PFP Legislator Li Yong-ping (李永萍) and her KMT colleague Chu Fong-chi (朱鳳芝) expressed support for the proposal and pressed the central government for tax breaks.
"The Executive Yuan should follow the precedent set by the 921 earthquake relief plan and use money from its secondary reserve fund to assist the industry with tax payments," Li said.
But Vice Minister of Finance Sam Wang (王得山) said the cash-strapped government would be hard-pressed to forego tax collection.
"It's not within the Ministry of Finance's authority to offer any tax breaks since there is no legal basis for the cut," Wang said at the legislative hearing, adding that legal revisions would be needed for the ministry to enact any tax cut.
Wang said the industry's tax-cut proposal may be unfair.
"If tourism-related businesses profited last year, they should report their earnings and pay their taxes this May," Wang said. "Tax collection in May should have nothing to do with SARS' impact."
Wang suggested the industry borrow money to survive the downturn, saying that his ministry has asked the Small and Medium Business Credit Guarantee Fund (中小企業信保基金) to grant similar preferential loans to the tourism sector.
But Wang was interrupted by KMT Legislator Ho Tsai-feng (
Wang promised to look into agencies' credit situation.
Meanwhile, the central government has made arrangements for its 240,000 employees to take vacations by August in order to pump much needed cash into the local tourism industry, said Su Cheng-tien (
Su said that the ministry plans to take the lead and have its 100,000 staffers take their annual trips this month and in May. It is estimated the trips alone will create some NT$600 million in new revenues.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day