■ 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$87.755 billion during the same period. The top three purchasers last week were all financial holding companies: Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控), Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控) and Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控). The top three sellers were China Steel Corp (中鋼), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and United Microelectronics Corp (聯電).
■ Bond seminar held
Senior international bankers and financial experts yesterday kicked off an international seminar in Taipei on global bond market developments, aiming to promote regional bond market development. Chaired by Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控) Chairman Jeffrey Koo (辜濂松), the seminar was co-sponsored by the APEC Business Advisory Council and the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council. Yesterday the seminar focused on the establishment of a sustainable regional bond market to help stabilize currency trading and avoid recurrences of crises such as the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
■ High Tech's revenue surges
High Tech Computer Corp (宏達國際), the world's largest pocket PC manufacturer, reported a record-high monthly revenue of NT$ 2.77 billion, up 84.1 percent from a year ago, due to strong market demand for PDA phones, the company said in a statement. Last month's sales accounted for 44.85 percent -- more than expected -- of the revenue of NT$6.22 billion that the company earlier forecast that it would generate in the April-June quarter. Separately, AU Optronics Corp (友達光電), the world's third-largest maker of flat-panel displays, said sales last month more than doubled from a year ago to NT$15.8 billion, while Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦), the world's largest maker of motherboards, said last month's sales rose to NT$6 billion, from NT$4.9 billion in the same month a year earlier.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained