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■ Uni-President sees small impact
Uni-President Enterprises Corp (統一企業), the second-biggest instant-noodle maker in China, said the Chinese government's attempt to curb lending and temper growth will have little impact on its food business as it continues to expand. "Even if China's economic growth slows to 7 percent to 8 percent from 10 percent, that's still very high, so the impact isn't really serious," said Simon Hung (洪世民), a spokesman for the Taiwan company. "China's measures are more focused on the real estate, steel and cement industries, rather than food and drinks, which are basic necessities," he said. Uni-Splendor Corp (大統營), a home-appliance making venture of Uni-President's investment unit, plans to invest US$50 million to build a new plant in Guangdong Province, Hung said.

■ Government to sell TSMC stake
The government said it plans this year to sell in the US a 3.2 percent stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) worth NT$38.3 billion (US$1.2 billion). The sale would reduce the Development Fund stake in the world's largest supplier of made-to-order chips to about 4.1 percent, according to James Ho, deputy executive secretary of the government-owned fund. The Development Fund plans to sell a total of NT$46 billion in shares including TSMC, Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體) and Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進), Ho said. The government also plans to sell its entire 20 percent stake in Bank of Overseas Chinese (華僑銀行) by the end of year. "Today or tomorrow we will send out invitations to investment banks for the proposal of selling our 20 percent stake," Ho said.

■ Singapore plant to make profit
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world's second-largest provider of made-to-order chips, said its Singapore factory will make a profit this year. "We do expect sometime this year, barring an unforeseen market downturn, that UMCi will be profitable," said Chris Chi, president of the Singapore unit, known as UMCi, which is also partly owned by Singapore's government. UMC first invested in UMCi in April, 2001 and owns 85 percent of the Singapore company. UMCi, which went into production in March, makes chips on 300mm wafers. The factory is currently making about 2,000 chip wafers a month and needs to make about 8,000 a month to break even. It expects to be producing about 10,000 a month by the end of the year.

■ Cash-advance market grows
The nation's cash-advance market size, as of February, reached NT$181.5 billion with a total of 4.7 million cards in circulation, according to the finance ministry's bureau of monetary affairs. The non-performing ratio on cash-advance loans leveled at some 2.6 percent, which is reasonable, said the bureau's deputy director-general Huang Tien-mu (黃天牧). According to Huang, among the nation's 32 cash-advance card issuers, Cosmos Bank Taiwan (萬泰銀行), Taishin Bank (台新銀行) and the Chinese Bank (中華銀行) are the top three players with NT$70.8 billion, NT$24.5 billion and NT$14.5 billion in revenues. Cosmos, Taishi and Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中信銀), however, are the top three banks that issued the most cash-advance cards boasting 1.31 million, 0.6 million and 0.42 million cardholders.

■ NT dollar up
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday rose against its US counterpart, gaining NT$0.051 to close at NT$33.277 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$383 million.

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