Business Briefs

WTO ruling applauded
The Ministry of Economic Affairs applauded a WTO ruling that US safeguard tariffs violate global trade rules.

In a statement issued yesterday, the ministry's Bureau of Foreign Trade said the government welcomes the WTO ruling.

It said the government hopes the US will remove the import barrier. Taiwan expects the US's removal of the duties of up to 30 percent introduced in March last year will help it sell more steel in the US market.

Matav to sell D-Link products
Matav Rt, Hungary's biggest phone company, that is majority-owned by Deutsche Telekom AG, will sell products made by D-Link Corp (友訊), a Taiwanese network systems maker, the news service MTI said citing company officials.

Budapest-based Matav is looking for new sources of revenue as more Hungarians switch off their fixed-line services in favor of mobile phones and its mobile unit faces increased competition from the local services of Vodafone Group Plc and Norway's Telenor ASA.

D-Link says it's the world's largest maker of networking equipment for homes and small businesses. The company had net income of NT$1 billion (US$29 million) in the first nine months, compared with NT$623 million in the same period last year.

IT growth predicted
Faster growth in semiconductor equipment, data communications and software industries in the US next year will lead a similar growth in the Asia-Pacific region, Salomon Smith Barney technology strategist Mark Fenton told reporters in Taipei yesterday.

"The growth, which will not be dramatic, is driven by strong consumer spending and recovering corporate spending," Fenton said.

Asian companies will certainly benefit from the brisk development, as US companies have increasingly farmed out production to save costs, he added.

Networking giant Cisco Systems Inc is one example of the promising data communications industry, the research house said. Many local companies produced networking components for Cisco, including Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密).

Tax revenues up 13.8%
The nation's total tax revenues last month amounted to NT$72.3 billion (US$2.13 billion), an increase of 13.8 percent over the same month last year, according to statistics compiled by the Ministry of Finance.

Last month's revenue from stock trading taxes totaled NT$7.38 billion, an increase of NT$2.1 billion over a year earlier. Revenues from land tax amounted to NT$6.13 billion, a hike of NT$1.9 billion. Income tax totaled NT$26.68 billion, an increase of NT$100 million.

In the first 10 months of this year, the country's total tax revenues amounted to NT$156.6 billion, up 0.9 percent from the same period last year. During this period, income tax increased NT$15.8 billion, but stock trading tax was NT$6.8 billion less than a year earlier. The business tax was NT$17.8 billion less than the same period last year. The ministry received NT$820.2 billion in revenues in the first 10 months of this year, NT$72.4 billion less than the budget earmarked for the ministry.

NT dollar weakens
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday weakened against its US counterpart, falling NT$0.054 to close at NT$34.029 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$500 million.

"The New Taiwan dollar weakened because of stock sales by foreigners and speculation that the central bank was buying US dollars," said Joseph Lee, a currency trader at United World Chinese Commercial Bank (世華銀行).