Business Briefs

■ Tax revenues soar

The nation's tax revenues last month amounted to NT$98.8 billion (US$2.99 billion), an increase of 19.7 percent over the same month last year, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement yesterday. Last month's revenue from stock-transaction taxes rose NT$7.9 billion, or 210.2 percent, to NT$11.7 billion from a year earlier. Revenues from land taxes grew NT$2.9 billion, or 77.5 percent, to NT$6.7 billion, the ministry said. Income tax revenues totaled NT$17.5 billion, an increase of NT$2.7 billion. Collectively, the ministry received NT$384.9 billion in revenues in the first four months of the year, up 22.4 percent from the same period last year, accounting for 28.9 percent of the target set for the year. During this period, stock-transaction tax revenues increased NT$24.5 billion, business tax revenues grew NT$15 billion, land tax revenues rose NT$15.8 billion and income tax revenue increased NT$4 billion over a year ago.

■ Foreigners still hold stock

Foreign institutional investors have bought more Taiwanese stocks than they have sold this year, although the dollar amount of their holdings has shrunk to NT$62.9 billion, according to the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp. Statistics showed that as of Friday, foreign institutional investors have bought NT$1.3733 trillion in Taiwanese shares this year and sold NT$1.3104 trillion. The market value of the shares owned by foreign institutional investors amounted to NT$2.9113 trillion, accounting for 21.95 percent of the market value of listed stocks. The tallies also showed that foreign institutional investors bought NT$59.202 billion in local shares last week and sold NT$87.755 billion during the same period. The top three purchasers last week were all financial holding companies: Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控), Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控) and Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控). The top three sellers were China Steel Corp (中鋼), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and United Microelectronics Corp (聯電).