China Airlines gets green light
China Airlines Co (華航) won approval from Beijing to buy a quarter stake in a cargo unit of China Eastern Airlines Corp (東方航空), helping it gain a foothold in China's freight business.
China Airlines will pay 375 million yuan (US$45 million) for the stake, and the transaction is expected to be completed by the end of June, said Joseph Wu (武志厚), a PR specialist at the company.
Meanwhile, the airline has been canceling between one to three of its daily passenger services to Hong Kong, as concern about the spread of SARS in the region keeps would-be travelers at home.
The airline is filling between 50 percent and 55 percent of available seats on its planes on those services, compared with the normal usage rate of 70 percent.
Silicon Integrated signs pact
Silicon Integrated Systems Corp (矽統科技), the world's third-largest designer of personal-computer chipsets, said it signed a contract with Intel Corp to make products that work with the US company's newest processors.
Silicon Integrated may make chipsets that work with Intel's latest Pentium 4 processors, Silicon Integrated said in a statement to the Taiwan stock exchange. No details were disclosed.
The company and its larger rival, Via Technologies Inc (威盛電子), will gain a larger share of the chipset market, analysts said.
``The second quarter will be a good opportunity for Taiwanese chipset designers,'' said Alex Kao, an analyst with Yuanta Core Pacific Securities (元大京華證券).
Business is blooming
An orchid cultivation zone set up by the Tainan County Government has been warmly welcomed by orchid growers, with all 30 units of the first-phase development already fully booked, a county government spokesman said yesterday.
The spokesman said that while the projected orchid plantation will cover 200 hectares with the completion of the six-year development project, the first-phase development will be confined to 12 hectares to be made available for building greenhouses.
The land development project is scheduled to begin in June and orchid growers will be able to begin building their greenhouses in the second half of this year.
As an incentive measure, the county government has obtained support from the central government to provide low-interest loans to the growers. Each company can apply for a maximum NT$40 million loan, which must be repaid over 10 years with an annual interest rate of 2.5 percent, according to the spokesman.
The spokesman added that with the completion of the six-year project, the plantation will comprise greenhouses, an orchid garden, exhibition halls and a horticulture training center.
Stable currency still priority
The central bank will keep its focus on maintaining a ``stable'' currency, a local newspaper reported.
The New Taiwan dollar's average fluctuation was 2.38 percent last year, less than the South Korean won's 7.64 percent, the euro's 9.01 percent and the Japanese yen's 8.60 percent.
In the past five years, the central bank's investment returns on its foreign currency-denominated assets have been higher than benchmark indexes such as the J.P. Morgan Global Government Bond Index, the paper said.
The nation's foreign-currency reserves rose to a record US$168.6 billion in March, according to figures from the central bank earlier.
NT dollar gains
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday turned stronger against its US counterpart, rising NT$0.016 to close at NT$34.797 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
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